Alcoholic mother - the aftermath

LegacyUser · 12-10-2019 11:32pm #1

For the first time in my life, I should feel at peace. But instead I feel lower than I have in years. I feel drained and tired and sad, and I’m not sure why.

This week, my mother finally admitted that she is an alcoholic and needs help. This was groundbreaking, she was in complete denial for the past 30 years. She has now entered a system where she will receive help, with endless support from extended family and friends who never knew she had a problem because it was all conducted in secrecy.

This came about after a week of turmoil for my siblings and I, as she drank herself unconscious over and over, left lying on the floor foaming at the mouth hours after promising us it would never happen again. We expected her to kill herself, with her drinking reaching a new level.

I’m a female in my 30s with my own life and world. I’ve long since left my mother’s toxic grasp and have limited contact the past several years. Most contact usually occurs when dysfunction is taking place.

Now, with her admitting to having a problem, everyone runs to support her. She’s receiving more love and sympathy than she ever did before. And I’m left feeling angry and utterly alone.

I am a victim. My siblings are victims. Our lives and personalities are permanently damaged by her actions.

We endured endless horror and trauma. The older I get, with more life experience, the more disturbed I am by it. Incidents such as her drunk driving us daily, failing to wake us for school, mocking my big nose, insulting us, failing to feed us, crashing her car with us as babies, partying nightly and having endless public marital affairs (introducing us to her boyfriends while our dad worked hard to put food on the table), all the while our poor father tried his best to take care of us, with his own health failing.

She’s insulted and abused me - she’s a nasty drunk. Her greatest crime resulted in my father’s death. He suffered with cancer and she failed to give him his medication. She refused outright to drive him to his chemo appointments. My siblings and I were teenagers and watched this unfold, watched him die unable to do a thing.

And now, I sit here remembering all of this, while her family and friends rally to her side to support her, and request we be more understanding of her addiction.

They don’t know even 5% of what we went through as children, into adulthood. They see me particularly as cold hearted and unable to understand her addiction. I have no interest in telling the world her crimes. She probably doesn’t even remember most of them herself. I confronted her on most of them when sober, and she denied them or failed to remember.

I also don’t believe she will change now, I fear she likes the attention and the drama of this and expect she will relapse when the excitement of her friends nursing her to sobriety dies down.

I’m angry. Maybe she will succeed and she will be sober and become a likeable, kind person. But how on earth am I to ever forgive her? The truth is I’ve never known her sober, and have no idea what her personality is.

I’m bitter that she gets a get out of Jail free card, because she was an “addict”. She couldn’t help her actions. Her every action for 30 years was conducted while drunk, so she doesn’t have to accept responsibility for the ****ty nasty person she was. Family and friends describe her as that poor thing, god love her and all she’s been through.. not one single person has asked how my siblings and I feel. Not one.

No one has reached out to me or offered me support at any point in my life. I’m not a fan of therapy, I try to live my own life and have a good partner and friends. I don’t like to discuss my mother because as always, I’m met with sympathy for her situation. Meanwhile I’ve gone through half of my life without my kind beautiful father who never stood a chance.

I feel like the whole world has become utterly sympathetic to people who have caused a lot of pain. I fear my narcissistic mother is taking advantage of the world we now live in, where it’s almost ‘current’ to have been depressed and suicidal. I fear she is using this as her escape from having to deal with her past actions.

I’m curious if anyone has ever been in my position, and how it played out. Is it possible to move on from something like this? Is a happy future ever possible?

I don’t wish badness on her. I hope she manages to sort out her life and has support from her friends and family, I just don’t see where she can ever play a part in my life. My extended family don’t understand how I am not by her side, excited that she is ready to change.

Batgurl · 13-10-2019 11:14am

I’m very sorry for your hurt OP.

I don’t think you’ll ever find the closure or apology you need from your mother so if you deal with that first and foremost. Learn to accept how ****tily you were treated, seek counselling and find a way to cope with those emotions. Eventually you will be able to put it behind you and be somewhat at peace.

Then you deal with other people. The best thing I found was either keeping them at arms length (ie avoiding them) or telling them what they wanted to hear but then doing what I wanted (oh yea I’ll definitely give x a call but then never did). I also found changing the subject helped. It the topic turns around to your mother, ask them a question about themself about a totally unrelated topic. People love talking about themselves and eventually people will realise you don’t want to talk about your mother.

