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[Ghills]

If she's willing, could she work with someone to set up a schedule?  Could she talk it over with a therapist and then the therapist's office assistant or whatever calls her and reminds her? Can she use a smartphone calendar?  Is there any local group (church, social, whatever) who would be willing to ask members to make friends and help your mom manage so she's seeing people besides you and isn't dependent on her kids?

[nenjin]

More or less yes to most of those things. The issue isn't really availability or ideas or any of that. It's her. She's gotta want to keep a schedule.

She's got several weeks of group and therapy to get through first though, so we'll see where she is after that.

[martinuzz]

Just posting to say respect. You're handling this as well as humanly possible.
Pat yourself on the back.

[nenjin]

Did family counseling yesterday. 8 hours of instruction and education about alcoholism in a room with 4 other families.

And then they brought in all our loved ones and we talked directly to them as a group about our feelings and how their drinking had effected us.

That was.....tough. For me and everyone else in the room.

Then I had some heated but good conversations with my aunt afterward. My brother worked a full day Monday, drove out that night, got up to do 8 hours of family counseling on Tuesday, then drove right back home the same night.

Meanwhile I've been sleeping an average of 6 hours a night due to her both her goddamn cats being medical trainwrecks. I've been to the vet 4 times in the last week, and she's dropped about $2,000 on having teeth pulled, antibiotics, pain killers, blood pressure meds.......fuck, at least they're not pissing in the kitchen on a daily basis.

When this is "over" I'm seriously going to sleep for a week. We're all pretty much wrecked by a combination of travel, early mornings, late night and stress.

Mom is.....I dunno, hard to say. Lots of tears, lots of "yes I understand", lots of talking about what they've taught her. I can't shake the fear when she's out and has to manage her own time and behaviors though. I guess time is really the only salve for that.

[BluarianKnight]

You've handled this much better then anyone else could have.
Posting to support/show respect.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There's just no way to know. Only a very naive person would actually trust someone who claims to be trying to change, even on the off-chance it's true. The only way is just to see what happens and react in a way you can live with.

[nenjin]

Brought mom home on Monday. She spent maybe 2 hours at home before leaving for an AA meeting, then coming home, hanging out for 30 minute or so, then showering and going to bed.

Tuesday she had no group and I spent some time shopping after work. Bought her dinner, hung out and talked for like an hour and a half about her day and this and that, then she went to go to bed. Things seemed alright.

But when I looked around that's when I noticed her favorite glass, sitting in her favorite spot, with her favorite poison in it. I sipped it just to be sure and yep, vodka.

I confronted her. She said she was "doing an experiment to see how alcohol made her feel now." I told her to surrender the bottle to me, which was a 750ml without about 1/4 to 1/3rd of it already missing, that'd she'd hid somewhere in the house.

I was so angry and disappointed I couldn't talk to her. I called her sister and her sister talked to her for a good hour or so.

I......don't really know at this point. This is exactly what I was afraid of. As soon as she re-entered her own environment she went right back to her old ways, complete with excuses and rationalizations to back them up. I basically could only say "It's your life mom. You have the power to salvage it or destroy it" to her.

She still doesn't believe she's an addict. She still believes she can have control over alcohol. All the rehab center time and positive reinforcement and encouraging things she'd said and done.....now feels like she was just playing ball so she could get through it. She may even honestly believe all the stuff she said. But for me, right now, talk is cheap. Action is what says the truth, and the truth is she's already headed back to where she was before.

I'm back at my own home now. My first instinct was to continue to stay at her house with her but the family members I talked to all encouraged me to just go home and try to relax. After initial resistance I decided that were right. Neither her nor I would get much out of it.

I expected a relapse as a matter of course. Something like 90% of alcoholics relapse within the first 4 years. She wasn't hammered but she was tipsy. She was drinking coffee at 8pm and had been crying when I came home. My instincts told me something was wrong but I figured with all the shit that was going on, some unusual behaviors shouldn't surprise. But then I found the alcohol and it all made sense. Like Agent Couillon in The Usual Suspects, I had a Kaiser Soze moment.

What really makes me angry and disappointed isn't that she relapsed. It's the lying and the deception. If she'd been forthright with me and just told me she'd had a drink I would have been a hell of a lot more supportive. But the sneaking around, the lies and self-deceptions she's telling me and herself, tells me she is at risk for a complete and total relapse. The lack of honesty tells me she hasn't fully accepted her problem, and the "experiment" bit tells me she once again thinks she knows best.

I'm becoming convinced my mom didn't just hit a rough patch due to depression and her manageable drinking escalated. I'm starting to think she may in fact be a hardcore addict that is unable to stop drinking. She's having anxiety and panic attacks driving around town, getting lost due to very simple road construction and being unable to successfully locate a place she's been at for a month, going the complete opposite direction of where she meant to go even though she swears she turned the right way.....

