Tonight I'm going to my first Al-Anon meeting.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I had hoped that this day wouldn’t come, but here it is.

I’m 35 years old. I have two kids. A wife I adore. A job, such as it is. A card-carrying, certified adult: father, husband, college instructor. And yet I feel like my life is crumbling, a black sheet slowly being pulled over my eyes. I don’t know what else to do. What does one do? Give up? Soldier on? Such a choice. Emotion says one thing, rationality says another.

My mother has been an addict my whole life. First by finding comfort in booze and then, when the social stigma of being drunk became too much to bear, she quit—and promptly switched to pills. Her addiction grew to the point where she was hospitalized for overdoses. Plural. I don’t know how many times she went in as I only found out about these incidents long after the fact.

When the pill addiction came to a head she finally gave in and started drinking again. When, I don’t know. How long, I don’t know. She made several stupid decisions while drunk and, thankfully, managed not to hurt anyone. Inpatient rehab failed, outpatient rehab failed, AA failed. She says she knows she has a problem and wants treatment but refuses to take simple (to me, but I’m not an addict so what do I know) steps toward sobriety: removing herself from situations where people are drinking or cutting enablers out of her life.

My father, an alcoholic long in recovery, can’t stand this behavior and wants to leave. He’s miserable and, when he gets angry as he has been most waking hours of late, he gets loud and obnoxious. This helps not at all, and their 40-year marriage is, unless my mom makes drastic changes very soon, effectively over.

My kids see this—or did before my wife and I made the decision to limit their contact with her to “supervised only.” Jesus God… what a terribly difficult thing to do. Cutting two children off from their own grandmother, a woman they’ve known their entire life and, before all this, saw routinely? Luckily they understand, or at least say they do. They saw her bruises from when she injured herself during a binge, heard her detailed descriptions of what stupid things she did while drinking. But they don’t know she’s still doing it. And as God as my witness I don’t know if I should tell them. But I suppose I will have to as Thanksgiving dinner will not happen this year. I’m not putting them in that situation.

So. Tonight I’m going to an al-anon meeting. I don’t know how to handle this, how to communicate with my family what I’m feeling, how to talk to my kids about something that, until a few weeks ago, they had no idea existed. Most importantly, I need to figure how to prepare myself for what may very possibly be the inevitable: my mom will, absent of help, allow this to kill her. It will kill her marriage, her relationship with her children and her grandchildren and then, when there is nothing else left for it to take, it will kill her.

I have no idea what to expect. I know I can’t change her behavior, fix my parent’s likely dead marriage, or convince her to stop seeing her “friends” who supply her with pills and, for all I know, drink. But maybe I can learn to, somehow, accept it and move on with my life.

What a fucking choice.

Thanks for reading this far. I just needed to rant for a bit.

2

I’m sorry to hear you’ve been going through all of this and I hope you find some support at the meeting tonight. I think you are courageous and I admire you for taking positive steps.

3

Welcome. I’ve been active in Al-Anon for five and a half years and it’s been a lifesaver.

Please feel free to PM if/when you need to talk. My alcoholic loved one is coming up on six years’ sober, and I remember exactly how it was. I’m willing to listen.

4

I went to alanon three times a week for a while when I was dating an alcoholic. I was afraid to go at first because I was afraid I’d hear my future–stories of gloom and doom and lives ruined. It wasn’t like that AT ALL. The people there talked about their personal journeys, and rarely mentioned the alcoholic in their family.

Don’t feel like you have to say anything. There is NO pressure to talk or tell your story or anything. They may go around the room and you just say your name, but that’s it. I went for many months and never said a word in a meeting. But I got something out of every meeting. No kidding.

Depending on how big a city you live in, there might be lots of alanon meetings all over the place. Sometimes you click with a meeting right away, and sometimes you have to shop around.

The one thing I remember about being in the room was the palpable sensation of being buoyed up on an ocean of love. Pure unconditional love and acceptance from these total strangers who didn’t know anything about my or my story.

Best of luck.

A message board you might find helpful is
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/friends-family-alcoholics/

5

I hope you find what you need.

