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?

I'd like to see you argue with him. As the brother of an alcoholic and a professor of medicine.

My grandad is an alcoholic. He is diabetic. He is in danger of losing his foot.
His GP suggested that his daughters should go round on a night with a cup of whiskey. This would stop him binging apparently. Never mind that it didn't and that 6 nights out of 7 ended up with him on floor drunk needing and ambulance.

When he was admitted to hospital the staff at the hospital were appalled the GP had suggested it.

As it stands he is now in a home where one of his daughters has been banned for smuggling whiskey into him. That daughter is a medical professional.

Medical professionals do not always make the right decisions especially when they are closely involved. Medical professionals can be enablers too.

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.

This bears repeating, and certainly doesn't just apply to alcoholism and addiction issues.

unless your brother's specialism is related to addiction then he is not more of an expert than anyone else on this thread.

Also, are you sure that when he said that he wasn't meaning that an "alcoholic" who recovers to the point of being able to drink without causing problems was not an alcoholic? I understand that viewpoint (I'm sure there's arguments either way). It just seems a bit bonkers not to acknowledge the hundreds thousands of alcoholics who work like mad every day to choose not to drink. for all the posters in that camp. I can't imagine the struggle.

It suits the OP to fall in with these views. The views of someone who is not an expert and is basically clueless. But it works for the OP. Who is doomed. Because 'real alcoholics never stop drinking'.

OP going back to your post on why recovery doesn't work saying you were running so much you weighed 6 stone and had chapped hands from all the cleaning. It sounds like you were just replacing one compulsion/addiction with another and not addressing why you behave as you do.

I'm not an alcoholic but I am anorexic and a lot of my behaviours are choices. Sometimes I feel like I can't make any other choice, that I'm compelled to purge, or restrict, or to fast but deep down I know there are other options. The supposed lack of choice is a way of distracting, I suppose, from the real issues.

Have you ever had the hard, uncomfortable therapy where you look at yourself and do the work on yourself to heal the issues within? It sucks and it's truly painful, but I suspect if you're willing to give it a try and take some responsibility for your future - for only you can change the course of your own life for sure - then you stand a hope of becoming a recovered alcoholic. One that doesn't drink, one who is always going to be an alcoholic - I agree that you won't be "cured" but you can put the active phase behind you, into remission.

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

Yes, but everyone has their limits. How many times do you do that and tolerate the backlash? OP says she has tried 20 times to get sober. Does he have to be courageous indefinitely for someone who clearly isnt ready to help themselves when it is impacting on him? And "dont contact me until..." Is easy to say, its also very clear OP would take no heed of that request. Look at the unsolictied bile she sent to her father just days ago.

I got as far as the posts from the OP explaining that alcoholics are generous, giving, salt of the earth types and got irritated.

Then reached the posts comparing alcoholism to cancer and got angry.

Of all the threads i have read on MN this is the most upsetting.

My Dad was an alcoholic. He died when i was 25. The first thing i felt was relief that it was over. Then the utter devastation of a life that was stolen. My life. I cut contact when i was 19. I would walk past him on the street. He looked like a tramp. His clothes were filthy and his face was smashed up, either from a fight or a fall. My friends told me stories of what he'd been up to. That he used the ambulance as a taxi service to get into town to buy drink. That he'd been raped by another alcoholic. I had to shut down the part of me that felt anything just to survive.

My friend once said to me "you know that guy you see walking up and down the road, his face is like a burst arse" i said "yes, thats my dad"

A woman once screamed at me in the pub "what the fuck are you doing in here, you should be at home looking after your old, alcoholic, disabled father"

He ruined my life. I am still picking up the pieces at 40.

My brother was a heroin addict. He got clean at 34. Our relationship was shot to shit because of the things he did when he was using. I didn't trust him. He accepted how much he had hurt our family and knew he might never be able to put it right.

He was diagnosed with cancer at 40 and died 9 weeks later. Watching him die was the most painful thing i have ever gone through. Trying to repair a relationship in 9 short weeks. Forgiving him for everything. Wishing things could be different. I felt relief when he died, but only for him, that his suffering had ended. He was no longer in pain, mentally or physically. He had stayed clean but it was a mammoth effort every day.