Also, the counselling will stop you feeling angry at other people for not “taking your side”. You’ll be better able to cope with them because you are more at peace yourself.

I know it’s not the same and I can’t imagine the hurt you are feeling but I grew up in a violent household and had to learn how to accept my childhood knowing I would never get an apology from the perpetrator. I also had to deal with family ostracising me for how I dealt with it (like you I just got away and stayed at arms length with no contact). These were some of the things that I did. I hope it helps.

bitofabind · 13-10-2019 5:03pm

Of course you're angry. You have every reason to be angry. I'm angry for you. What you've been through is serious hardship and trauma, and at such a young age when you and your siblings had no defence mechanisms and were completely vulnerable to her dysfunctional and dangerous behaviours. This kind of stuff can damage people for life and alter their inter-personal relationships forever. Your hurt and your anger and your pain is totally normal.

You're at an age too, where that unprocessed childhood stuff can really take a hold. Especially as your mother starts her recovery journey, which is likely to be fraught with speed bumps and false starts and yet even more trauma for the family as she resists and fails and starts again as that's how it goes with addiction most of the time.

You never had the love, protection and support of a mother and instead, you had to grow up well ahead of your years. You never had the chance that we all deserve to be an innocent, protected child. I'm so sorry for you OP. This isn't an easy fix, but I just wanted you to know that your anger, hurt, pain and distrust is not something you should feel guilty about. These are healthy, normal feelings. You've been robbed of so much and I can totally understand why it's so hard to see your alcoholic mother who inflicted so much pain and suffering to be embraced with all the love and support that you never received.

I know you don't like the idea of it, but I think now is a very good time for you to find a good counsellor to work through these issues with. It's not about being "fixed" because there's nothing to fix here - it's about accepting your past, accepting your mother and learning to live with these family circumstances with a degree of peace and inner-comfort and knowing that you are safe now and can move onto a better and healthier life for yourself, regardless of what your mother is going through. You deserve that now.

joeguevara · 13-10-2019 7:31pm

You and your siblings are victims and whatever happens now or in the future. You deserve love, honesty and respect and if there are issues you should seek help from a family member or trusted friend. You deserve to be angry but anger won't fix the past and may damage your future.

Your mother seeking help is not a get out of jail free card. She is not instantly fixed and has to live for the rest of her life knowing what her actions did to her family. People rallying around is to try and help her but it doesn't mean that the past is forgotten or they love you less. You can choose if you want to be part of the people that help your mother but it is not something you have to do and don't feel bad if you don't. It looks like it would cause you more pain if you do right now and your mental health is the most important.

Whether you believe that this sobriety will last or is just for drama is irrelevant and will only cause you more pain and turmoil. Instead of thinking about things that you have no control over think About yourself and ways of dealing with your past.

YFlyer · 13-10-2019 7:42pm

Time to burn bridges.

LegacyUser · 14-10-2019 10:52pm

I just want to thank all of you so much for replying. I’ve felt a little overwhelmed reading the replies, because this isn’t something I’ve talked about much in my life, other than with my siblings.

I think I’m surprised that I’m feeling so down, when the problem is being dealt with for the first time. I thought I would feel relief, but I just feel low and sad. For the first time in 10 years, I’ve found myself browsing properties and jobs on the other side of the world and considering moving far away with my partner and starting afresh. It’s not realistic but it brings me peace for an hour.

joeguevara · 15-10-2019 8:49pm

Abigail889 wrote: »

I just want to thank all of you so much for replying. I’ve felt a little overwhelmed reading the replies, because this isn’t something I’ve talked about much in my life, other than with my siblings.

I think I’m surprised that I’m feeling so down, when the problem is being dealt with for the first time. I thought I would feel relief, but I just feel low and sad. For the first time in 10 years, I’ve found myself browsing properties and jobs on the other side of the world and considering moving far away with my partner and starting afresh. It’s not realistic but it brings me peace for an hour.

People here are nice. It is quite common to feel bad or low when something you are used to (even if it's negative) changes.

There has been many threads here from victims of abuse, both emotional and physical, feel low when it stops and they see the perpetrator getting help.

