I am 25 years old and have been living with my husband for several years now, just the two of us. My mom (58 now) got really bad into her alcohol addiction a few years ago. It’s caused a lot of stress on me trying to get her sober - I’ve had to apply for her to get onto government benefits to get her into rehabs. She was clean and living in a sober living facility for a whole year with my help. My brother gifted her a car so she didn’t have to ride the bus to find jobs in October. Two weeks after she got the car, she decided to move out of sober living and moved in with her alcoholic sister. It wasn’t even a month before she started drinking again and ended up in the ICU with kidney damage. She was released from the hospital in January and had nowhere to go. So rather than let her be homeless, I had let her into my home so she could get back on her feet. That was 2 months ago. She acts so helpless when it comes to finding a job (she now has trouble moving her right arm after her hospital stay - I suspect she might have had a stroke). I’ve helped her apply to several jobs and I’ve paid for her to have gas in her car. I track her on her phone (that I also paid for) and sometimes it seems like she’s driving around aimlessly. I suspect she leaves the house to make it seem like she’s looking but in reality, I think she’s just driving around to different ash trays looking for other peoples old cigarettes to smoke. I’m really so tired of having her here. I don’t see an end to this, she acts so dependent on me. My husband is incredibly supportive but I can tell it’s affecting him too. I’m sure the easy way out is to kick her out, but it’s so hard for me to tell if she is unwilling to help herself OR if she really can’t function enough to become independent. Her memory and cognitive function are not that great anymore after years of alcohol and drugs and so my main conflict with myself id trying to decide if she NEEDS my help or if she is just playing helpless and is taking advantage of me. I scheduled her a neurology appointment next month so hopefully they can help me answer this and guide me on what to do. I move out of my two bedroom in June and our plan was to move into a one bedroom to save money. I can’t do that if she still lives with us by then but I’m so sick of paying for her already. Please, I need some guidance and advise!!!
I would never forgive myself if I kicked her out and she just ended up living out of her car, stealing alcohol from somewhere and dying.
I’ve tried to get her approved for nursing home programs but they’ve told me she’s capable enough to not need them.
If she can get a job, she can move back into her sober living facility. But again, it’s been two months and she’s been to two interviews - or so she says.
I really hope I don’t get stuck with her for the rest of her life. I love my mom and care about her but I’m also a grown adult with my own life to live.
I finally decided what I want to do with my life and my husband wants to support me while I go to college but we can’t do this if we have a third person to support.
My brother has a spare room at his place, but I don’t think he could handle her for very long either. Ugh.
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Your mother has chosen alcohol. There will never be anything you can do about that, and you will never be able to change it or manage it.
If you become slave to it you are basically throwing your life and your relationships onto your mother's funeral pyre, and alcoholism is a very "slow burn".
It is time to stop relying on "so she says". It is time to realize alcoholics lie.
It is time to claim your own life and leave your mother to her own choices.
You are enabling her (and locked into co-dependency with her) and preventing her from reaching the bottom she needs in order to decide whether to claim her one life, or not. You didn't create this and cannot fix it. And you need to understand that no matter your good heart, not everything can BE fixed.
GO TO AL ANON. Take care of yourself. I am just now dealing with a friend late 70s who is understanding that her son, pushing 50 and now on the streets is an endless sponge that soaked up endless amounts of her time and money, all to no avail. It is, yes, a difficult thing to see. But this is not in your control.
Your mother is suffering from her own severe limitations. You are not trained to help her.
You cannot save an alcoholic.
But you CAN BE ASSURED that they will take you down with them.
I'm the mom of 22 and 25 year old daughters. To me - they are still kids - even though I know they aren't. They are grown women with lives of their own and their whole futures ahead of them. THEIR lives. THEIR futures.
My problems (and their dad's), my bills, my needs should be the last thing they are worried about. Now of course I'm not saying they shouldn't think about their parents and be concerned about us. What I am saying is that they should not have to concern themselves with where our next meal comes from, or if we have a roof over our heads, or if we see doctors or pay our bills. That is up to us as adults to take care of. And if we drink ourselves into an early grave - that's on US, not on them.
