Hi Struggling, welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry I can't provide any perspective on the issues you're dealing with, as I don't have friends or family with alcohol problems (at least not that I know of...), but I read your post and wanted to let you know it didn't go unnoticed or unheard.

I think this area is a little quieter than some others. If you move your message into the Introductions area, maybe more people would see it and could offer you some support.

I can certainly empathize with family problems; I'm sorry you're under so much stress from that right now. This is a good place, and I hope you'll find some comfort and relief here.

RabbitEars

Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a go and see what happens

Hi,
I diden't grow up with an Alcoholic I married one however I do have 2 daughters who did. Now I cant speak for them however I am there mother and by watching them they were affected quite a lot. My older one is very controlling and my younger one is just like him very introverted. and avoident. It's sad really the way alcohol can tear up a family and it is hard to watch some one you love slowly kill them selfs. The only thing I can tell you is what I have learned that I have to take care of myself first and let go good luck to you.

Hi Struggling,
My mom was an alcoholic and drug addict forty years and so was my step father. Drugs finally and literally killed them both two years ago. The last year of my mother's life I completely had no contact with her by choice. I could not handle the constant disappointment, the frustration, the dashed hopes. I really wasn't even angry not having contact with her or because I stopped having contact. It was incredibly difficult to not be there, to not wonder and worry about her and her welfare, but i really came to embrace the fact that she made choices. she chose alcohol and drugs over my milestones, over my life. The drugs were more important, they brought her relief from whatever internal suffering she was experiencing. I am saddened that my mom never made the choice to seek peace in life, but instead lived in emotional and mental chaos. They are both gone now and I feel like I am here cleaning up the "mess" (me). I do know that for me it was worth it to walk away physically and emotionally from the toxicity of the relationships. It is one choice I do not regret and it was a way of showing myself self love and respect.

Hi Ghost Girl,

Thanks for sharing that with me. I feel exactly the same albeit my dad is my only support now, and I can't imagine how you coped having both parents with addictions.

It is very frustrating all the time. Especially recently. I turned 21 last week and my mum didn't even call me, which is a new low. I assumed she was on a drinking binge, and when she finally did get in touch I asked her what her excuse was and she said "i don't know". NOw its a week later and I actually spoke to her again yesterday and she said she was waiting on test results from the doctor. I told her if she was waiting why couldn't she pick up her phone to wish me happy birthday for 1 minute.

She keeps saying she's going to the doctors and has a "lump" in her breast, which she tries to tell everyone she has cancer but I know she's lying. She won't let anyone come with her to the "doctors"and the stories she tells me about her trips to the doctors don't match with what would actually happen in that situation if it was real.

Its very frustrating for me living in england and her living in poland as I never truly know what she's getting unto, and she's cut off the rest of her family there so they don't know anything either. People tell me to go over there and check on her and I can't because of the horrible experience I had there before, and I can't achieve anything there anyway. Everyone who has a parent who is an addict understands hopefully that nothing can be done to help them unless they help themselves. If i went there all I'd be doing is watching her destroy herself and pretend nothings wrong, whilst making my anxiety problem worse. She's an adult now and so am I, and I can't be held responsible for her actions now, and Im glad to finally have understood that. It really upsets me also that she pretends she's so ill when my grandfather who I loved and was very close to died 2 months ago from cancer which came out of nowhere. Its like one minute we were happy and going on a day trip and 6 months later he's in a bed about to die any minute. I miss him so much and if my mum can't realise that something like that is more serious then her lies and fantasies induced by alcohol, then why do I need to play along with her?

I feel a lot more grown up now, I have received some counselling, but I still struggle with anxiety at times, and sometimes I have days where I cry all the time just because all the bad thoughts and memories need to come out. Its horrible when a parent absolves themselves of any responsibility and their child is left to pick up the pieces. I wish it on no one.

