Helping someone who is reluctant to help themself?

greenandgrey

First off, as a disclaimer, I'll say that this is likely to be a long post in order to best explain the situation I'm trying to deal with at the minute. So a big thanks to anyone who makes it through it all.


The issue I want to address is with my father. I'm in a situation where I don't know what to do about him and I'm at my wits end about it. I've exhausted the usual avenue of OH, friends etc... chatting about what to do and it hasn't really gotten me anywhere. I know it's probably a longshot but I'm hoping someone here might say something that might spark something off that maybe I haven't heard previously.


I'm struggling to know how to even approach explaining the situation. There is a lot of relevant information to the current situation that is firmly rooted in the past. Without knowing the whole backstory the current state of things wouldn't really have a discernable context. I guess I will get the back story out of the way first of all and then tell of the current problem/issue I'm trying to deal with. Hopefully it should make more sense that way.


Back to the very beginning. My father and mother weren't together very long when she got pregnant. I think the relationship including the pregnancy was about 18 months. So all in all they were barely together and pretty much split up as soon as they felt they were "allowed" to as there was a child involved. My father had only just turned 22 when I was born.
There was no chance of an abortion because of Ireland at the time and also their two very Catholic families. My mother didn't want me so didn't ask for custody. Despite my father saying he'd take me I was due to go into foster care until my Nan intervened, with the help of the local priest, and got the relevant authorities, after many house calls and checks, to agree to let him have me. The local priest was a big fan of my nan and it was a decision basically predicated on my father living with my nan and having a good, strong, devout Catholic woman involved in raising a baby.

As a young child lived with my father, nan and grandfather and, as far as I recall, things were fine. My father had three brothers and I'd see them the odd time but it wasn't a particularly close knit affair with my father and the other three. Life moved along like that normally until I was 7 when my grandfather got cancer. A year later he died. I remember my nan and father obviously being very upset but things were still pretty normal.

About a year later my father had to take early retirement from his job because of serious back issues caused on the job that were the employers fault. At the time he had a well paid job and was paying for a high premium income protection plan. It basically ensured that for the rest of his life, up until 65, he gets paid a full wage every month at the current going rate for the job he worked in. This may seem a little bit off topic but it will become relevant quickly.

It was only when I got to about 10 or 11 years old that all of a sudden my father started to go off the rails. To this day I don't really know what prompted it. When I say go off the rails I mean first of all he started going out a lot more. It was noticable to me as kid, even with my early bed time, that he wasn't around as much in the evenings anymore. He was still pleasant when he was around in the daytime and so on. That didn't last long however.

In basically no time at all he went head first into full blown alcoholism. And I mean full on. He was able to fund this by virtue of the fact that he was getting a full wage. It quickly got to the stage where he'd go out in the afternoon and come home at any hour of the night or morning. Every chance he got he'd go to the pub. I'd come home from school at 3.30 (I lived close by) and my nan would tell me that my father had gone out at 2pm. Maybe he'd come home at 10pm, or 1am, or 3am. Regardless of what time he came in at I'd be made get out of bed and sit with him in the kitchen while he ate whatever takeaway he brought home.

He'd always be absolutely hammered. And I mean hammered beyond anything I've seen with even the wildest and most drunken people I've come across in all my years since (I'm in my late 30s now). He was always in absolutely terrible humour, grinding his teeth, clenching his jaw, ranting and howling at the moon. He was definitely a huge bully. The better nights were when he was so insensbile he could barely speak or stand. It meant having to carry a man who 5"6 and probably 16 stone at that stage up 4 flights of stairs when I was only a weak little kid but at least it meant he'd get into bed and pass out quickly. I should also add that he was then, and still is now, on extremely strong medication with which you're not meant to drink ANY alcohol. His doctor, who was my doctor until I was old enough to pick my own, was an absolute quack. But they were good friends so he'd write a prescription for whatever my father wanted. He was, and as I said still is, being medicated as strongly now as when he sustained the initial injury in around 1990. I can tell you for a fact that while he definitely had back pain during these years he wasn't in need of anything like the dosage he was being given. He'd also swallow them like smarties so that didn't help either.

He'd be out at a minimum 4 or 5 days a week doing this. I had a conversation with my nan recently and we could only recall maybe a half dozen times during my childhood (after this started) that he stayed in two days/nights in a row. I mean he was at it constantly. Every week of every month of every year.