6

I went, but there was no meeting. I don’t know if the website is outdated or what, but there was no meeting. The church where it was supposed to be held at was locked and dark. So I came home. I didn’t want to; I went because I felt (still do) that I was at the end of my rope and that somehow I may not be able to cope with whatever will coming down the pike in the next couple of weeks by myself. Maybe it’s just gotten to be too much to bear.

When I got home I called my parents and spoke with them separately. Dad was barely talking and mom was sulking. They had clearly had a fight. Another one. Mom says she’s going to try inpatient rehab again.

We’ll see.

7

I am so glad you are reaching out for help, Lancia. I’m an adult child of an alcoholic (who is turning in to a pill addict) and the pain and frustration never goes away, it just changes as your life changes.

Seeing all the missed opportunities between grandkids and grandparents is crushing. It’s often times worse than your own bad memories from when you were a kid.

I pray that you are able to find some paths to your own peace.

ETA: Ack…ninja’d by your cancelled meeting. Well, I still hope you continue to look for that meeting and get to it. It is important.

8

Back in the day, people used 800 numbers, and Al-Anon’s is 1-888-425-2666.

OK, an 888 number. Same thing - it’s free to call.

http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/find-a-meeting

Turns out they also have online meetings.

9

Do check out that board that I gave you the link to. Someone’s always there.

I feel for you.

10

Keep looking until you connect via one of these resources. You cannot control what happens with your mother. You can only control yourself. It sounds like you are taking the right and necessary steps. Best wishes to yourself and your family during this difficult time.

11

Hang tough.

Hunt a meeting or three down.

Call AA and ask as many have SO’s in the Al Anon groups. You can do it, so just do it.

And hang tough.

12

It’s Thanksgiving week and a lot of meetings are cancelled this week. You might call the local AA number; they usually have a list of Al-Anon people who are willing to accept phone calls and who can point you to a group that is meeting since the World Service Office meeting locator service generally doesn’t know which groups are or are not meeting in any given week but a local volunteer would. The local AA groups may also have something planned for Thanksgiving; Al-Anon members are usually welcome to attend and you might meet someone to talk to.

I’m also going to echo Sunny. You didn’t cause your mother’s problem, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it. All you can do is seek out help for yourself, which you are doing, and let your parents sort things out for themselves. It sucks, but there it is.

13

Don’t give up, you are making a wise choice.

14

You are doing what you need to do to protect your family and find sanity. I applaud you. I know this isn’t easy.

15

Thanks very much for this. I’ll check it out this evening when I have some free time.

You know, it’s weird… growing up she was “normal,” or as normal as could be expected. She was never publicly drunk or had to miss work, and quit drinking when her friends and family started avoiding her. She has some medical issues that necessitate the legitimate use of pain meds which complicates the matter exponentially: she can take pills and be fine, but there is a line that she crosses and becomes sick. Her increased trips over that line is what caused this to become more of a problem over this past summer. To be sure, she’s always been an addict and did indeed substitute pills for booze for many years, but it she was much more functional when I was growing up.

The pain, the frustration, the anger (on my part) are all recent developments. I think that’s why I feel I need these meetings. For whatever reason this is something I’ve never had to deal with before. Having my children inadvertently thrown into the mix I’m sure is a big part of this as well.

Thank you for reminding me of this. Objectively I know this, but that helps little when I hear stories of her drinking or going over to her friends house where she will stock up on pills. Being reminded that I have no control over her behavior is something I need.

Thank you all for your kind words. I mostly lurk on here, and only seem to post when I want to share big, life-changing events (rants, much like this one) or dumb mundane questions.

I emailed the folks at al-anon and am awaiting a reply. Hopefully they’ll be able to provide me with some contact numbers and an updated list of meeting times / places. I’ll also try the number nearwildheaven gave.

16

Maybe your children aren’t the only ones who should have their contact with your mom limited, Lancia. It sounds like communicating with her isn’t good for you. The very best of luck to you. Hugs.

17

I had a similar experience, but very shorthand compared to the OP.

A guy in my neighborhood named PK called me last month and said he needed a place to stay for a couple of days. He’s a contractor who fixed my carport when it fell apart and fixed the plumbing problems I had in my crawl space. So, I said sure.