It doesn't make you a bad person for feeling like you do. And it doesn't make what happened right. Emotions are strange and hope it gets better

ChrissieH · 17-10-2019 4:39pm

Hi Abigail889,

I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciate your post, your honesty and your feelings and I really want to suggest to you to be very sympathetic to yourself: a really, really big change has happened; the way you worded it is that it's 'groundbreaking' and it followed a week of turmoil; I read your post, thinking in my own mind that you've really been through the wringer with all the different emotions and to be quite honest, I think I would nearly want to see you distancing yourself completely from everything that's going on with her for a while... of course you're drained and upset.
She behaved absolutely abhorrently for years and years, and of course you and the rest of your immediate family were the ones who suffered the most because of her behaviour, like all families of addicts. It's bloody hard!!
Whether consciously or not, a lot of your formative years were spent developing coping and defense mechanisms in response to HER behaviour, so in essence, her addiction has formed a lot of your character (just as much as everything else that influenced you would). You have built up layers of protection against her because she had the ability to absolutely ruin your day (your week, your years, your confidence ... any event you ever held.. the list is endless) and now all of a sudden, she's doing something about it... everything is potentially changing and it's leaving you ... where?
It's a very very tough situation and don't for one second think that you're obliged to be delighted, or even involved, because she's finally doing something about this.
Maybe I'm being harsh, but my honest opinion on this is that you're all adults, you're not obliged to be involved in her life at all now. It may be the case that your siblings and you are so used to having to worry about her that it's made you all very involved in her and each other's lives, but take a bit of time out now to really assess if that's what you want, or if you want to just take a break from it all.

I don't know what kind of treatment your mother is going to have, but if it's similar to the traditional 28-day programme that my ex went through, the family involvement in that programme is pretty high - you're expected to go in for a half-day a week to attend group therapy with them, and then visit on a Sunday. During the group therapy part, you'll be expected to tell your mother about the ways she hurt you when she was drinking - the idea being that she'll be sufficiently humbled to never want to drink again.

The best advice I can give you, as other posters have given you, is to go to therapy so that you can sort out your own feelings on this situation. I went to therapy for a long time and have studied it as well, and I really genuinely believe that a deep understanding of yourself is the key to happiness.
Once you truly know why you are the way you are, you really are free to just choose how you want to be in life. It's not about anyone else, it's just about you feeling content with who you are as a person, and about not reacting to other peoples' crap any more.

I wish you the very best with this situation.

tdf7187 · 17-10-2019 9:31pm

I suggest trying a few ALANON meetings. Many people find them very good.

valoren · 18-10-2019 10:37am

The residual anger is perfectly normal. Your post OP conveys the palpable anger of a good person who by misfortune had a mother who was too selfish to measure up. All I can say is that you mentioned her friends and family were unaware of the scale of her addiction then they must not be particularly close with your mother. If they were, then they'd have known. I would suggest focusing on not caring what such people think of you and your attitude towards your mother because you alluded to the idea that you have your own world and life to live. It's your prerogative to include or exclude anyone from your life.

If anyone has the temerity to suggest that you don't understand the addiction just tell them that not only do you understand it but you very much understand the long term impact and effects of it. I would also convey to them the message that the decades long chaotic and abusive nightmare you and your siblings endured was unnecessary, that you are forever thankful and genuinely appreciative to have had one loving and supportive parent and that you really hope she gets the help she has needed since you were children. If they are incapable of deducing that this has been ongoing for years and can’t appreciate the impact this had on you and your family then they are not worth expending energy in caring what they personally think about you.

banie01 · 18-10-2019 10:51am

The anger and the residual and simmering rage, disappointment, and other myriad of negative emotions you are being consumed by are all unfortunately part and parcel of being a child of an addict.

You are moving from being perceived as strong, independent and doing the right thing for you in your past actions.
To possibly being seen by some who don't know how bad it gets as a child of an addict, as selfish, unsupportive and possibly abandoning your mother when she "needed" you most.

Its Bollox of course, no matter how much one loves and supports an addict you cannot fix them.
They need to take action, and it cannot be imposed upon them.
That won't stop people making assumptions however.

The disease model of addiction gives an awful lot of leeway and tbh a get out of jail free card to people for quite often atrocious behaviour IMO. Its not a topic for discussion here however.

