My mother became an alcoholic when I was about 6. My father was always one, he left my mother when I was 3 and moved to London. Great in a way because I got 6 yearly trips to the capital which I enjoyed very much. Bad because it’s what broke my mother the most I think.
She used to leave me alone at 6 and sneak out of her bedroom window at night to go drinking. I’m an only child and although family were living in the same town they were more than a short walk away. We had landlines but no numbers written down and I knew not to call the police because I was afraid she would get in trouble. So I played piano until she came stumbling in through the door whenever that may have been.
That continued through my life whilst living with her, she drank during the day, hid the booze in water bottles etc etc etc made a fool of herself, got so many DUIs she was told she was never allowed to drive again in her lifetime. Came home with busted lips, noses, concussions. Came home with random men (who I chased, duh).
I was left to look after my grandmother who was bedbound because my mother was too inebriated to carry out any proper care. I learnt how to change a colostomy bag at 9 and change over a catheter at 12 out of necessity. Which I didn’t mind of course, my grandmother was everything to me and although she had dementia she knew who I was.
My aunts didn’t know what to do with my mother, they sent her to rehabs, they moved me from one aunt to the other when she was being physically abusive to me during her blackouts but she never could stop drinking. With everything laid out, she never stopped.
It got to the stage where she attempted suicide every time she binged at the weekends. I was around 14 when she first tried to kill herself, I came home and found her passed out in the hallway and found the 20 packets or so of APAP along with the 3 bottles of vodka. That became a common occurrence until I left at about 17. I think it was the third or fourth time she did that that my brain just said enough. I grieved for her even though she was still alive, my brain literally did that out of necessity, to protect itself because I don’t think I could have taken seeing her near deaths door again and still been sane, if that makes sense.
My mother had so many opportunities to recover. We aren’t poor so she had the best therapists, the best rehabs. We tried loving her, giving her boundaries, tough love in regards to taking away her right to see me and her mother, none of it worked. I had her declared unfit and I took control of the estate, she was given a weekly allowance and moved to a property more suiting to her whims, meaning she loved smashing things up.
I always kept in contact with her, even though when she was drinking she was a very twisted horrible person that started seeping out into her everyday being. I called most days, visited every week a few times and made sure she had something to recover for. When my son was born I was sure she would want to recover so that she could enjoy being a granny and for a while she seemed to pull herself together. Of course it didn’t last long.
So I guess here’s where the real tough love came along. Emotionally I was already disconnected from her, I didn’t want to see my son have to witness her drunk or worry about her the way I used to as a child. She was given an ultimatum. Either she go to a rehab and stop drinking or I and my son would no longer be a part of her life and she would essentially be dead to me. She chose the latter.
She’s probably lonely and sad and in pain and sick but she’s not my problem anymore. I gave decades of my life trying to help her and picking up the pieces and it didn’t work.
My father died when he was 53 from alcoholism, he literally shat out his insides, he haemorrhaged to death from his back passage. A proper drinkers death and I can still smell it sometimes if I think about it hard enough. Nothing we tried to get him help worked either, even cutting him off.
I think there will always be addicts that will stay the course. Tough love won’t work, being loving and kind won’t work, nothing will work and they are destined to have their drug of choice end their lives. How sad that is and I’m not ignorant to the fact that my mother and father must have been so broken and sad to have chosen alcohol over facing their issues and I do wish I had found a way to help them but that’s life.