PK is kind of the left wing version of Ted Nugent. Type A personality, dreadlocked hippie, very much into environmentalism, refers to friends as his “tribe,” the type who can start a party just by being there. Idolizes the Grateful Dead. He’s also been busted for growing and distributing marijuana and owes the Federal Government $150K. Currently on probation. No longer smokes pot, but drinks constantly, snorts coke, and overmedicates himself on tranquilizers. Not a violent person, but has no control valve. His wife had already kicked him out, and so did some farmer friends of his out in the country. He had been in rehab multiple times. Still, I said sure.

A couple of nights stretched to a month.

I don’t drink much nowadays because of type 2 diabetes, and he wouldn’t smoke my weed, so I figured a few extra weeks wouldn’t hurt. He was talking about building a net-zero energy home to live in. He said he had a contractor’s gig lined up where he could live in the houses he was renovating for a few months. Said he was going to AA meetings and proudly displayed his chips.

After a few days, he got to where he was slurring his words and talking loudly. I asked him if he was drunk, because he sure acted like it. He said no, he was taking pills. Turns out he was taking about 5 times what his doctor prescribed. He had a cold at one point. I said I had some Percocet left over from kidney stone surgery if he wanted some. He consumed the whole bottle. He talked about all the cool people he was making friends with in the AA meetings. Turns out he was bonding with runners. He had already lost one runner friend to a heroin/fentanyl overdose, and here he was lining up replacements.

The final straw came when his soon-to-be ex-wife contacted me and told me a client who returned after a week to the house PK was supposed to be renovating found the place all torn apart. No renovating work had been done. PK and his runner friends had been partying there. PK had come to my place that day, stayed a few minutes, left, and then drove his truck straight into a light pole. We didn’t know. I had only heard about the client incident. I went into PK’s room, gathered all his shit and put it outside. I also saw that he had bled all over the bed, like a hog was slaughtered there. I managed to wash most of the blood out.

I eventually heard PK was in the hospital and his truck was totaled. So, instead of leaving his shit outside, I put it in my backyard shed, along with all the tools and saws and electrical supplies he left out in the open. I figured he needed to salvage enough to renew his occupation if it ever came to that.

A few days ago, he came to my place and told me he was checking into long-term rehab this time. I said I didn’t mind keeping his stuff, but he can’t stay here anymore. I said “I guess you’re used to this by now.” He understood, got some of his clothes packed into a duffle bag, and called a cab to the halfway house. He no longer had his truck, and wouldn’t have been able to drive it anyway because his license got pulled. When I told his wife about it, she said “Now you know what the last ten years were like for me.”

I love the guy, but I can’t trust him. I genuinely hope he sticks to his rehab, but I don’t have much faith that will happen.

18

Thanks-giving dinner can still happen, though… You and your wife will just have to be the ones to host it. Nothing like starting your own traditions. Don’t want to cook? Order out. You can also reach out to any kiddie-friendly friends/co-workers/etc who have no other plans, and make it a Friendsgiving.

((Lancia)) Families are hard.

19

After 3 decades of drinking way too much and way too often, my mom’s body shut down and she called for an ambulance to pick her up from her home. She lived alone, although she had a shitload of schnauzers.

That was in August and she was initially told she had 2 days to live. She’d been on some sort of medication for her liver for awhile and had been told to abstain repeatedly. She was a teacher and had 3 months off for the summer, every year. Time to drink, camp, fish and post on Facebook.

I live 900 miles away and went to see her in late August, knowing full well that I wouldn’t see her again beyond that final visit. I spent 7 hours with her, told her I loved her and then made my exit from the depressing extended care facility she was staying at.

When I got back to my hotel I drank screwdrivers until the sun came up. I visited the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and then headed back to Minnesota the day after. I could have seen her one more time but I didn’t.

My mom died October 14th at the age of 55. I went to her memorial service and cried, spoke what I could muster. I never went to Al-Anon and neither did my 4 siblings. I feel guilty about what I could have done, even if that is nothing.

I guess my point is try. And then try again. If she won’t help herself then there is nothing else you can do.

Happy Thanksgiving.

20

Consider one on one therapy as well. Al-anon can be great, but its an hour meeting in a non-judgmental group. A therapist may be able to provide better tools.