My advice would be to support your mother in her recovery, but place limits on that support that recognise your own mental health needs primacy.
Self care is vital and if you are struggling, you can't really be of help to anyone else.
Perhaps engage with one of the addiction support services?
Many offer family support services and they can be very helpful.

But, you have had a lifetime dealing with your Mother's alcoholism.
That she has finally come to terms with that, doesn't reset the clock on the time you and your family have already endured.
It may extend some goodwill on your part, but don't let it become a free pass for her to feel like she can start from day 0 again.
Forgiveness is important for recovery, but not forgetting!

Your family have hopefully seen the back of the hardest years and I wish your mother well in her recovery.
Mind yourself 1st however would be the sum total of my advice

nthclare · 18-10-2019 11:11am

Hopefully for your sake and her sake she won't get indoctrinated by the 12 Step cult and gets proper treatment.

The AA thing only has a 5% success rate and it enables the alcoholic or addicts to blame everything on the fact it was all down to drinking and being an alcoholic.

It's a program of contradictions and a lot of them have this mantra of putting their recovery and AA group first and rely on laypersons to be their confidants, ie sponsors.

Alcoholic : I had a row with my wife, I don't feel like I was wrong...

Sponsor: Did you drink ?

Alcoholic: No

Sponsor: As long as you didn't drink it'll be ok
See where you went wrong and apologize for your part of the story.

Alcoholic Goes back to his wife and says sorry, but never tries to fix the initial problems.

it's all sorry, I'm sorry on and on

Sorrys never good enough, it takes a lot of trust and respect to gain back trust and believe a person has changed.

Intensive psychotherapy and building confidence and social skills and responsibility is paramount for recovery.

AA is ok for sharing your experience strength and hope, but it's not the spiritual group it portrays itself as.

It's full of misfits, predators and Narcissist's who prey on vunrable people.

Hopefully your mum will recover and live a life of responsibility etc

I wish you well OP I really do.
Living under the shadow of alcoholism, and addiction ain't easy that's for sure.
It's insidious....

Hopefully your mum won't get sucked into AA and end up being a spiritual Narcissist's like a high percentage of them..

tdf7187 · 18-10-2019 4:57pm

nthclare wrote: »

Hopefully your mum won't get sucked into AA and end up being a spiritual Narcissist's like a high percentage of them..

Their solution to every problem is go to more meetings. The concept of a spiritual disease is highly dodgy. One bloke (my sponsor, briefly) would say there's nothing in the Big Book that prohibits taking anti-depressants (it didn't seem to occur to him that if there was indeed a stricture against anti-depressants in the Big Book then of course it should be ignored, because he was a truly indoctrinated cultist) then in the next breath would complain about older members on anti-depressants because they weren't doing the steps properly, he claimed! If you point out anything wrong you are told a bunch of mantras like "love and tolerance is the AA code!", "we are all sick people trying to get well!" Yes but some are sicker than others. Completely illogical and damaging bull****.

Paddy Cow · 19-10-2019 6:37pm

banie01 wrote: »

The disease model of addiction gives an awful lot of leeway and tbh a get out of jail free card to people for quite often atrocious behaviour IMO. Its not a topic for discussion here however.

I agree it's not a topic for discussion here but you have hit the nail on the head and it's very relevant to the op's situation. The op has grown up on the receiving end of her mothers abuse which was a direct result of her addiction and none of us here can fault the op for keeping her distance. We understand that she's not being selfish, it's simple self preservation on her part.

Other people though don't/won't see it that way. They've never experienced that side of op's mother and are in the initial stages of "you're so brave for admitting you've got an addiction, how can we help?". They expect op to be compassionate, empathic etc and it's completely unfair to the op. They are treating the mother like she has a disease and it can be overcome if everyone just loves and supports her enough.

They are the ones being selfish. They weren't even involved enough to realise how badly the mother treated her dying husband. They don't know the true extent of her abhorrent behaviour. It probably wouldn't help even if the op was to tell them. They didn't (or are pretending they didn't) know she had a problem for 30 years. Maybe they feel guilty and are over compensating now by trying to be super compassionate and they are using the op to try and alleviate that guilt.

