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its a call for help from her.....it will only get worse if you dont address it now.
does FI know everything? I think you should address it before the wedding- man what if she got to drunk and it was a disaster?? or when you have children...
its shitty, my brother is an alcoholic too...he even got so drunk he didnt come to my wedding bc he missed his flight and of course didnt have enough money to buy a new ticket.
We tried getting him help but he relapses each time...its worth a try. Good luck and im sorry you have to deal with this.
You do not have to make her problems your problems; if you've tried to help and she resists, all you can really do is take care of yourself, enjoy her good days, and hope for the best. I sent you a PM with a lengthier response...take care of yourself!
I agree with MrsGrape. You need to try to enjoy the good times when there are some and maybe keep trying when she's in a good mood.
Alcoholism is a disease, and people will not get treatment until *they* themselves realize they have a problem AND want to make a change. You cannot convince an alcoholic to seek help until they are ready to do so, which can be incredibly hard, painful and frustrating for family and friends.
I would suggest joining your local Al-Anon group. It is a support group for the family/friends/partners of those suffering from alcoholism. If you cannot easily find one in your area, look for a local AA meeting, and call them, or go to the meeting and ask about support resources for family members. Members of AA will be more than happy to point out in the right direction to resources (your mother doesn’t need to be a member of AA for you to get help).
You may also want to call local recovery centers (whether privately run, or through a hospital), and ask about programs and support groups, so that if your mom becomes ready to get sober, she can do so in a safe and controlled environment. Detoxing from alcohol abuse can be extremely dangerous health-wise, and a recovery center will have the resources to monitor her withdrawals and make sure she is safe.
My parents have both dealt with alcoholic parents, and found Al-Anon to be extremely helpful and supportive, here is a link: http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/
Good luck, you don’t have to go through this alone.
Ugh. That totally and utterly sucks. My dad was a heavy drinker all through my high school and college years and got furious whenever we suggested he might be an alcoholic. Even though he started drinking around mid-afternoon and then was a rambly mess by the evening. Last February he quit drinking, which is I think when he realized he had a drinking problem. Things have been much better since then - we are less resentful of him all the time, and he notices more things, like that my mom has health problems that she won't own up to.
Does your mom admit to having a problem? We used to use my dad's denial against him, by hiding alcohol and forcing him to admit he wanted/needed it. I'm not sure whether this actually helped - eventually what happened was they went on vacation to a place where he couldn't drink (long story) and then he realized that it was hard for him to go a day without drinking.
My only concrete advice is to firstly, get some counseling for yourself - it is extremely hard to be the child of an alcoholic. You need somebody to talk to - there are even support groups for the children of alcoholics, I think. Definitely get the help that you need to deal with this, and face the reality that your mother may very well be an alcoholic for the rest of her life - and figure out how you can best deal with that.
The other thing I would tell you is what I used to do - don't talk to her after she's started drinking. Just don't answer the phone, don't call her, don't have dinner together. If she asks why, you can either choose to tell her the truth or you can just say, "I'm busy in the evenings." Don't respond to her paranoid ramblings, and definitely don't feed her insecurities by trying to reason with or reassure her.
I'm really sorry you are going through this.
Could you contact your moms neighbors? Maybe give them your cell phone number and get theirs. Maybe that would help put your mind at ease if you needed to contact someone to go check on her. Also if they saw something suspicious then they would have your number and could call you.
My mom's an alocholic as well. Things came to a head last year and my dad got her into counseling (while somehow blaming my siblings and I for overwhelming her causing the condition- my parents have had out of control drinking habits since we were kids). She was sober for a year when my parents began socially drinking again- a few weeks ago my dad found an empty bottle in the basement and is now threatning to leave. Luckily, she's back in treatment.
It's a really difficult situation, but keep peddling the counseling idea. In my opinion, alcoholism is caused by depression. I notice my mom falls off the wagon when things make her sad (i.e. I moved out of state and my siblings moved out of the house). All you can do is love and support her- some therapists recommend emotionally distancing yourself, but that's really difficult to do because she's your mother (I couldn't do it). I second not talking to her when she's is drunk. WHen my mother was/is drunk I avoid her.
I'm sorry you're going through this :(
Actually, when I was little (I think my dad said around 8 or 10), I used to be able to make her stop for about a week or two. He said I used to ask her why she always got mad at me after a certain time of day and she got upset that I noticed. It's a hard cycle because the depression and paranoia fuel the alcoholism which in turn fuels the depression and paranoia further. It's also extremely hard to stop talking to her after she's started to get upset but I'll try it, she may even forget by the next day (sometimes we will get into a small argument and the next day it's like she doesn't remember). I am extremely worried about how she's going to react if I move though. It's just getting pretty late in the game for her to have a lot more time to realize what's going on and how to fix it.
Also, she probably won't drink at the wedding. She knows that if she does, it'll all come out into the open and she doesn't want that.
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So I post regularly under a different name but for the purposes of this post, I'd rather not do that. One, because I'm ashamed (as in the username). Two, because I don't want this to be associated with my regular username or have any connection so that I'm a lot more anonymous. It's just something that has permeated my life more and more as time goes on. I have a general support system for it but I need to write it out to vent it. Also, I'm sorry this is so depressing on a Monday morning. Okay, ready?
My mother is an alcoholic. And a smoker with depression but an alcoholic mostly.
I don't know when this started because honestly, I didn't even realize it until high school. And it's been getting worse lately. The alcohol in now way helps the depression and she even now is appearing borderline to me and my brother. It is so hard to know that every day after 6pm, your mom is going to be a highly, unpleasant, paranoid person. Everyday I can tell by calls, emails, texts, etc that she's had some wine. They go from being generally upbeat to accusing me of different things. She says I take her money (I've offered to make the wedding smaller so she didn't have to pay and she refuses that, I decline when she offers to get us stuff, and she still does - plus, she does make money so that's not the issue). I also love my FI's family more in her mind (I don't and we share time at each place but in her mind, their time is longer and better). This takes a very heavy toll on me on the days that I get the brunt of it. It's incredibly hard to deal with and trying to ignore it to have a quiet day only makes it worse because now I'm ignoring her because she's done something wrong according to her. She also goes on tangents once a week about why was she a bad mother, what did she do wrong, why do I hate her, etc.
Another bad point with this is that I worry. I worry a lot when I haven't heard from her all day (I know, contradiction). But we have heart disease in my family plus as I said, she smokes, drinks heavily, and has severe depression/stress. So I don't know what I think will happen but I guess usually I worry that her liver failed and nobody was around (she lives alone due to me having moved for school and my brother moving out because he's older). I also worry about a heart attack or honestly, her setting the house on fire with a cigarette because she was tipsy. I worry about these things a lot and that adds to the toll.
I know counseling and quitting are the best things. But she won't go to counseling and she won't quit. I don't know how many times she's had pills for the depression or had pills to quit smoking. I've suggested counseling to her multiple times, my brother suggested it multiple times, my dad left mainly because the alcohol changed her, we've even gotten her friends to try. It's at the point where we don't know what to do because she actually just gets angry that we think she needs counseling even though she admits she does (but won't go).
This is mainly to vent and because I feel sometimes like I need to get that out in a forum that I post regularly in but I don't actually want it associated with my posts. Also, if anyone has been through this and has any ideas on what to do, we're open to it. It's just getting to be a bit much to deal with everyday and the worry affects me all the time (will she make it to the wedding, will she see me have kids, will she be around for much longer).