Does anybody else here have an alcoholic parent?

[Februaryblooms]

Are you still in touch with them or have you gone no contact? Do you allow your DC to have a relationship with them?

I'm 36 weeks pregnant with a toddler at home. My DM is the problem, she's causing more stress than she is being a mother and a grandparent. I'm tense, anxious and feel alone.

Not sure if I want my children exposed to this, or her bobbing in and out of their lives letting us down depending on whether she's had a drink or not.

I've tried all the usual steps to get her help and they have been fruitless, she doesn't want to change.

WWYD?

I did. She died though. After 2.5 years of being an alcoholic. Her body couldn’t take it sadly.

You have to do what’s right for you and your child, to be fair I think a relationship with a grandparent is for most kids often a case of bobbing in and out depending on what’s going on with life, it’s not the same level of damage as a parent bouncing in and out of the picture. The super close weekly babysitting grandparent grandchild relationship is more rare than common I find, it’s nice if it happens but unrealistic in modern life. Might be nice for him to have some kind of relationship with her as long as she can commit to being sober when you meet, you don’t leave her with him etc. If her alcoholism gets worse maybe calls and letters if she is sober enough?

There’s no right or wrong answer. If I’d had kids before she died I’d absolutely have wanted her to be part of their lives in however remote a way. She was amazing and it’s very sad to know my children will never know her.

What’s your gut saying?

The 3cs re alcoholism:-
You did not cause it
You cannot control it
You cannot cure it

Unfortunately you really cannot help anyone who does not want to be helped, as you have already seen in your futile attempts. Unless she decides of her own accord to address her alcoholism and the causes of this, there is nothing that anyone can do to make her address it.

You do not mention your dad here; is he still around?.

You can only help your own self ultimately and I would further detach from her and her chaos that she leaves in her wake. Your children also need emotionally healthy role models to be around and your mother is not an ideal person for them to see. She was not a good parent to you when you were growing up and she has not fundamentally changed.

Do seek support from Al-anon as they are very good with family members and people affected by another person's drinking.

I'm very sorry for your loss @stacktherocks

My gut says I want her in our lives but she has become completely unreliable and regularly let's me down when we make plans to meet. We arrange a day whilst she's sober then when that day comes she just turns her phone off and doesn't turn up. I spend alot of my time worrying about her well-being (falls, bruises etc) and It has an impact on my own mental health as I'm constantly on edge waiting to receive bad news. She's 64.

My father is not on the scene and never has been. As dysfunctional a parent as she is, she's all I've ever known so it's very difficult for me to emotionally detatch although I often feel that's what's best for me.

Sorry to read that your father is absent.

Al-anon can help you re detaching with love, I would suggest you contact them by phone. Their literature is certainly worth reading. You cannot help your mother but you can and should certainly help your own self here and al-anon is a good place to start.

That sounds awful.

I would keep the door open but accept it’ll almost certainly be a more ad hoc thing. Tell her to call you on days she’s free to meet, with an hour or so notice if that, and you can let her know if it works for you or not. Don’t tell your child you’re meeting her until you do and she shows up. Sadly she has a chronic disease and there will be many days where she lets you down and maybe can’t predict if she’ll be able to keep to plans or not. You’re just gonna have to work around her good days but only so far as it’s not detrimental to you in any way.

I would really urge you to try find a way, maybe al anon or therapy, to let go of feeling responsible for her safety and well-being. You may well lose her, you may get the call I did that she’s been hospitalised and might not make it. You can’t stop her from killing herself with drink. You can just have a relationship in the meantime that works for you without damaging your own life and sanity, if you want to. But I really hope you find a way to accept that it’s out of your hands and not your responsibility so you can appreciate the relationship you do have, whatever form it takes, unless it becomes detrimental to your wellbeing. It’s pointless spending so much time and energy worrying about her when you can’t do a thing to influence her behaviour.

You should try reading up on the stately homes thread here and also the adult children of alcoholics website, they were invaluable to me working through this stuff.

I think once your a parent yourself, you click that the kinds of behaviour you put up with arent ones you want for your children.

For me, it was a long process of reducing down contact - eventually not hearing from her for around six months, then she had died. Fortunately I had some counselling before deciding to reduce contact which helped sort through the issues contact was causing, specifically Fear Obligation and Guilt.