Op your anger isn't misguided and is completely understandable. These are people who suddenly turn up after 30 years of abuse and are practically victimising your mother. You are 100% right. You, your father and your siblings were the victims. You don't owe these people or your mother anything. Even if your mother has an epiphany, acknowledges and apologises for everything she has put you through, you don't have to automatically forgive her. She abused her family for 30 years, it'll take more than an admission that she has an addiction to begin to repair all the damage she caused.

I know you've said that therapy isn't for you but maybe you could look into Al-Anon? I've heard great stories about them and they would be equipped to help you work through this upheaval. I wish you all the best and no matter what your extended family say, you are not selfish.

Peatys · 19-10-2019 6:43pm

Op, I would print out that post and have her read it out to your extended family.

Paddy Cow · 19-10-2019 7:47pm

Peatys wrote: »

Op, I would print out that post and have her read it out to your extended family.

I don't think it would be possible.

I have no interest in telling the world her crimes. She probably doesn’t even remember most of them herself. I confronted her on most of them when sober, and she denied them or failed to remember.

The op's mother isn't ready to face the true extent of the devastation her behaviour caused. She's still in denial.

Family and friends describe her as that poor thing, god love her and all she’s been through.. not one single person has asked how my siblings and I feel. Not one.

Rightly or wrongly everyone is still focused on the mother. They are in the initial stages of accepting that she is an alcoholic and wanting her to "get better". They are only considering her and if the op told them now the extent of her abuse, they wouldn't be able to process it.

I have a cousin who told me a few years ago his wife is an alcoholic. I am 20 years younger than my cousin and we lived in different counties so growing up I only saw his wife as a lovely adult. As I got older and moved to the same county I visited them more but I only saw her good (sober) side. Even when he told me about her bad side, I couldn't reconcile the two. I believed my cousin but hearing about something is completely different to experiencing it.

When sober, this person was someone who would do anything for anyone and I really respected her. The first time I saw her in the middle of a drinking binge I was shocked. It was like two different people. She was rude and inconsiderate and didn't give a fcuk about anything but getting her next drink. She was a secret drinker who would hide bottles of wine or vodka and "go to the toilet" so she could top up.

I, being new to the scene, was wondering if there was anything that could be done to help and questioned my cousin and asked him if she could get help (she'd been in rehab loads of times and often left) and asked was there any trigger (not really, herself and a few others got into the habit of drinking wine everyday. They out grew it but she developed addiction). This had gone on for 20 years and is still ongoing. It's got to the point where I don't like visiting their house because I don't know what state she will be in.

I'm not going to get into all the things she did to make me feel like that because this thread is about the op but I feel my experience is relevant because if you don't know how bad someone is on drink and you just hear about it, your instinct is to try and help them. If the op unloads all of her (perfectly acceptable) grievances, they won't be able to reconcile the two. Give it time though. The op's mother maybe loving the initial outpouring of love and support but unless she is 100% serious about her recovery, she will relapse and her extended family will she her for what she truly is at her worst. Only then will extended family begin to understand what the op and her siblings went through.

StinkyMunkey · 19-10-2019 8:15pm

Look after what's important to you in your life. Your partner and friends are the people who actual care for you with no conditions attached.

Move past the people or family who try judge you. You and your siblings are the true victims here not your so called mother. Addiction is not an excuse for you to traumatise your children, anyone who says otherwise has never been the victim of an "Addict".

At some stage your mother may approach you and seek forgiveness and acknowledge her misdeeds, if she doesn't then carry on with your life because she doesn't deserve a second thought if she doesn't acknowledge what she did to you and your siblings.

Good luck OP.

Paddy Cow · 19-10-2019 8:47pm

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

Look after what's important to you in your life. Your partner and friends are the people who actual care for you with no conditions attached.

Move past the people or family who try judge you. You and your siblings are the true victims here not your so called mother. Addiction is not an excuse for you to traumatise your children, anyone who says otherwise has never been the victim of an "Addict".

At some stage your mother may approach you and seek forgiveness and acknowledge her misdeeds, if she doesn't then carry on with your life because she doesn't deserve a second thought if she doesn't acknowledge what she did to you and your siblings.

Good luck OP.

Everything you said is true, especially the bit in bold.

Alcoholic mother - the aftermath

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