My mum is a hopeless druggie

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I can remember when I was 5 years old (1966!) my mum was abusing prescription medication. And she has been ever since.

Way back in 1983 she first went into a hospital for detox and rehab. Since then I have lost count of the times she has been in, gotten clean, and then within days started getting all drugged up again. And in the last few years she has added alcohol abuse to her routine. She washes down her many prescription medications with booze.

This has taken such a huge toll on her health that she is now close to house bound. She runs out of breath walking from her lounge chair to the kitchen. She has constant chronic pain in her back, hips, and knees. She has become obese and has diarrhea every single day of the year. In fact she now soils herself. And to cap it all off she has developed what appears to be dementia. She forgets having talked to me as recently as 30 minutes previously.

In the past I have noticed that all of these health issues vanish when she has been in hospital to detox. She looks 20 years younger, and I have my mum back. But as soon as she comes out and starts drugging and boozing again, they reappear.

I challenged her about this last Saturday and ended up in a huge argument with her. I told her if she doesn’t enter a proper long term rehab and take her health seriously I will move overseas. She is very clingy and doesn’t like me being away.

I told her that she has been become an object of pity and ridicule within the family and that every avoids her because she is always embarrassingly drunk. She hates me for telling her that. I am apparently a nasty little pig, a bully, and a coward.

Now I really do feel like getting away from here. I feel ashamed to admit that my mum disgusts me - not so much because she has an addiction but because she refuses to deal with it. It is depressing me.

I might go back to Korea for a while or maybe back to my native England. Anywhere but here.

2

Al-anon has a lot of good counsel to offer someone in your position.

Good luck. You are not alone. Many others have been in your situation and have come to terms with it, taking care of themselves and detaching with love from the alcoholic/addict.

3

Beat me to it!

Here’s the link specific to Australia:

http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/australia/information.html

Sydney
02 9570 3400
Al-Anon Family Groups
Suite 4, 2 Ormonde Pde, Hurstville, NSW, 2220

As Qadgop the Mercotan put it wisely, you are not alone.

4

Is it a terrible awful thing to say that at least she won’t remember fighting with you about it? Probably.

I am so sorry about your mom, and hope that you’ve learned over the years to take a lot better care of yourself than your mom does herself.

5

Perhaps that what she needs. If someone has no one to fall back on maybe that will be the catalyst for regular change.

You can’t allow others to dictate your happiness. And look at it this way. Suppose you die tomorrow, and it could happen, what would happen to your mum then?

I would go back home. Tell your mum in XXX amount of time, you’re leaving and then DO it

Good luck

6

Makes my friend who about five days after vowing to improve her lifestyle (she was really fucked up and almost catatonic and only went to the corner store to get chedder potato chips) relasped, look mild. You want to shake them.
You know I wonder if it’s true dementia or the effects of meds and alkyhol?

7

I don’t know if this helps, but my father was a hopeless alcoholic. He had quit and relapsed more times over the last 30 years than I can count.

As recently as a year ago, he was drinking himself to death, and my family were all sitting around just waiting for a phone call. By this point, we’d detached ourselves, and left him to his own devices (he was living on his own). Without the support network that he’d always had when he lived with my mother, he got himself into a really bad situation where he almost died. As a last resort, we stepped in and physically got him to hospital, but what he did with that was up to him. Again, we were done supporting him in his drinking.

A year later, he is clean, sober and a new man. He now lives 2 minutes from my mother and they have a better relationship than they have had in years. If you’d asked me 2 years ago if this was possible, I would have laughed at you. He still has physical problems associated with the drinking, but many of the issues he’d had whilst drinking have cleared up remarkably. It’s quite something.

What turned him around this time? Well, at a guess, I would say it was the comination of a serious medical wake up call, and realising that his family were finally done with dealing with him and his drinking.

I guess what I am trying to say is that however hopeless you feel your mother’s situation is, you just never know what is around the corner. What you should know, though, is that you have to take care of yourself in all of this. Only you can judge, but maybe leaving her is the only thing that will get through to her.

Don’t be ashamed about the contradictory feelings you have about your mother. I have the same feelings about my father, and have ever since I was old enough to form opinions about these things. The person your mother is when she is drinking and taking drugs is completely different to the one she is when she’s sober.

Look after yourself, and maybe you leaving will be the catalyst she needs. Good luck, you have all my sympathy.