He had idolised my father his whole life. He told my mum on his death bed he realised my dad was a fucking cunt.

I went my brothers grave recently and i cried and apologised for being such a shit sister.

We were so royally fucked by our dads drinking that we couldn't have good relationships with each other.

OP, I hope for your sake you figure your shit out. You are destroying yourself and everyone around you. You are nowhere near realising or accepting your problem.

And just for the record, cancer and addiction are worlds apart.

Cloppy

Thanks.

Reading that back, it seems a little self indulgent. I was just hit by so many difficult feelings reading this thread and it all came spewing out.

It feels like i was dealt a shit hand. So was my dad. So was my brother. My brother turned it around and took responsibility. My dad never did. He could have, but he glamourised his alcoholism. He saw himself as a tortured soul. He saw himself as a character out of a Steinbeck novel. He wasn't. He was nothing special, no more or less than anyone else. He was a husband and father with responsibilities he chose not to take and he fucked up lives because of it.

No it wasn't cloppy

So sorry Cloppy. You were dealt a shit hand.

This thread is very difficult to read and very emotional.

I agree with everyone who says OP is, sadly, an absolute textbook alcoholic thinker - self pitying, unaware, denying.

In summary everyone on this thread understands how awful, how hard it is to be in the grips of an addiction but it is still a choice whether to drink or not to drink - however incredibly hard that choice is. That's why there are recovering alcoholics.

'I've tried everything and it didn't work'. Come on.

It's like people who say they've tried every diet and they didn't work. No they 'didn't work' because you didn't follow them! That's all. I'm not demonising dieters or drinkers or drug takers, I'm just saying however difficult it is - it's also very, very simple!

I said I wasn't coming back to this thread after Wilde tried to excuse my exH beating me to near death and then having the audacity to compare alcoholism to the cancer that I am currently going through.

Then refused to apologise.

Thinking about it has kept me up all night.

for you cloppy and all those affected and in recovery.

Reading that back, it seems a little self indulgent. I was just hit by so many difficult feelings reading this thread and it all came spewing out.

It really wasn't cloppy.

Absolutely staggering levels of self pity and delusion. It's scary to think that you have a dependent daughter.

Cloppy

I went my brothers grave recently and i cried and apologised for being such a shit sister

I often cry quietly for being a shit sister to my alcoholic brother. I have to remember that I am a Mummy, a wife and a daughter first. But I am still a sister too.

What will I do when he dies? What will I do when Mum dies and I am the only one left in the world who cares about him?

My situation isn't even that bad - the rest of the family don't have issues and we are all close and supportive of each other. No children involved (apart from mine, who I keep shielded from the chaos of his drinking)

I am finding this thread both very distressing and at the same time very therapeutic to be able to share experiences.

I can't believe what I have just read OP has a daughter ??

So she has started a thread on her woe is me my dad abandoned me in my hour of need yet she has obviously done far far worse to her own child by her choices and actions.

I am disgusted by you it was bad enough you compared your lifestyle choice to cancer victims but I can guarantee you have emotionally destroyed a child if that is the case.

God I could write a book on my disastrous life but I have always done my utmost to protect my children (mostly caused by their alcoholic father)

Distressing and theraputic is right.

I know the op flounced, but I really hope she is still reading.

I imagine after reporting her father for welfare fraud (which I am inclined to believe is a figment of the ops imagination) her dad will never forgive her.

I imagine her dd won't forgive her either. Was the dd living on the streets with her?

Was she in care? Was she with family?

I really hope the OP sees the courage on this thread of those that are recovering and those that have had to live with alcoholics. I hope (though I doubt it) that she sees herself for what she is. An addict who thinks she is entirely reasonable and completely so detached from reality that she can't see that this is her. Not anyone else.

There are only three outcomes for those who love an alcoholic a) the acoholic dies, b) they go nc with the alcoholic or c) the alcoholic manages to stop drinking. Only c) can bring joy, but all three bring relief. Make it c) OP.