Dear Struggling,

I would like to start off by acknowledging your recent birthday and by commending you for taking such huge emotional strides at such a young age. It is so difficult to put the whole situation in perspective and emotionally detach from it. My mother was great at fiegning illness too. In fact the year before she died she did in fact suffer from seizures and 3 days in a drug induced coma from which she suffered some loss of function of her ability to balance when she walked. I hired home health aides to take care of her around the clock because she did not have health insurance. But she was so mean to the aids and actually assaulted two of them physically, leaving me to be the only one to care for her (this is what she wanted because she wanted ME there). She wanted me to be her physical and emotional caretaker and I did it for a short time which was leading me toward total emotional meltdown and relapse from my ED. She used to put on a "show" when I was around, pretending that she couldn't walk at all or bathe herself but all the aids said she did just fine when I wasn't around. It used to kill me how my mother wanted me to parent her and to take care of her when she never did that for me even as a child. I used to feel suffocated by her and so resentful, but I kept trying with the hopes that something I would do would make a difference and she would change. But you are 100% right, people do not change unless they want to change and wanting to change means acknowledging that a problem exists. It is sad to say, but true, that we all have to find our own way in life. I know that a lot of what fueled my desire to "help" was that I always had hopes she would change, but obviously my mother was ok with the way she was. As a child I had no choice but to accept what I got from her which was abuse and neglect, as an adult, I had the freedom of choice to walk away. Your mother and her choices are not your responsibility. Even her cancer was a reality, there is nothing you could do for her and any help you may give would most likely go unappreciated and just pull you into a toxic web. I do understand your desire to help, your desire to have contact and to know what is going on, but sometimes for our own sanity it is better off not knowing. Trust me, when the chips are down and she runs out of places and people to turn to, she will come out of the wood work and give you a jingle. Know that it is up to you to prepare yourself for how to respond in that situation. It is so tough to walk away and it does not mean that you do not care about her. It simply means that you care about yourself more and that her behaviors are no longer acceptable to you because you are learning to create emotional boundaries to keep your own sanity.

as far as cleaning up the mess. Whew it is a big one. I remember the terror I felt as a 11 year old when my mom was too drunk to drive and forced me to drive a car for the first time ever to get us home safely from the bar she was at as she vomited all over the car and herself. I remember the nights of being pulled out bed by my hair to be tossed across the room like a rag doll because she was in drunken rage and needed someone smaller than herself to rage on. She needed someone who could not fight back. I remember the time when I was 12 and sat on the phone calling hospitals, morgues and police depts statewide because she disappeared for 3 days and my step dad and I thought she was dead. It is scarey and confusing and I am so glad it is over. I am relieved to be free of the burden, physically and emotionally of being my mothers caretaker and daughter. It is over and I am on my way of having my own life without her in it.

Ghost Girl,

Thank you. It is hard isn't it? To try to walk away for our own health's sake, when someone so near to us just wants us there all the time. I have found that in the past year I have made it clear to my mum that if she calls me drunk or makes stories that are clearly lies, that I will not respond. And I did that after my birthday when she didn't call, I distracted myself from the thought, although I was worried sick that maybe this time she was in a ditch dead on the side of the road. But then Ive been worried about that so many times now and every time she's been ok in the end, so Ive learnt that she is probably drunk and that I shouldn't fear the worst. Although I do believe that I'll get a call one day to tell me the bad news, but Ill deal with that when it happens. The thing with my mum is that even though she's saying she's so ill now she keeps going in circles week after week saying she's better, then all of a sudden its bad again, then its better, then bad, etc. But she doesn't want me there all the time, actually she pushes people away so that she can be alone, and i think thats because she doesn't want people to see the truth- that she's drunk rather then going to doctors every day.

Im so sorry experienced those things, I was shocked reading them, and I felt thankful that my mum wasn't so lost as yours seemed to be. However I thought back and I did experience my own pains with my mum, not as shocking but just as painful. I never speak about them really because I feel like people don't want to hear. The time I came downstairs and found her grinding and kissing my dads work colleague, and running up the stairs in tears to wake my dad up (who was asleep in bed after the dinner party they had held). He chased his colleague out and then him and my mum got into a massive screaming match as usual, which ended in my dad giving up and my mum chasing him around the house hurling abuse and then passing out. I found out from my dad recently also that she used to drink before taking me to school, i couldn't believe that, now I understand why my friend's parents' suddenly took me to school, and my dad when he could get to work later. She hit me several times also, and my dad. But it was the last two weeks before she went to Poland that were the worst, where she lived in our downstairs living room, on the sofa, hiding alcohol wherever she could, vomit on the floor and the couch, cry ing all day long. Not eating, not listening to our pleas. So we tried tough love, no success. IN the end I found her cutting herself and we rang an ambulance to take her to a hospital, but they wouldn't take her because of Dubai's silly muslim policy that whoever isn't a perfect citizen can't be let in public places. She also ran out the house in her underwear just before the ambulance arrived so my dad had to chase and carry her home. The next day she was on a plane to poland, where she was to go to counselling and therapy and taken by her parents to a hospital. 3 years later now and still no treatment, purely because she refuses to believe that she has the problem. Now she's pushed all her family away, lives with a drugie and i have no idea what she's going to do when her divorce money runs out. But its not my problem now, as Im sorting my life out and she doesn't bother me as much. She knows I won't act worried or cry like I used to, so she's stopped trying to get my attention.