During this time we went from seeing little or his 3 brothers to basically nothing at all. They'd come down and visit my nan for a while every now and then but they'd no interest in me or my father. It transpired, as I got a bit older and wordly wise I found out, that the other 3 brothers were in fact pretty serious criminals in their own respective rights. My nan wasn't pleased at all with this so that's why she wasn't that close to them. She'd never tire of telling them she didn't approve and they didn't want to hear it. They had no interest in my father because he wasn't interested in helping them in their criminal ventures (I guess because he had a nicely paid steady stream of income). They definitely had no interest in me either. So I never had uncles or cousins around from either side of the family. The only family I've always had are my nan and father. This is revelant later on too I guess.

Nan was always the one looking after me. She basically raised me while my father went to the pub all day and night. She got me up for school in the morning (he'd still be in bed sleeping it off), was there when I got home, made sure the bills were paid etc... all the practical stuff. She was caring in that regard and considering she was 50 when I was born it was a big burden to undertake given she'd already raised 4 kids. She started all over again and that can't have been easy. However she never called my father out on his drinking or general behaviour. No matter how many times I cried or how miserable I was nothing was done. And I was miserable growing up. There is no denying that. You put on a face to your friends and all but I was miserable inside.

Eventually one day I built up the courage to ask my father to change his ways. I waited until he was sober obviously. I remember crying and shaking and telling him that the way he was going on wasn't good for him and it wasn't good for me either. I talked about all the stuff mentioned above so I won't repeat myself. He mumbled something, wouldn't look me in the eye and basically ran out of the room. He was back to his usual form a day or two later.
Occasionally I'd try talking to him about this but it never mattered how upset I was or what I said to him he'd just go back to it. The last time I tried it with him I think I was 19 or 20. After that I stopped wasting my breath. He could never have a conversation that was in any way uncomfortable.

This pattern just continued on for years. When I was about to leave school I was going to get a job right away and get out. However my nan started to get sick then and he had no interest in looking after her any more or less that he already did. His pattern wasn't going to be interupted no matter what happened. So I went to college close by and stuck around. By the time I was around 25/26 it eventually it got to the stage where I couldn't take it anymore. He would try and physically fight me every time he was drunk. And he was drunk all the time. He wasn't physically violent with me on a regular basis when I was smaller but it did happen occassionally. Once I was an adult, though, he'd just want to throw digs all the time. If and when that happened I'd just leave and sleep over at my GFs or a friends. I was a fully grown man and would have had no problem beating the living daylights out of him but I didn't want to do that the sake of all three of us. Physically he'd be hurt and mentally and emotionally myself and my nan would be hurt.

Anyway, I moved out and got place with my then GF (now wife) but my fathers behaviour didn't change. I'd know this from talking to nan about it. He was still doing the same things. He'd regularly ring me up leaving foul mouthed, drunken abusive messages. Even when my nan started to have hip problems he made no extra effort to help her. He was still in the pub all day and night. By this stage I'd started to warn my nan that he might just drop dead one day. He was smoking at least 20 a day, eating like a pig and drinking as heavily as anyone can imagine for about 15 years at this stage. I told her this because I felt it needed to be said. I didn't want his health failing to come as a shock to her if and when it happend. Quite frankly it sill amazes me how he sustained it for as long as he did.

Anyway we'll skip forward a bit as things went on in this way for another few years. Then my nan had to have a hip replacement, not too long, relatively speaking, after that she had a minor stroke. Her days of living in a house with 4 big flights of stairs were done and she had to go into a nursing home. She's been there about 6 years now.

Along the way the other three brothers all died. All in their early 60s just like my grandfather. They all ate, drank and smoked too much as well.

So we're at the stage now where he was living in the house alone. Over the years he'd had friends come and go because, as far as I could see the only friends he had were other alcoholics, evenutally they'd have a drunken falling out. He had no other interests or hobbies than going to the pub by the way. Go to the pub and watch whatever sport was on.

Our relationship was, and is, very strained at best as you can imagine but I always visited him because it would break my nans heart if I just didn't talk to him. I'd go down once a week for 2 or 3 hours because it was all I could manage at this stage. She especially didn't like him being in the house on his own.

