Binge drinking mum - am at my wit's end now - sorry long

[brokennail]

I am an only child and have often felt my mum lives her life through me, she has few 'real' friends and is divorced and has never really allowed me to live my own life, well not without making me feel guilty for doing so
She has been binge drinking for over ten years now, not heavy stuff mainly lager and martini and has suffered from depression on and off for years. Combined with his is her taking prescribed painkillers for a medical condition. When she drinks I find her unbearable. It makes me feel sick to the pit of my stomach.
Anyway I recently moved away from her but have come back to visit her and I am now stopping with her for a month. I have my 5 month old son with me. Since I've been here she has been on a binge and this evening I finally saw red and we had a massive row. She makes me feel so guilty and blames her drinking on me because I have taken her grandson away to live in another country. She says I am selfish. I have only lived abroad for the last 10 months and have seen my mum 4 times since then, she has stopped with me for a month at a time. So its not like we haven't seen each other.
I am distraught as I type this as I really thought she would make an effort, if not for me for my DS. I don't know how much more of this I can take and I really don't know what to do...

I can't offer any advice but didn't want to not post. It sounds ao awful and you are torn between your mother and your family.

I hope someone with better advice is along soon.

Best wishes.

You know what we did?

We stopped my IL's seeing our kids.

They drank every night of the week & were always pissed. I grew up with an alcoholic abusive father & did not want my children to be in that atmosphere.

We told them when they had sorted out their drinking we would see them again. They cut it way down, going from about 2 bottles of wine every night. Now they might have a bottle over two nights, this I can live with. Though they don't see the kids every night, I know if we call unexpectedly that we are safe & they won't be drunk & fighting.

Is there any point in chatting to her in the morning? Or, do what we did, we videoed MIL drunk & snoring in a chair one evening & showed it to her, she was mortified that she can look like that....

I know you don't want another row with your mum, but she needs to value herself, as well as her relationship with you & your baby.

Good Luck

good post FFF2

Thanks FFF2. The problem is she just want admit there IS a problem. I have tried talking to her before but it is impossible.

She will not admit shes got a problem or worst still denies everything or conveniently can't remember.

Oh crap.

It's difficult if she thinks she doesn't have a problem.

When you say binge drinking, what do you mean?
Like every night?

or once a week but loads of units in one go?

At the moment it has been everyday since last Thursday. I found a pile of empty cans hidden in her wardrobe along with an unopened 12 pack this evening.
She seems to be able to go for so many days or even weeks without drinking anything but then goes off the rails. As she takes painkillers too the mix is lethal.
I am so tired of this.
Thanks for replying

Actually sweetie, I would be really worried by the fact she is hiding the empty cans in her wardrobe.

She sounds like my dad actually. He kept a half bottle of vodka in his bedside cabinet & one in the shed etc...

He used to be able to go for a few days without drinking & then we would get off the school bus & see the car outside the pub

I do think she needs to see how worried you are, though ultimately she will do nothing until she's ready.

Sounds like my mum!!
Similar issues plus a recent nervous breakdown! I was an only child and she made me feel guilty when I moved out a 16 cos she is so unbearable to live with. Wollowing in self pitty type. She told me I was sick in the head when I fell pregnant at 23! She then never saw me at all in my pregnancy and saw my dd for the 1st time when she was about 4 months old. She pays her a little bit more attention now she is just over 2 yrs but its nothing to shout about. Also, while I was preggers I found out I had cancer and she still never came to see me. Im ok now but her issues have always been more important!! There is no helping my mum, and god knows I have tried! I think distance is a good thing, I really really do!
Sorry no real words of advice here but your not alone. There is no helping some people!

oh, forgot to say, she used to binge drink too. Hide the evidence, but she then lost her home and lived with her sister who had to control her money etc. She got her counciling which helped a little but she still has relapses.

Please go onto the thread "my mother has cut me out of her life". That thread is invaluable to me. On there, we all have mothers similar to yours. Please dont repeat the cycle with your own child. I live abroad and never feel guilty anymore. My mum hasnt seen my 7 month old DD, and is unlikely to anytime soon. For my DDs sake, I cant let my mum into my life because shes too painful to be with, and it is intolerable to me when she tries to influence, guilt trip and bully me. My DD deserves a strong mum, who is in control, and Ill do that for her anyway I can. In my case it means severing ties with my mum until I can cope with her.

Have you contacted Al-Anon? I understand it's a group for relatives of those who have problems with alcohol, as opposed to AA which really needs someone to consider themselves to have a problem. I have never drunk, partly affected by the fear that I might have alcoholic tendencies after my first serious relationship was with someone who did have a real problem at 17, and my mother's father who spent his last few years being driven between detox and Oxford home by my mum who would come down from Leeds, and who died at 77 of alcohol-related pancreatic disease. I can't risk turning out to have inherited it.