I am the adult daughter of an alcoholic father. It's not something I really talk about in every day life too much. But it was part of my formative years. He wasn't abusive - and thanks to my mom - it didn't impact whether we had a roof over our heads because she both worked full time and made sure he was sober enough to keep a job. But that being said (and she will attest to this), she was also an enabler.
I asked her one time why she didn't just walk away - she was fully capable of supporting us on her own. She said it was because HE needed HER - he needed us. That was what she told me when I was a teenager. I asked her again several years go - after he passed away. She said "I loved him and couldn't bear to watch him kill himself, and I knew as long as I was there, I could manage him."
But the reality is that she didn't. Not really. We would tell people that he was a "recovering alcoholic". But I always told my DH, you have to stop drinking to be recovering. To my dad a beer was like a glass of water. We knew he was dying when he lost his taste for alcohol. My brother asked her why she bought it for him when he couldn't get it for himself - mom said she was afraid it would literally kill him to stop cold turkey - and she was probably right.
But here is the problem with enabling an addict. And it's the hardest pill to swallow. People will tell you stop helping them, walk away, and everything in between. All very good advice by the way. Next to impossible to do when you love someone. But literally the best possible advice.
But at the end of the day - what you are doing isn't helping HER, it is helping her ADDICTION. It SUCKS!!! But people - with addictions - have to hit rock bottom and keep falling until they figure out for themselves and themselves alone that they need to stop (and sometimes even that isn't enough). It won't matter how much you help her. If you find her everything she needs, the perfect job, the perfect apartment, or if you let her live with you - her addiction may still control her. She could still end up drinking in her car.
You cannot save an addict from themselves. You just can't.
Others have mentioned Al-Anon. 1000% this. Therapy. Anything. You can't change her. You can't make her stop. She will ruin your life and your marriage.
She won't mean to. I know people hate to hear this about addicts because it always begins as a choice. 100% it starts as a choice. But once they are in so deep - it is a disease. They need help. But you are not the help she needs. And you can't make her get the help she needs. And she will suck the life out of you trying to help her.
In the end, my dad retired at 50, worked a little side business with my mom for a few years - sat down in his chair...and basically didn't get back up. My mom - who had worked her entire life to enjoy her retirement with her husband - had it taken away from her because he didn't want to get out of his chair. She had to find a new dream. Because he would rather be comfortable and sit in his chair all day. I loved my dad. In comparison to my Narc FIL he was a dream father. But he definitely had his faults.
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You are doing your mother no favors by enabling her to sit around and deteriorate. You really can't care more about someone else's health and well-being than they do; it's an impossible task, one destined to fail, make you hopeless and helpless and eat you up from the inside out.
Your mother is an addict. She needs to find her way out.
She needs to leave. Now.
You say that you would never forgive yourself if your mother found herself living in her car and turning into a thief in order to get her alcohol.
I’m afraid that you are viewing your mother with misguided compassion. Having compassion is a wonderful quality but there are times when it isn’t appropriate.
Trust me, I have experienced living with an addict. I barely remember my life before my oldest brother (deceased since 2013) started using. He had an opioid addiction. I was 7 years old when my brother became an addict.
I loved my brother and he was a great guy when he wasn’t using. Sadly, for whatever reasons, he was unable to stay clean. I suspect that he had underlying mental health issues.
I tried to help my brother at different times in his life. I nearly lost my mind too. So, I can relate to all of your emotions. There were times when I couldn’t bear the pain anymore and would cut him completely out of my life.
My brother ended up having a horrible motorcycle accident. My mother asked me to go to the hospital.
By this point. Mom wasn’t able to leave the house accept for doctor appointments. So, I reluctantly went to see my brother, so I could let my mom know how he was doing after the accident.