I feel like everything we've been through, all the house work, the lost time, the bearing of our souls, all of it was for naught. I know that's not true, that 1 month of rehab doesn't begin to address years of problem drinking. But it's hard not to be discouraged. I hoped for a little time at least before I had to face up to this and that's also what rankles/is worrying. It only took her two days, and it's likely she was just too busy to try this a day earlier.

I think I need to go Alanon at this point. I don't really know how to react to any of this anymore. It was easy when she was in managed care because at the end of the day you knew someone was watching over her. Now? Now she could be a month away from falling apart again. Sometimes it seems like the advice family members of alcoholics ultimately get is "you can't do anything other than watch it happen until they're almost dead." I see the truth of this but it doesn't make it any easier to accept.

She has another two weeks "intensive outpatient" treatment, which is 5 hours in the morning at the treatment center. I called her counselor and told her what happened because, frankly, I'm not sure my mom would have told her. I want to believe that she really was just experimenting, that she is just exploring her boundaries now. But years of her behavior has made it difficult to nigh impossible for me to accept that. She's just spent too many years lying to herself for me to take anything she says or does seriously.

[TheBiggerFish]

AA isn't right when they say that going completely stone-cold sober is the only way.

I don't think that justifies this, but remember that.

[nenjin]

AA isn't right when they say that going completely stone-cold sober is the only way.

I don't think that justifies this, but remember that.

For some addicts it is. For hard drinking addicts that have destroyed their livers, it is. For people that cannot function or give a shit about their life when they're drunk, it is. For people that drink long enough they become physically dependent and feel like shit and still can't stop drinking, it is. And she is all those things.

I'd like nothing more than for her to be able to enjoy a drink like the average person. But she's demonstrated she can't manage that.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Not that I wish to give apologetics for addiction, but there's been a good deal of investigation that's suggested AA's method isn't workable for a lot of people. They're quite literally religiously dedicated to the twelve-step, but if it's not a hit it tends to be a miss.

I know it seems insane to say a person can go from a lifetime of addiction to moderation, but the whole mental conception of an addictive substance is different when in and out of addiction. More importantly, moderation programs have had success with people who cycled between abstinence and abuse for years under AA rules.

Though, if we're considering all possible solutions, there is all that research saying LSD can outright cure alcoholism....

Anyway, just take this as a preemptive warning that AA are where they are more because of entrenchment than proven effectiveness, and you might want to keep options open.

[nenjin]

Another day, another relapse.

Again, she lied to my face despite her swaying there on the step and her mostly empty drink in my hand. Called her counselor and told her what I'd seen, called her sister, called my brother, yadda yadda yadda.

Does this shit ever get easier? I suppose not.

I think it's time I go to Alanon. I simply don't know emotionally how to process her repeated relapses, lying and backsliding short of tuning it out and not thinking about it. And since she's my mother and I give a shit, that's nigh impossible to do. Christ if she could at least tell the truth, or even try to call her sponsor, I'd have some hope to cling to. She can't even do that though.

[Infinityforce]

Tell her how much it hurts. Maybe you can reach her somehow.
She doesn't appreciate the value of truth, but you seem to. Use honesty and let her know what you feel about all this shit. Don't just complain at her, tell her what you want and expect. ex.

"Mom, this shit is too much and I can't put up with it.
I just want you to drink less and spend more time being healthy.
I'm willing to do whatever it takes, but I can't put up with your bullshit lying.
You can act however you want, but I KNOW when you're lying and it's not big and it's not clever AND I just want you to be honest with me and let me know what's making this happen so we can put an end to it and live peacefully.
I can handle it, I can take it, I'm a big boy GROWN-ASS MAN and we can deal with our problems, somehow, if we just work together.
Just tell me, and we'll work it out together. How can I abandon you? Don't make this so hard on me.
There's no need to drink yourself to death. I love you and will support you no matter what.
You will ALWAYS be my mother, no matter come what may"

Sorry if I misread it, or impinging you somehow

edit

"We don't have to get counsellors involved, but I am really fucking worried and it kills me.
Show me an ounce of restraint, don't lie or chat shit to my face and we can do without all this drama.
Your family loves you and wants to see your recover from whatever it is that makes you do this.
You don't have to keep doing this. We can cook and eat together.
We can do anything together, but we need to start by getting the right kind of stuff in you. Hot food is good for your body. Drink makes your body weak."
etc.

[martinuzz]

Have you tried literally slapping her in the face? I don't mean hard, but like a wake-up scare slap, the way you would slap someone who passed out back into consciousness? If you've never done that before in your life, it might shock her into realizing she's being stupid.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Don't do this. ^ That is the single worst idea ever advocated on Life Advice.

[martinuzz]

Why? I even know a doctor or two who recommend that in situations like this. It's not like I'm saying 'go beat the hell out of her' or something like that. Just a gentle slap.