I hope you find a way through and am glad to see you felt brave enough to post here, though of course I have no real advice.

brokennail,

Your Mum sounds both toxic (by heaping on the emotional blackmail) and alcoholic. I would also suggest you read "Toxic Parents" written by Susan Forward (there is a chapter in there on alcoholic parents).

Do you yourself believe she is alcoholic?. She has all the characteristics of such people. She is ill; alcoholism is an illness.

Unless she wants to help her own self there is nothing anyone can do to help her. You cannot make her stop drinking, even if she was to seek proper help for her alcoholism (unlikely as she does not admit to herself that her drinking is a problem) there are no guarantees she will completely stop.

Alcoholics are by their nature selfish (using your son as an excuse is frankly pathetic as she has been drinking for many years), they blame others for their problems and can do denial very well. Alcohol is also a depressent; its making her underlying depressive state worse. It can also affect short term memory; she probably has memory loss caused by excessive alcohol consumption over the years.

Infact I would go cold turkey on her and not see her at all. Do not enable her by having her over to see you or you going to see her.

Do you feel she has hit her own rock bottom yet?. I would not stay with her any longer after all this; I would find another place to stay or even better return to your own home. Your DS seeing all this re his Nan is doing him no favours either.

She will not make any effort for anyone; her son, yourself as her own daughter. It has to come from her and if she makes no effort as to understand why she started to drink excessively in the first place then there is no helping her.

Your main priority is you now along with your son; I would certainly talk with Al-anon as they are very helpful re problem drinkers.

I am so grateful to all of you for replying.
I agree with you Meerkat about her being toxic. As I said before she has been excessively drinking for years since I was in my early teens so I know deep down that me going away is not to blame. When I was a kid I used to beg her to stop as I wold often come home from school to find her drunk in bed.I was scared to come home as I knew the signs as soon as I walked into the house. I get so frustrated as she will not acknowledge any of this. When I think back everything I've done has been at a price when I went away to college I came back every weekend to be with her and even so she would go for days without speaking to me, she said she couldn't cope with talking or would not pick up the phone when I called as she knew how much it would make me worry.
Sakura - I know that I should spend some serious time away from her as her behaviour is seriously affecting the relationship I have with my husband and I am damned if her attitude/behaviour will have any impact on my ds. Its just so hard. None of my friends or my DH's family know what she is like so I feel I have to put on this everything's fine facade and I am weary of it now. When I confront her she just turns on the self pity "right I'm rubbish then" she'll say but I know she has no intention of changing.
I will read the link you mentioned.

Brokennail STOP!!! Don't let your mother make you feel as if anything is your fault. Believe me I have been there and worn the teeshirt, I think so many of us have. I spent years shouting at her and boy did I use some strong language but they don't listen. They are too ill.

I am just wondering if there is a chemical balance with your mum if she is taking painkillers as well.

The last straw with my mum was frogmarching her to her gp because I was no longer in control of anything. She was in control even if she didn't know it. Daily life was controlled wondering what state she would be in in the evening, my work suffered because more often than not my mind wasn't on the job but worrying about her. I don't know how many times I took my children out of her care. The number of times I picked her up off the floor, the number of times she embarrassed us in front of people, the times I had to go looking for her car cos she didn't remember where she had parked. The list is endless.

Thankfully 3 years on and things are so much different. She eventually saw what she was doing, BUT as everyone else has said there isn't a damn thing you can do until they know enough is enough. We got all the excuses under the sun, if it wasn't my dad, it was she was lonely, we were all to blame, we didn't love her and she would be better off dead. The pattern seems to be the same. I had threatened that she would never see her grandchildren again and stuck to it in the end. I didn't phone or answer the phone when I saw her number come up.

Anyway my mum got her meds sorted as this is what made her so bad. She was taking a cocktail of stuff which reacted badly with alcohol.

I love my mum to absolute bits and today she isn't drinking and knows she can't. She didn't do the AA thing or any sort of treatment, she said it wasn't for her and we respected that.

Thoughts are with you at this difficult time

I hope it won't be long before she sees the light.

Brokennail...I don't have any real advice, but just wanted to add my support to the thread. My SIL is an alcoholic and I know how soul destroying life can be. Unfortunately she knows she has a problem, she just doesn't want to stop (her own admission). She can be very manipulative and hurtful, to the point that none of her SILs will now have anything to do with her and my brother.

Al-Anon are quite good if you want someone to talk to. I hope you can get her to see what she's doing to herself and that she can find the strength to seek help and get better.

From your OP it seems like it's a little more than binge drinking as well. Good Luck