It makes me wonder how on earth the world ended up like this, with people like us suffering for the mistakes that others make. Its not fair at all.

It definately is not fair that we are left to pick up the pieces, but unfortunately it is a reality. For me I often wondered what went "wrong" in my own mother's past to send her down such a horrible and lonely path. I often wondered what pain was so great that she had to use drugs and alcohol to numb and escape from her own reality. Though I know she too bore witness to the damage of alcohol from her own father, that she witnessed my grandmother being physically abused by my grandfather when she was drunk, I could never understand why having a precious child to love wasn't enough to stop her. More than anything I was just always saddened by the fact that she was incapable of experiencing life "unaltered", that she found her joy in being "out of it" on drugs or alcohol. I did learn to have some compassion for her. I wish my mom could have summoned the courage to talk about her problems and feel her pain and loss of her own childhood. The emotions that come with this abuse are temporary and fleeting and though they have shaped my life and my perceptions I am learning to perceive things differently which makes me feel differently. In the end all I could do, was feel compassion for her and understand that she must be hurting horribly to choose to go through life drunk and drugged. I used to call her a tornado because one brief moment in my life's path was enough to cause total destruction. It is so hard to unlearn all the old ways of thinking and responding and behaving and it takes so much talking to yourself and pulling up resolve from somewhere, but the good thing is, that we have made it. We are here. We may be struggling, but we are changing, we are growing, we are moving forward. It is so so hard and painful and we have to make decisions that sometimes don't feel right, but they are best decisions for US. It sounds like we both had mothers that didn't base their decisions in life around the needs of their child so we never learned how to make appropriate choices for ourselves through good modeling behavior. But we have done it! And we continue to do it every time we draw the line in the sand and set boundaries. I am glad you have shared your experiences with me and started this conversation. I am glad that you are making choices that are difficult but are in your best interest. Hold firm to them.

I always thought I would have totally devastated when my mom died and I never envisioned she would die the way she did or at such a early age, but I have to be honest, when I received the phone call from the sheriffs department, I was not shocked and I did not shatter to pieces. I don't think there was anything left to shatter. For me it was a relief that I no longer had to take care of her in any way. I am an only child and was all she had after my step dad passed 8 months prior to her death from an illegal drug overdose. I take peace in knowing that even though she didn't have inner peace during her life, she is now experiencing something better. Her soul is finally at rest and whatever internal suffering she lived with is now gone. For that I am grateful.

Ghost Girl,

Hearing you say these things is such a relief and inspiration to me. You're living proof that us ACOA will survive. I also wander why she is the way she is, and I think I know but its all based on what evidence I have from my other family members. I know my mum witnessed an abusive father beat up her mother, whether under the influence or not. HEr parents have never wanted to be together but still live together because of their financial issues and their lifestyle in Poland. I think that was the baseline for her depression, but from what I understand she had postnatal depression after me, which was never treated because of the lack of support back in that time. She also refused counselling when I was a baby and she once tried to overdose on antidepressants, and then never touched them again. I think because she was never fully treated the depression spiralled into something bigger and more worse. It was probably horrible for her not having the support she needed, but then I wander if she would have accepted the support judging by her demeanour now. She also had a miscarriage after me and then was told to abort another pregnancy later on because the doctor advised her she was too mentally unstable to carry and squeeze out another child. That must have been so painful but Im relieved she did abort the baby because I wouldn't want a little brother or sister to go through what I am.