Then one day he fell over and badly injured his hip. He gave me a big cock and bull story about how he tripped over a plastic bag on the street. He'd rang me and left a voicemail the day it happend. He was s**tfaced. So he got drunk and fell over and hurt himself badly. He used to fall over a lot through the years but obviously the body is more resilient in the younger days.
Then it happened again and this time he hurt his back. That was on top of the pre existing injury he had that meant he had to quit work. Another cock and bull story to cover for him being drunk when he did it.
Then he hurt his shoulder badly and nearly tore the ligament off the bone. He spun another yarn about how it was a crazy fluke accident but he'd just gotten drunk and fallen over again.


This finally woke him up a little bit. I think even his idiot doctor told him to wind his neck in, or gave him some kind of grave warning, because all of a sudden he'd quit the smokes and given up drinking. It turned out that he'd also fallen out with the last friend he had so that was probably a factor too.
I was skeptical about the drinking at first for obvious reasons. However after a while it was clear he wasn't doing it any more. There wasn't a time of day or night that I couldn't ring him and he wouldn't be sober. And I tested that out believe me but he had done it. That was about a 18 months ago.

The a few months ago nan got really sick. She was very close to dying and it was a shock because despite her age she'd never really been badly sick. She'd never even gotten sick in the nursing home and there are regular outbreaks of flu or whatever that have half the place struck down. Her doctor told us she was all but gone and funeral arrangements were made with the home. Amazingly enough she rallied through and is still around.

It was obviously very stressful for both of us. It was after this that he started looking ill himself. He seemed to start to throw in the towel on ridiculous things claiming he "can't cope with that" or "I can't deal with these things". Simple stuff like having to return the wrong voltage batteries to the shop. He'd throw his hands up and say he couldn't cope with it. Simple things I'm talking about now. Not difficult situations. Throws his hands up and says I can't deal with it.
He's become visibly ill over the last while but as usual, with everything in his life, he never really talks about it. He'd hint and initimate that he wasn't well but never actually give any detail. I'd long given up on a meaningful conversation with him as he'd avoided them at all cost his entire life.

It's gotten worse and worse and over the last few times I visited him he constantly implies that he's going to die. Anyway today things came to a head. He kept complaining about his back pain, I told him to see a doctor, he says it wouldn't do any good. He complains about not being well, I tell him go to a doctor, he says it wouldn't do any use. He complains about being in the house on his own all the time and having no friends, I told him to join some clubs/societies (an idea I've told him repeatedly over the last 18 months) and he says there is no use.

He then went on to warn me that his health was deteriorating rapidly and he didn't know why. To be blunt he was feeling very sorry for himself (forgive me for saying it) and I had to say something to him. So this is what I said.

I told him that I was sorry his life turned out the way it had and that I'd never wanted him to end up the way he is. I told him it was hard for me watching him piss his life away down the pub for 25 years while he ignored everything I said. But that living the lifestyle he had for 25 years was catching up with him. These were the consequences. I told him that if he wanted to sort his health out that he had to make an effort. To sort his back pain out he had to make an effort. To try and find friends and things to do he had to make an effort. That theres no use shrugging and saying he just wasn't going to bother trying to resolve the issues he had. I told him he has to try.

I said to him that I know he didn't like hearing things like this but he had to listen to me. To my shock and amazement he muttered that what I was saying was about him was true. He'd never in his life before even made the vague admission of drinking too much so I was surprised.
But then the bad news. He stared at the wall for a couple of minutes. Then he got up and went out of the room. When he came back in he'd changed his clothes and was going out. He never leaves before I do when I visit, I have a regular time I leave at and he's always there when I do. He couldn't look me in the eye and said with his back half turned to me at the door that he was sorry if he'd ever done anything bad on me. He'd never said sorry for anything before in his life. It wasn't much but it was more contrite than he'd ever been before.

Anyway he left and I went off to visit my nan not long afterwards. I always ring him after I've been with her to let him know how she is. I rang him 2 hours after I'd last seen him. I'd gotten used to being able to ring him whenever and not worry about what I was going to get down the other end of the phone. Well tonight he was absolutely plastered again. I stopped engaging with him on the phone when he is drunk many years ago. I was caught on the hop because he'd been clean and sober the last year and a half.
He'd also gone from borderline contrite to beligerent. He kind of mockingly thanked me for talking to him earlier and sarcastically said he'd never realised what an asshole he was. At that stage I'd had enough and told him I wasn't talking to him while he was drunk and I'd talk to him when he was sober. One "real" conversation about something uncomfortable (it didn't even last 2 minutes) and he goes straight back into meltdown and the old habits.