He was certainly a cat with nine lives. I saw him overdose since I was a child. He nearly died in his accident. Something inside of me snapped when I was visiting him in the hospital. While I was visiting, he asked me to go into the streets and buy heroin for him.
My brother did a lot of crap before but he had never asked me to do to go out and buy drugs for him. I lost it. I said nothing to him and went out into the hallway and emotionally fell apart.
An incredible nurse who happened to be walking down the corridor saw me and stopped to ask me if I was okay. I told her what my brother had asked me to do. She told me to go to Al-Anon and to leave the caregiving of my brother up to the hospital staff. I will forever be grateful to this nurse. She was very kind and helpful to me.
I came back home told my mother that I didn’t have any other choice but to be involved in a dysfunctional family as a kid but that I do have a choice now and that I was choosing to walk away from the insanity.
Mom was hurt that her first born son would be abandoned by everyone in our family but she understood that we would not be involved in his life anymore.
My brother did end up being homeless. It hurts like hell to see someone that we love suffer. I feel your pain because I have been there.
The last time I saw him was when his friend called me to tell me that he was in an end of life hospice facility and I took my mom to say goodbye to him.
Life stinks sometimes and we can’t do a damn thing about it. We can only control our own lives, nothing more.
Please don’t ruin your life for an addict. Yeah, she’s your mom. He was my brother but that doesn’t mean that we are supposed to sacrifice ourselves for them. Get a grip on reality and lose your misguided compassion.
You have a beautiful heart. Find a place where your compassion will actually be of help.
I know that it’s hard for you to walk away but don’t put yourself in a vulnerable situation where it will only become worse.
Take care of yourself. An addict will suck every ounce of life out of you if you allow them to. Walk away.
Love your husband. That’s what I chose. I gave my husband and children all of my love. My brother wasn’t capable of changing no matter how much I loved him.
Consider this: Your doing all of this for her is encouraging her to drink. Why would she stop drinking if she knows you’ll swoop in to rescue her when she has a crisis?
”She had nowhere to go!”. Wrong. There are always women’s shelters. She is choosing this life and she loves alcohol more than you. Stop trying to get her to love and appreciate you. She never will. It’s not your fault.
You will have to get tough and tell her that she will be leaving soon, no longer than 30 days.
Right now, you're her enabler. You are helping to keep her sick because you're propping her up and not allowing her to reach her rock bottom. It's scary, but needs to happen.
Please look into faith-based programs like Adult and Teen Challenge (ATC), which has an 18-month in-house program and the highest success rate of any national program.
The most you should do is help her apply for Section 8 housing so that you can expedite getting her out of your house. Or, drop her off at her sister's house. She can't go to a shelter unless she's sober...
Please do attend Al-Anon meetings so you can get support and stop enabling her. Our church hosts ATC every year and the personal testimonies of those women (of all ages)... is incredible. She has to get to the point where she wants sobriety for herself. What she says and what she does are 2 different things. Your Mom is not hopeless, but you will need to sit on your hands while you watch the sausage being made. There's no other way. Your long-suffering husband in your priority, as is your own life.
You are not supporting your alcoholic mother by any means, you are enabling this behavior under the guise of helping. From what you've written here, she is not trying to help herself, but just driving around in her car while you front the money for gas, give her room and board, and put your plans on hold.
Please get this woman out of your home. I know this is your mother, but alcoholics will use who they can use.
Sorry to be so blunt.
YOU can not get her sober.
YOU can not get her a job.
She has to want to get AND STAY sober.
You do not want to be taking care of her for the next 10 to 40 years. (wide time span cuz with alcoholics you never know..)
Please seek out Al-Anon meeting.
DO not disrupt your life, go to college. Live your life. Those are the choices YOU want to make, she is making the choices SHE wants to make. You do not want to look back in 5, 10, 20 years and wonder what happened to your life.
You cannot fix this. She is responsible for her actions. If she ends up on the street or living in her car, that is her own doing. She needs to want to get help, you cannot do this for her.
You will destroy your life dealing with your mother's alcoholism. Get her out of your house.
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