Mothers drinking to her demise..

This problem has been evident for over 10 years.. although in recent years it has spiralled out of control.

My mother has suffered with her nerves for over 20 years, when she was in her early 20s she was sectioned under the mental health act and as a result she is still on medication for her condition. I am not sure what medication this is..

Roughly 5 years she was put in hospital again due to the same illness. My mother has always enjoyed her drink, her parents were avid drinkers and every night would go to the pub also. Just before her entrance to hospital 5 years ago she took a turn for the worse.. she stopped taking her medication and became an increasingly violent drunk. Bottles of wine, cans of lager or any alcoholic beverage would be consumed in vast quantities and as a result she would forward her aggression onto my father.. one point we had to call the police because she was strangling my dad. She tried to get into a room where me and my sister was hiding and in tears with a knife and always blamed my father for numerous things such as taking her parents inheritance away from her by selling the houses (which is not true from our perspective... countless events like this happened and then she went into hospital for a nervous breakdown.

The problem appeared to had gone away after her exit from the hospital.. but a year later she was getting drunk in front of the family, falling over and slurring her words at most family functions. The family picked up on her behavior, yet she still continues to do this to this day. She must drink everyday, secretly hiding her beverages and taking any excuse to go to the shop. I went to the shop with her and she went in and bought her wares.. upon arriving home i checked the boot, she had taken every bag apart from her alcohol. I asked how much she had bought and she replied with 1 bottle of wine.. where infact there was 3. I mean even today she took her daily venture to the shop.. she brought in the bags (no alcohol) yet later seemingly tucked away in the other fridge there was 2 bottles of wine, and somehow she was drinking beer. Not to mention the vodka. All of which have been consumed.. 2 bottles of wine, possibly 4 cans of lager/beer and vodka. She is absolutely smashed as i type this.. she cant talk.. and her coordination is terrible.. she is at present slumped in the chair sleeping. She went to the toilet for a good 30 minutes.. and i went in later to discover bits of sick in the sink and in the toilet (she must have tried to clean it up but there are still marks there). Thing is she was wasted last night as well.. she cant remember when she went to bed and lied when we knew she was up till 3am.

We are seriously worried about her, the doctors have sent her in for liver tests but she says they are fine. But with excessive daily drinking i cannot see why her liver would be in fine health.. especially since the doctors have requested a second liver test. If everything was fine why would she have to go back??

As a child i probably dealt with it the worst way i could.. frantically pouring her alcohol down the sink.. only for her to buy more. We really do not know what to do anymore.. and any useful advice would be appreciate. :smile:

Thankyou

Reply 1

mgls

I don't know if I can give you any advice really but I can tell you that I can totally empathise with you. My mum has had problems for as long as I can remember and as a child I also dealt with it the worst way I could...though I don't think I deal with it much better now :p:

The thing is my Mum and Dad have split up, my mum is with a new partner and he also drinks but doesnt seem to get drunk, just has a few each night. I have to protect my younger sister from a lot of things but the amount of arguments and just the dysfunctional way of it all is blatant to me and is all down to alcohol. Recently I've had a lot of support from my family as they haven't really known about any of it until I opened up to them about it. There have been many hospital visits and I put them all down to alcohol.

Unfortunately, as family have told me, there is no way of stopping an alcoholic unless they realise themselves that there is a problem and they also want to stop the problem. You can offer support in which I have tried to do the many times my Mum has "promised" us to stop however I've got so used to the empty promises that I don't think I can trust a promise off anyone in my life ever again because I'm so let down when she just reverts back to it all. Hiding the alcohol or throwing it away won't work as she will be determined just to have some so will buy more or hide some. I've tried pretty much everything but I will always just be there to support her and hopefully one day she may realise that she is slowly killing herself.

I know none of this is really helpful to you and it doesn't give you a quick solution to stopping your Mum. I understand totally what you're going through and wish myself there was a quick solution to it all. I found it has helped a lot to know that I have a large support network now that I have opened up and spoken to my family about it. If you feel you want to chat or anything at all feel free to PM me. We can swap MSN addresses if you have one and chat better on there. :hugs:

Reply 2

Anonymous #1

Aww bless you :smile:

yes i understand that! We went to the doctors to ask for support and they told us basically to ******* off... my sister was in tears in front of our family doctor and they couldn't care less. Being at uni i guess i've ignored the problem but returning now has brought it all up again.

Reply 3

sweet_fluffy_nuke

Perhaps you could take her to some meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Reply 4

Anonymous #2

acolyte

Perhaps you could take her to some meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Unfortunately, I don't think you can take people to AA meetings unless they want to get better and acknowledge that they're alcoholics. I'm really worried that my Dad's an alcoholic because he routinely drinks 8-10 cans of beer a night and sometimes gets really irrational and abusive, but I know he'll never agree that he was. :frown:

OP, I hope things with your mum get better soon and you get the doctors to take you (and her) seriously - that's appalling that they don't.

Reply 5

slk999

try and do all you can. my mother drank a lot too- she did have a stomach operation about 30 years ago which might not have helped- but she had pancreatic cancer which she contracted last summer and without the excellent treatment she had she would have gone within weeks and not months like she did. the drink really didn't help matters and no doubt contributed to the cancer- and we didn't know and neither did the doctors- they can get things wrong. to be honest however much it's nice to say try alchols anonymous- i don't feel this is very realistic with alcoholics because of their pride and it'd be very shameful to go to something like that. i don't think there's a lot you can do apart from monitor it and any signs that she looks weird or is feeling weird get her to a doctor. unfortunately the nhs take AGES to get you in for a full scan but that will tell you if something is up.
hope thats not alarming but certainly i dont think we could have predicted it- we thought her drink didn't do her any noticeable harm- apart from she had to have 2 hip replacements in 2005 because she drank so heavily. but each to their own in that respect.
just monitor it is all i can say and try and bear it.

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