My mum was a single parent too, so the only parent I had - but the alcohol ended up being the biggest part defining her.

@Februaryblooms

I am in a similar boat to you. My DM has been a high functioning alcoholic for years. When I was pregnant with DD I swore I didn't want her growing up thinking DM's behaviour was normal. But it's so very difficult to keep away when I know how vulnerable she is/can be.

I am hardly full of answers, but all you can do is protect yourself and the DC as much as you need. Because my DM is high functioning, I tend to stay around her until she starts to 'change'...and then we leave. But that in itself can be hard.

I'm so sorry you're going through this.

My dad is an alcoholic. It's affects his choices in life and it's not something I want to be a part of or to involve my 5 kids with. His priority is booze and I don't ever want my kids thinking they are second best with Grandad. He's never been a part of their lives and my eldest is 18 now. I'm more or less NC. It affected his marriage to my mother (they are now divorced) and it will continue to affect everyone he has a 'relationship' with till he dies. I think I've been without him for so long that I'm emotionally attached. I don't feel anything but sadness..... sadness at what a great father he could have been (he really could be a lovely man if he wasn't a drunk) and the sadness at the Grandad that my kids will never get to know. It's just all so sad when an addiction takes over :(

Thank you for the replies, it's comforting to know I'm not alone in my experiences although I wouldn't wish an alcoholic parent on anybody else. I'm absolutely terrified of the day I get the news she has passed, I don't think my state of mind could handle it anytime soon.

I had PND after the birth of my last baby, not helped by the constant drama and hyper vigilance that came with panicking about her constant trips, falls and drinking herself into a stupor. I'm angry at her because she causes so much stress, yet desperately sad at the same time.

At the moment we have an arrangement whereby she keeps her bank card at my place so she doesn't waste all of her money on booze and hospitalize herself the day she gets it. I take her shopping, make sure she has gas and electric and ensure she pays her bills. Its a big burden on me to be made responsible for her but I've seen what happens when she has free reign of her finances, she drinks until the point of oblivion and ends up injured. Her bills don't get paid. She accumulates a debt by not paying her rent. She's incapable of "adulting" it seems.

Despite the current arrangement she still manages to get drunk, I've no idea how. I suspect another relative (one I'm not close to) is giving her money.

I don't want to be responsible for her anymore but feel like I have no choice because I've seen many times what happens when she's left to her own devices and it's heartbreaking.

I'm slowly reaching a point where I say enough is enough, I'm not doing this any more you can be by yourself.

I will look into al anon and the stately homes threads

I do. My DM always drank heavily but after my dad had to move into a nursing home the wheels came off. She got worse after he died in 2016. She's 78 now, is doubly incontinent, has dementia. Next week she is being assessed for compulsory admission to a nursing home. She's in the Netherlands so things are slightly different. Throughout it all she has refused support, refused counselling, refused everything except the booze. My dsis and I have now stopped trying. We work with her care services as best we can from another country and that's it. I suggest you get support from Al-Anon, work on your boundaries and detach with love. Put yourself and your DC first. It's hard - I have now had to do this twice and I know I am going to lose my mum to the same disease that killed my husband.

I'm sorry your lives have been touched by alcoholism it really is a horrible disease.

Reading the three C's makes me realise just how indenial and entwined in the whole charade I have become.

Despite seeing first hand how she can't be helped I still continue to hold out hope that if I 'just' do this or do that then she might change, the grandchildren might be enough even if I'm not.

The only thing I'm doing by continuing to pour energy into trying to curtail the drinking is hurting myself really. Its like setting myself up to fail when I already know she will drink regardless.

Damage limitation is what I've been going for, I think.

My mother is an alcoholic. After putting up with her getting progressively worse over 15 years, I'd had enough. Nothing mattered more than her next drink. My siblings, her step children, their children, her sisters, everyone has gradually gone NC with her over the years until it was just me. Her behaviour became more and more intolerable and was having more and more of a negative effect on my own mental health.

I went NC in November 2017. I'd got married not long before and had given her the ultimatum that she came sober, or not at all. To my amazement, she made a huge effort and was totally sober. Rather naively, I thought that may have been a turning point, but it wasn't.

