If your father left you to die [Trigger warning for addiction/alcoholism added by MNHQ]

[WildeWoman]

By leaving you to die, I mean 'she's an alcoholic, what can you do'.

And you later found out that he may have been complicit in welfare fraud..........

Would you report him?

Hi Wildewoman,

Can I ask, do you have a fellow person in recovery to talk about this resentment? Someone who understands the disease of addiction and how it can affect thinking?

I always think it's better to sleep on anger before acting....

OP you are a nasty nasty person. Perhaps alchol made you so or perhaps you always were. either way it oozes from your posts. It is painfully obvious why your family have had to draw lines and step behind them. You are not ready to stop drinking. You are not ready to address the reality of the situation. You are not interested in becoming sober. Not right now. You are focussed on blame and excuses. Your father is not responsible for you. You are. There comes a point in adulthood where you realise that yes, parents get it wrong and some are deliberately cruel. Your father may be the nastiest bastard alive, but i can tell you now that all the whining in the world about that will not solve your problem. You need to drop the blame. Of everyone, including yourself. Yes you made decisions in the past and it is essential to acknowledge that, but you need to forget about who did wrong in the past and decide what YOU and you alone are going to do for yourself and your future. Forgetting everyone else who had a hand in getting you where you are now. YOU need to make decisons about what you are going to do. And actually make a decision that what happens from this point forward is going to be exactly what YOU chose to happen, whether good or bad, they are your choices. Make that decision. Thats what you need to be doing. Taking ownership of your own choices.

Op, I was like your brother. Always offering excuses for why my mum couldn't help herself. It was easier to think she had no control rather than to accept she had a problem she wasn't ready/willing to do something about. I, and many of my siblings, are low/no contact with her now. I can't take the pain of it, you see. I really do wish you well and hope you can achieve sobriety but I also understand why some of your family had to walk away.

Btw. I know exactly why OP's brother is enabling her. Its the path of least resistance. If he takes a hard line and tells her she can recover then she will put the onus on him to prove that whilst doing her damndest to prove him wrong. And when she does prove him wrong and he holds his hands up and says "i cant do anymore for you" she will treat him to a similar text as she did her father. Quite frankly given what OP has said, if i was him, i would smile and nod as well whilst on the other end of an email. Whatever gives her the least impact on his life. He doesnt need that shit.

I see what you mean RudeElf and you're probably right about the path of least resistance. But if it's true, then he's a coward as well as an enabler.

(Rhetorical question) I wonder if OP will come back. I expect not. I don't think the thread went the way she expected it to.

But if it's true, then he's a coward as well as an enabler.

I agree, it is the easier option. But when you have helped and you have helped and you have helped, sometimes you just have to put yourself first and say "ok, i'll say what they want to hear because i cant take the backlash anymore" sometimes what looks like the cowardly is actual the only way to ensure that person has minimal impact on your life. OP's brother isnt responsible for her either. He isnt obliged to always say what she needs to hear and take the inevitable reaction from her. I think its fair enough if he just says what he knows will keep her 'peaceful' wrt to him.

I hope you soon reach the point where you properly understand that even the most addicted person has choices and also no choices. Like being underwater and having to decide to inhale or kick for the surface. I hope you kick hard.
for you and for all the people angry or upset by this thread.

It's possible that the OP's brother has just reached the same level of frustration that I do with my toddler when he insists the sky is green - "Yes dear, that's right, you're absolutely correct the sky is green after all/ alcoholism is completely not your fault or responsibility and there is nothing you can do, you're medically fucked"

Said in that battle-weary tone, that most of us will know. Maybe that's what happened and the OP missed the nuance of tone and took it as fact.

Rude I guess I'm looking at it from the point of view that it's cowardly because the courageous thing to do would be to tell her to get help and not to contact him until she's sober. It's cowardly (IMO) to give the old 'yeah, yeah, whatever' when you know that what you're doing may be making it easier for you, but isn't helping the addict.

It took a lot for me to see that, although mine was more enabling by rescuing rather than appeasing, iyswim. And it took a lot for me to finally tell him that he was going to have to do it on his own, that I was done enabling him.

I haven't read the whole thread sorry it's too long and won't load on my device as I have really slow internet where I am. But I think the thread title and the OP are to vague to make a judgement call either way here.

One of the things that the families of addicts and substance abusers learn through AA family support is that you cannot, no matter how much you wAnt to, cure or save an addict by loving them and supporting them unless and until they are ready to help themselves and accept that support.

Sometimes for the sake of your own sanity and wellbeing you have to accept that and withdraw. I imagine it's incredibly painful as a parent to reach that point, but in the end sometimes it must be done.. If the addict in your life is hellbent on taking themselves down then you will get taken down with them if you don't recognize when it's time to let go.

I doubt there are many parents who would just 'leave their child to die homeless' without having put themselves through the most awful emotional wringer a hundred times first, in attempts to save them.

Managed to read the thread now. Totally agree with AF the OP sounds like a total Narc. Not sure whether these traits are due to actually being a Narc, or are just a natural consequence/ side effect of alcoholism. I was particularly struck by the poster who said she felt embarrassed looking back on her own self pity and dramatic histrionics. That is exactly how Wilde is coming across to me.

I think she has a long way to go before she is ready to take any responsibility for this. Even her writing style suggests she is penning her own romantic/tragic memoirs where she is the tragic victim and everyone else is the dastardly villain, save her hero brother who understands her and agrees that nothing is her fault.

