[juniper]

Hia. First time poster here. My mother is an alcoholic. I suspect she also has an undiagnosed mental health condition. She is extremely manipulative and controlling. She had an unhappy childhood and my grandmother has also had periods of mental instabilitiy throughout her life. My grandmother is now in her 90s, still lives alone and my mother takes her shopping to the supermarket and then round to visit a friend once a week. My mother is convinced that my gran has early onset dementia, which is absolutely not true. I’m horrified that she has arranged to have power of attorney over my grandmother and now has control over her finances etc. She has also bern convinced that my sister is bipolar and that I am autistic over the last few years which is not true either.

There have been various points over the last 20 years that I have argued with my mother about her drinking. As a teenager I would beg her to stop. There have been periods where we didn’t speak for months at a time. I have found her to be particularly neurotic and difficult to deal with over the past 6 months. My husband and I stayed there over Christmas and I found it particularly traumatic, as it brought back feeling I had of my childhood and how trapped I felt growing up in that house.

Since Christmas I had only spoken to her about 3 times until this week. I had bought her tickets to a concert on Valentine’s day and she was behaving extremely neurotically. She was late, and of course drunk, but she was giggling all the time and poking me in the side constantly. She talked the whole way through the concert, and I found it very stressful. I decided that I needed to continue to keep my distance for a while, although in hindsight I should have been more concerned that her behavioir was stranger than normal.

My dad mentioned to me at the concert that he’s having a hard time getting my mum up in the mornings and that she had hardly cooked for 3 weeks. My mum is usually an early bird and so I thought he just meant she was sleeping in till 10/11 instead of 6am. We were interrupted and couldn’t discuss anymore.

Then this week my sister called to say she had gone over because my dad was at his wit’s end. My mum’s refusing to get dressed or get out of bed. She only gets up in the evening to sometimes eat and to drink. My mother has hyperthyroidism, diabetes and high blood pressure, and my dad said that she hadn’t been taking her medication regularly. They searched her bedroom and there were at least 3 month’s worth of prescriptions hidden in drawers. They also found that she’d been prescribed anti-depressants in August but hadn’t ever taken any of them. They took her to the doctors and he’s transferred responsability for my mother’s medication to my dad. He now administers it and has to watch her take it all. The doctor told her it’s time to completely stop drinking or she’ll be dead within a year. I wasn’t aware but there was an incident on 21 January where she went to A&E with a massive headache and her blood pressure was through the roof and that’s when the behavioural changes happened. Dr thinks in hindsight that she probably had a small stroke. He also thinks she’s suffering from alcohol induced psychosis. She is waiting for a brain scan and has an appointment with the drug and alcohol service in 10 days.

She is making plans with people and not showing up. People are coming to the house and she’s had them wait downstairs for over an hour till they give up and go home. She has missed appointments. She can’t tell you why she won’t get out of bed. She is either unemotional or giggles when you ask her why she stopped taking her medication. She’s peed herself in bed a few times and won’t get up to clean it. I was there for 4 hours yesterday and she wouldn’t get up to see me. She was awake in bed with no book, phone, computer or TV, just staring at a wall. Her eyes are glazed over when you talk to her. She tells me that the doctor agrees with her that caring for my gran all by herself is too much for one person to do. She isn’t a carer for my nan at all, my nan gets up and washed and fed and has all her faculties about her still. My mum sees her one afternoon a week. And my sister confirmed the doctor didn’t say anything of the sort.

She will talk away normally if the conversation isn’t about a difficult topic for her, and she phones her friends and tells them that she’s not feeling right and doesn’t know why she can’t get up. My sister and I have worked out a rota for visiting my nan and my parents so that my dad can get out for a walk a couple of times a week. He’s reluctant to leave her alone in the house as she burned a pan of gravy recently by turning the heat up instead of off. I suppose I’m worried that she won’t improve from this state and feel guilty that I had pulled away when I should have been paying more attention.

[eleighmitch]

Im sorry you have to deal with that. Sometimes no matter how hard we try nothing works. We have our own lives to worry about because if we don’t our own time runs out and then we get lost too. Be kind and understanding to yourself and to her as well. That’s all we really can do.

[klb93]

Hello! I’m in a very similar situation as you with my Mum. I have distanced myself because she will still find a way to drink if someone is living with her or not. I think it’s important to think of yourself because your Mum makes a sober decision to drink when she could think of you and your family.

My mum is currently in hospital after I called 999 as she told me she was going to kill herself. Since speaking to her over the phone she has no remorse or idea what she has said to me which makes me so mad!

Just be there for her when you need her and take care of your Dad.

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