I wrote her a letter. I told her how I felt, outlined the emotional abuse over the years and told her that as soon as she is ready to accept there's a problem, I'll be there to support her 100%. I also told her that my husband and I would be hoping to have children and that in her current state, she'd be having nothing to do with them.

I had a few abusive messages soon after (mainly around money that she seemed to think I owed her, in fact it is more likely the other way round - I bailed her out of thousands of pounds of rent arrears over the years purely because I had a younger sibling still living at home) but since then it's been radio silence.

I have no idea if she knows I've had a baby (I think it must have got back to her by some route or another) but she's made no contact. Having had my own pregnancy/baby, makes me think that there's some major psychological issues going on when I consider how I feel about my child, compared to the upbringing we had.

Interestingly, very shortly after going totally NC I happily stopped having counselling and came off of antidepressants for the first time in years. Funny that...

I have alot of admiration for those who've had the strength to distance themselves for their own well being and that of their children. I often find myself wishing I could adopt that determination, but I've always faltered up until now.

She falls off the wagon and we go a week or so without talking and then she'll call me when sober and tell me everything I want to hear, making empty promises for the future and saying how much she misses DS.

I lap it up and welcome her back again, relishing in the times she's sober and is being the old mum again, but she always reverts back to the person she's now become.

We had plans this morning. I waited around all morning then called her at 1:00pm to see where she'd gotten to, she was pissed again and acting beligerantly.

I told her not to come and hung up the phone feeling deflated and have felt so down ever since. Same song and dance.

She knows I don't want her around my son if she's had so much as one can, yet there's been many occasions when she's turned up drunk and I've had to ask her to leave again. She has no respect or regard for us.

I need to force myself to get to a place where I'm not affected by this to the extent that I am.

I'm still relatively young (25) and although I'm independent I can't help but feel as though I need a mum sometimes, it's quite pathetic really. I'm not as strong as I'd like to be.

February your posts really resonate with me, although not pregnant, I’m a similar age to you and also have an alcoholic mum who I just cannot detach from.
It’s so unbelievably difficult, my mum also makes plans and then when I get there I can tell she’s already had something to drink and I just want to cry and leave. It’s almost like mourning for someone that’s still around but not how they used to be if that makes sense.
I haven’t got anything useful to add but just know you’re not alone

I'm still relatively young (25) and although I'm independent I can't help but feel as though I need a mum sometimes, it's quite pathetic really. I'm not as strong as I'd like to be

I was 28 when I went NC and was very aware that I was putting all my eggs in one basket by doing so - my husband and his family basically are everything I have. I've been so much happier since though, it was like a huge weight of responsibility I never signed up for was removed from my shoulders.

@originalsource I'm sorry you can relate. Its so disheartening isn't it, you find yourself looking forward to spending some time together then it becomes apparent they're already under the influence and it completely ruins your day. I hope you can find the strength to do what's right for you. It really is so so hard.

I suspect there's a degree of co dependency at play in my case, I feel as though I allow her to take me for a total mug and trample all over my boundaries time and time again. If i were secure and confident in myself then maybe I wouldn't be standing for it.

I put alot of effort into her birthday presents last week and then again for mothering Sunday, now I regret doing that because I feel like she doesn't appreciate anything or anybody. No doubt she'd have been over the moon if I bought her a bottle of cheap plonk, though.

@ABC1234DEF really glad to read that NC ended up being the right thing for you. I take some degree of comfort hearing from people who've put themselves first and not regretted it. Unfortunately my partners family are almost as dysfunctional as my own bar the drinking, so I don't have a relationship with them (because his is very limited)

It's just me and DP, our toddler and newborn when she arrives. Maybe not such a bad thing? I'm just very aware that if me and DP did split in the future (I hope we never do) I'll be totally alone. That thought scares me to be honest. I'm facing up to the fact I've got some abandonment issues stemming from the shit childhood she afforded me, and then upping sticks and leaving me in my home town days after my 16th birthday as soon as she couldn't be prosecuted for doing it.

Both my PIL are alcoholics. Contrastingly, my parents used to split a 150ml bottle of beer on the occasional Friday.

They are addicts in very different ways. FIL can't hold a job and when left unsupervised would go through hundreds of pounds worth of the stuff. Still likes to point out other people's habits. MIL has a job, has cut down her drinking by half, and still manages to send her children into those heart breaking quiet stupors.