So that's where I am. I genuinely believe if he keeps moping and feeling sorry for himself his health will continue to slide (especially since he won't see a doctor) and that he won't last much longer. I know for a fact that if anything happens him it will be the end of my nan too. She's sick enough as it is and anything happening her last remaining son will do her in. I'm not a doctor but you'll have to take my word on that. Regardless of anything else they are the only 2 family members I've got.

I really don't know what to do. I've no idea. This is all very mentally and emotionally draining for me now. So I'd welcome some input.

I would put the disclaimer that simply telling me he's not very nice or whatever else isn't going to help me. I'm aware he's not going to cut a sympathetic figure here. I've had the advice of "f**k him, let him rot" before and that's just not helpful at all. So if that's all you've got to say please just keep it to yourself. Hopefully there will be some people/person who might have been around or involved in a scenario like this before and might able to offer help.

If you feel the need to ask anything that might help your opinion I'm happy to answer.

Again, if you've made it this far, thanks very much for taking the time.

LegacyUser

Op, if you haven't already, please go to Al Anon and a counsellor. All of your focus is on helping your father change. The stark reality is you cannot do that. I have many years of professional experience in this area and it is heart breaking to see the energy families put into supporting someone who wants to live life with alcohol on it. It is wonderful that your father achieved sobriety, it shows he has the skill to do so. Do you have the skill to love him wherever he is at? That's your only job here. Love him where he is at, and accept his choices. Rather than trying to parent or support or change him. Those options won't help him and will exhaust you.

My advice is to maintain whatever kind of relationship works for you during his sobriety, if needs be, scale it back when he is drinking. My general advice is for a family member to say to the drinker 'I love you, it's easier to spend time with you when you aren't drinking but I accept that those are your choices.' Wish him well and stop trying to control his choices. Free yourself of that job. Best of luck OP

Big Bag of Chips

You need to attend Al-Anon. Addicts lie. Your dad is an addict. They lie all the time. They lie about little irrelevant things and they lie about how they hurt themselves. They lie about everything. And often they believe their own lies because to own up to the truth is to admit they are a failure as a person, a parent, a son etc.

There is nothing you can do about your dad. Nothing. He may try to get sober again but he may continue to relapse back to his familiar ways. You have no control over that.

My friend is separated from an alcoholic. Their cycle is much like yours. Occasionally he apologises for everything he has put her and their children through, tells her she is a brilliant mother, and pretty soon afterwards she'll get a pissed phone call with him abusing her telling her she's ruined his life.

Your father is no different to any other alcoholic. And you are no different to any other person living with an alcoholic in their lives. Contact Al-Anon. Today.

Ghekko

My heart goes out to you. I had no relationship to speak of with my father as he too was an alcoholic and then he transformed and AA took over his life, to the detriment of his family. I agree with the other posters who suggest Al Anon. While I never went as I was young enough when dad gave up, I think you need to start healing yourself. Unless you want to make one last ditch attempt at physically bringing him to a different doctor, there is little you can do. I was there for dad when he was dying and was always nice to him and I don't have any regrets. There really is only so much you can do and it seems you have gone above and beyond what many others would manage - even frequently visiting him to make sure he was ok, despite the way he treated you. Allow yourself to step away and hopefully he will find his way back to sobriety for however long it may last next time.

greenandgrey

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I've had a lot to mull over in the last few days.

Many thanks for the responses and taking the time to help out a stranger. I've a lot to evaluate going forward.

.......

Ive a similar back story in terms of my fathers alcoholism.

You need to go to Al Anon. You cant help him.

You didnt cause it, you cant cure it, you definitely cant control it.

In my own case, I was unable to help my father - having gone to extraordinary lengths trying and damaging my own mental and physical health.

There was nothing I could do. Only he could help himself and he chose not to. He died without ever making any kind of recovery. That was his choice.

No one is going to tell you to "f*ck him, let him rot", but realistically the only healthy option for you is to detach with love. Now you may perceive that as letting him rot, but the truth is, you are not actually helping him and you cannot help him. Instead you are only hurting yourself.

So now you have a choice. Do you love yourself, or do you allow him to continue to damage you?

It is difficult to accept that you cannot help someone else. But the truth is that the only person you can help is yourself.

My favourite analogy is that you are standing before a raging ocean, you have no chance to hold the waves back. But you can leave the beach. And save yourself.