Unless I missed it, I assume all mention of her daughter has been gleaned from another thread? What is most terribly sad here is that there is a child who has probably suffered her whole life because of this, and yet her mother is in such a state of self absorption that all she can talk about is how other people have made HER suffer, and nothing about her own poor child.

It suits your narrative not to help me, NOT because I'm beyond help, but because you are TOO FUCKING GOD-DAMNED MEAN

Just gone back to look at your original posting, op.

Wilde, you ask for financial assistance saying in your view, you are not beyond help, as above.

And yet you tell us all, at length, on this thread, that you ARE beyond help, tht it is a disease and there's nothing you can do about it.

Do you not see how impossible this makes it for the people around you op? Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

You sound like a bullying, vindictive and terrifying drunk and I really feel very sorry for your poor 11 year old daughter.

Hopefully she is not in your care.

This thread's actually got me out of bed, I've been fretting and pondering.

I do feel for you Wilde, my father withdrew from me when I was at my worst and I told everyone who'd listen what an unutterable bastard he was (I also gather from your OP he has a wife you're not too keen on - My Dad had one of those too and I'd rail against her frequently - how she'd turned him against me, what a bunch of cunts they were). But the truth was, he'd simply had enough, he didn't know what to do any more and he was weary and tired, and helpless, so the only thing he could do was withdraw.

And looking back, I don't blame him, I hope I NEVER have to see my children in the state he saw me in many times. I remember getting off a plane once, he was picking me up from the airport and I'd been drinking heavily combined with benzos (I'd even lit a fag on the plane and told myself if I blew the smoke into my tonic can no-one would notice - it's amazing what you can get away with if you're vaguely plausible, apologetic and middle class). Anyway, I walked out of arrivals and had NO FUCKING IDEA where I was, I had a brief moment of clarity and saw someone who looked familiar and honed in on them. It was my Father, my Father looked 'familiar'. The next thing I remember was being in the car with my hand on his leg, and him gently removing it, I was so fucked I thought he was my ex-husband and was apologising to him for all my misdemeanours.

He's found me face-down more times than I care to remember.

The poor man.

And I was never a nasty drunk, a violent drunk, I was never a danger to anyone but myself, but I was a self-pitying mess, and I had ALL the excuses lined up and ready to roll. It was never my fault.

I've had a complicated family history, but who hasn't? That one just gets tired after a while. It's ok to blame every fucker but yourself when you're young, then one day you look in the mirror and it's just you staring back, the old crimes against you have suddenly become shit you're perpetrating on others, YOU become the one that's causing pain and people are your victims, you can't play the 'Poor me' card any more because it's 'poor every fucker that comes into contact with me' and that's when you realise it has to stop.

I don't know if you'll get there Wilde, I hope you do, but you HAVE to start taking some responsibility for your own life, you're not helpless, you're not a lost cause unless you choose to be.

I understand that choosing not to be can be very fucking difficult though.

Wilde Reading things again I see that you equate asking your father for money to (apparently) tide you over and set you up with a few things until the fabulous job paying 140 a day came through, as 'saving your life, and not leaving you to die homeless on the streets.'

I am going to guess therefore that there have Been many instances where those who love you have given money to help you through a temporary emergency, only to see it poured down your throat, you lurch onto yet another shambolic crisis and nothing changes.

It's interesting that you see your fathers refusal to lend you money as him 'leaving you to die on the streets.'

In spite of the fact that he didn't cough up, you appear to still be here, alive, if not entirely well.

I think your perspective is a little out of whack.

Fantastic post Delusion.

Can I just say, an alcoholic treated with kindness is usually the epitome of humility and gratitude.

I can't me from a family with lots of alcoholics. Spent my time around many others. This is not true in my experience.

An alcoholic see kindness as a weakness to exploited

Does the spouse of a cancer patient suffer? Does the mother suffer? Do the children suffer?

This is shocking. This whole thread is classic alcoholic behaviour. It's everybody else who has let me down etc.

You sound like a bullying, vindictive and terrifying drunk and I really feel very sorry for your poor 11 year old daughter.

op has a daughter?

Where was the dd while she was dying on the streets?

To be honest this sounds like someone still firmly in the grip of addiction who sees things how they want to see them. It's everyone else's fault

Wilde. I have read your post. You are an addict. Your father isn't responsible for you now that you are an adult.

Lots of us were never supported by our parents growing up.

My own dad was sexually abusive and massively violent. I ended up in care and for a time was homeless as a teenager. Too old for children's homes. Not capable of caring for myself as no life skills.

You chose alcohol. Your family didn't. I am sure they would have tried to help. Your brother grew up in the same family home I assume.

I have a drug addict brother who in his mid 30s displays behaviour of a teen.

I housed him. Fed him. Picked him up from the hospital more often than I can count. He has been in and out of jail for drug offences, violence and all the while tells me that it's not his fault. It's not fair his life is like it is whilst I live the life (I wish)

I have stepped back. I am no contact with both of them.

Your post shows a lack of insight that your behaviour has on others.

When you are ready to accept that you are an alcoholic and that you are ready for treatment then go for it.

Your family are not responsible for you now. You are an adult.

I feel for you. I really do. But you and only you can change your life.

Outstanding post Delusion