We can spend so much time wandering how and why, but I think many people just need to realise that it just IS. It wont change. Unless the addict has a miraculous discovery. But Im ok with that. Because of all this, I strive to help people, which is why I have just completed my undergraduate degree in Psychology, and Ive been accepted onto a Masters in clinical psychology for next year. I based my research this year on the support systems for postnatal depression, and Im working with my supervisor during summer helping with his research into PND. Its fascinating what these women have to say, they really need to be heard. I wish my mum was heard and accepted the help that WAS available back then, even though it was minor. I want to continue my research career in this area, because if I can't help my mum, then there are others who want to be helped, and there is so much that can be done to prevent such horrible consequences. Maybe I can save a child's future relationship with their mother/father, prevent them from stepping over the brink from the beginning.

Im relieved to hear about your reaction to your mums death, as horrible as that may sound. Ive often wondered how I will react when i get the call, and I've often thought I won't be so shocked. I felt horrible about thinking this way, like people would judge me or think I'm horrible for not being too sad about my mum passing, but we have no relationship anymore. I still get sad sometimes, but my "mum" from my childhood, the woman who kept me safe when I didn't know about her depression, the woman who cuddled me to sleep and made everything ok if I was sad, she's just gone now. I don't know who the new one is, she's just an empty shell with a stranger in her,that still looks like my mum but more tired. I do think Ill be relieved, and that sounds bad too, but she's hurting inside, and i want her to stop hurting. I just wish she could stop hurting in a more positive way.

Dear Struggling,

Congrats to you on your studies. I am sure you will be of great assistance to others in your chosen profession. It is kind of funny how we choose our careers or how our lives send us in that direction. I also work in the field with addicts, alcoholics and the psychiatric population. So many friends and relatives ask me how I work with addicts considering my past, but I love them and I love my work. Call it my way of working through my issues I guess. I always see so much hope in people for the capacity to change. I myself am in recovery for 25 years from anorexia nervosa. It takes an awful lot to fight the monster every day but I have had 25 years of victory. I think tapping into my own compassion for human suffering has been what has spared me. I used to just be angry about mom and her substance abuse. I can't say as I understand

sorry... post got cut off. I was saying I can't understand why, but I can empathize and the empathy and compassion that God has granted me with have aided me in my healing. I am glad you are sharing your thoughts and feelings. Letting other people hear our struggles, our secrets, our wishes, our hopes, it all helps. At least it does for me.

Ghost Girl,

wow, well done on your recovery. That must have been tough! I can't imagine. I definitely think my desire to help others stems from my inability to help my mum, but if I can help someone else then thats good enough for me.

Talking about all this definitely helps, it gets it out of my mind when I can't speak to my bf about it all the time, he just doesn't know what to say sometimes, and I can't expect him to know the right things to say all the time. Empathy is the biggest aid, it gives you hope that theres others out there going through similar things and that you won't go insane from it all.

absolutely, and I hope you continue to share here, I have enjoyed our interaction and have found your perserverance inspiring. You are so young and it is refreshing and exciting to see you making such great emotional strides and insights so early on. I am actually breathing a sigh of relief for you. I entered into therapy and recovery when I was 18, I am 45 now. Had many ups and downs and setbacks, but I am here, I am happy, I am healing in ways that I never thought possible. I will never stop seeking healing. I plan on taking over the pen and writing the rest of my life's story through new perceptions. I can't believe how distorted my thinking and perceptions are as a result of the trauma I survived. Some days I stand in awe of it all. I see how far I have come, not how far I have to go.

If you ever want to PM me please feel free.

I have enjoyed it too. Its nice to see things from the perspective from another, yet have such similar views simply because of a similar experience.

I think when I can afford full on therapy if I feel the need for it I may start, but for now I think just hearing what others say is just as important

keep up the awesome work Struggling, you have helped me by sharing.

You too Ghost Girl. My mum called me today acting normal but I could hear the alcohol in her voice. She told me her "test results" were good yesterday with regards to the "cancer". Such a shame she just couldn't wait to celebrate… Some things never change, but its not holding me back.

You've helped me loads too, given me hope and reassurance, which is all I could've asked for