8

Might be worth looking up Korsakoff’s - condition brought on by excessive alcohol consumption. There are treatments, no cure, but a diagnosis may help if that’s what it is.

I’ve seen an old man’s white beard return to brown after just five days detoxing so yeah, results are fast. But ultimately the damage is done - the liver, the digestive system, the brain. Don’t let the damage consume you, too. Get out.

9

“You cannot help someone, by doing for them, what they should or could, do for themselves.”

I know this sentence by heart because I had it taped to my computer screen for a couple of years. It’s easy to read and hard to internalize. That is the voice of bitter experience speaking.

Buy that plane ticket and get the hell out of Dodge. The parent/child relationship does not obligate you to stand by and watch. If you choose to do so, as you probably sense, you will be damaging yourself, today and forever.

Go. Go now. Don’t look back. Call from time to time, drop a postcard in the mail at birthdays and holidays and have a little compassion. Not for her, for yourself. You’ve given it your best shot, you’ve done all you can. Distance will help you become more circumspect, the water in your own pond will begin to calm. You’ll become healthier. And whatever the future may hold, (And let’s be honest, it could get uglier still!), you’ll be much better prepared to deal with it.

You have my sympathies and best wishes, never, ever forget - you’re not alone.

10

You have always been the parent in the relationship. She will never be there for you, ever. I am so very sorry for that.

The threat you made to leave the country,…unless you follow through on it, it is as empty as a bottle of beer.

The advice here is solid.

Remember, you are not alone.

11

May I just say - you aren’t a young kid, from what I can figure using my poor math skills. Your life is going by. You only have so many years ahead of you, and your mom has used up the years she had, badly. I would say you have every right to leave her to her own devices and try to find some happiness in your own life. Whether you can do this without the misery of guilt eating you up, or whether you can cut the cord, I don’t know. (I remember a call some poor guy made on the radio years ago, to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who was exactly in your position. It was an extremely sad sad conversation between them, but she basically told him to give it up, after years and years, and let his mom take responsibility for her own life, to sink or swim. She too said to keep in touch - call once a month, bring her a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter if she was hungry, find her a cheaper apartment if she couldn’t pay her rent.) Good luck, Imasquare, addictions are horrible things no matter what age or relationship.

12

Thanks for the advice and support everyone. I really appreciate it.

I will withdraw from this situation as much as I can. Luckily I don’t actually live in the same house as my mother - that would be totally intolerable.

I may well go overseas for a while, but even if I don’t I plan to be less involved in her drug and drinking BS.

13

I’m sorry to hear this. I’ve got many family issues as well, and had to eventually write off my younger brother. I’m sure it’s harder with a mother.

14

What were the rehabs she went to? Were they the short term kind or the long term ones?
Maybe she may need long term rehab. Excercise in futility prolly right? Too bad there’s not sober living arrangements for senoirs. Before cutting ties I would make sure that she has some help. Heck, maybe it might even be time for a nursing home.

15

Yes, short term rehab in the past.

I haven’t actually cut ties with her, but she has with me. She won’t talk to me anymore - claims I have broken her. :rolleyes:

16

You’ve almost got it. You MUST withdraw from this situation completely. You are not helping her. And you cannot be “less involved in her drug and drinking BS.” You must be completely removed from her. She is not separate from the “drug and drinking BS” - it is what she is and it will be until she herself removes it from her life. You cannot do this for her.

Good. Leave it there. She’ll contact you when she needs something from you. Then **you **cut ties with her. Right now, she’s still calling the shots and you’re doing what you’re told. You cannot change her; you can only change how you react to her. Like others have said, much more eloquently than I can, get out. Save yourself. Stop enabling her behavior. And the hardest one of all: tell her “no.”

Good luck.

17

Oh yeah, that’s what I guessed. Short term rehab seems to be just good for a drying out spell.
The reason why I suggested maybe looking into some sort of nurse or caretaker or some other sort of " drop in and see that everything’s OK" arrangement is that it might help you totally cut ties with her. You wouldn’t have that niggling in your mind " Oh I just left her with no help" (which would then draw you back to her) Just an idea. But then you do seem to really want to cut ties for her for good. (and I do know what it’s like to deal with that kind of addict. Even if they’re dry/sober they’re still messed up. My friend was so emotionally needy HAD to have someone over 24/7, but then didn’t want to do anything except sit on her bed)