We're not TTC yet; I want to be farther away before doing anything like that. I have no interest in leaving my MIL unsupervised with little ones.

You have to make your own choices, whatever is best for your little ones and for you. It's never easy though...

I feel pathetic reading that back to myself.

This is somebody who neglected me my entire childhood then abandoned me to relocate as soon as I turned 16, i had no prior warning whatsoever.

I had been staying at a friend's for a few weeks because our relationship was breaking down then i returned home to see her to find her gone and the house empty.

She got rid of all of my belongings bar my diary and a bag of clothes which she left in a cupboard for me to pick up through the landlord, she didn't tell me she was leaving or even say goodbye. She was uncontactable for months.

I had to sofa surf for a year then take on a run down flat when I turned 17, we then had no contact until I was 19 before I moved the 250 miles to where she had moved to because I was escaping DV and wanted my mum.

Now all of this has been going on for years and I still craved a relationship with her and tried to help her overcome her problem.

She really is a horrible woman.

Sorry I'm waffling now

I think I just needed to let it all out, feeling a bit hormonal today

Oh OP.

I’m sorry. My advice comes from a place where I was incredibly fortunate to have a loving mother who loved me and put me first even while battling addiction. I know how fortunate I am to be able to look back at her life and know that I loved and respected her and had the best possible mum I could have had.

But what you’ve just said about your teens is heartbreaking. She’ll always be your mum and you’ll always yearn for her love and protection as you never had it. Just as it takes more than impregnating a woman to be a father, this woman is no mother to you. She sounds like at times she’s acted like you’re nothing but an inconvenience and selfishly put herself first time after time.

Honestly? In your shoes I’d cut contact. Permanently. And seek therapy to help me cope. Stand Alone are great for helping people dealing with family estrangement. Perhaps through a combo of something like that and al anon and personal therapy if you can access it you might find a way to eventually be at peace with the fact that whatever you do now, you don’t have a mother and never will. I’m so sorry. You’ll never stop yearning I’m sure, and it’s desperately sad. But I fear the consequences of continuing to allow her to have even a small amount to do with your life will hurt more. Every time she lets you down you’ll be ripping off the scab unable to ever heal from what she’s put you through.

She should never have been a parent if she couldn’t offer you even a shred of love and care and protection. Please know that whatever you decide, it’s in your hands to cut yourself off from her permanently if you feel it’d help. I’ve had to make that decision with a family member a few years ago and although the fact things got so bad will never stop hurting and I still grieve (I dream about him every week without fail) I’ve never wavered from knowing in my heart that cutting him out for good is the safest and healthiest thing I can do for myself.

You get to decide who is part of your and your childrens’ lives. Never forget that.

Just to say that low contact and then no contact was the absolute best thing for me - it was literally like bricks i didnt know i was carrying were just lifted after I realised I didnt have to answer the phone to drunken rambling, I had to make the choice of how my time time and energy were going to be best spent.

Once i framed it that she was taking me from my children, it made it very simple.

@stacktherocks thank you ever so much, Its somewhat vindicating to hear that from somebody else other than my subconscious, because despite the history and my codependence I've always battled with the "You only get one mother" stuff.

People from my RL circle who don't know the ins and outs of what she's done to me over the years don't realise just how toxic she has been to me and think she's harmless and a bit of a wally.

I should really look into some therapy for myself away from her because whilst I'm being bogged down with her troubles she's living carefree. I'll make that a priority.

She'll be on the telephone tomorrow when she's ran out of money for booze and cigarettes so she'll be wanting to come here or meet with me to access her card. I'm tempted to tell her to keep it at her place, waste her money for all I care and don't bother me again.

@Timeforabiscuit really pleased to read that, time. I can certainly see it from that perspective myself because she does infact take my focus away from the DC who are absolutely the most important.

My parents both alcoholics. Dad died at 60. Mother still alive at 73 but health terrible. She drinks 4 litre bottles of Vodka a week so I guess that puts her in that category.

She doesn’t drink daytime though and is pretty good with the kids. You wouldn’t know she was dependant on alcohol speaking to her but she has been for 40 years

I’m another who kept my dad away from my children. They don’t know who he is. Again, he died 2 years ago, due to the alcoholism