[new-beginnings]

So here’s my story…

I first remember my mum starting to change at around age 12. It was a gradual thing. Mood swings, violent tempers, smashing up things, sleeping all day, calling me every name under the sun and occasionally hitting me. Then as time went on I started noticing hidden empty bottles of vodka in the bread bin etc. This went on for many years, when I was around age 17 she got rushed to hospital because her body was shutting down, she would cough up blood, she had severe jaundice because her organs were failing. She nearly died basically. It’s something I still remember vividly.

Fast forward to today and she’s had many ups and downs – relapses as well as brief sober periods. But now, even with suffering from chronic pain, she had seemed to have found a new lease of life. She is an active member of her church community, she is about to start volunteering, she is managing to get out and about more, always meeting new people.

So for a good two years she was in a good place…

Until this week where my sister had informed me (yet again) that she was unconscious at home after downing a bottle of wine alongside strong pain killers. She cracked her head on the floor and was in a bad way. My sister called for an ambulance and she’s now recovering in hospital.

This has happened many times, sporadically.

I managed to speak to my mum on the phone tonight. We had a real heart to heart, probably the first time we’ve ever done that. I told her some home truths about what she’s doing to all of us and that we’re always here to support her no matter what. I got her version of events, what triggered her and what’s been going on for her recently.

It’s just killing me inside because she has tried every form of help out here. Counselling, anti-depressants, alcohol support groups etc. Nothing seems to stick. It just hurts me to know that I can’t be by her side every time she had a trigger moment, which for her, can be brought in from anxiety/depression.

I know I’m doing as much as I can, in the sense of always being at the other end of the phone and checking in on her. But it doesn’t stop the hurt of wanting to help her… But not knowing how. ????

[hox]

I don’t think we can help until they want it. We can be at the end of the phone and try to be supportive, its all we can do.

I have spoken to my sister this morning on the phone.

She is now three weeks without a drink, going from eighteen cans a day plus cups of whisky. I cannot remember a time that she’s not been on the drink.

She never seems to get a hangover so thinks she isn’t an alcoholic as her husband calls her. But she definitely has a drink problem, she was violent and spiteful the majority of the time. She went to the doctors and told him that she had a problem, he prescribed anti depressants which obviously didn’t work washed down with a can of beer. She also went to a councillor that said she hadn’t got a problem. So no help was provided even though it was asked for repeatedly.

The thing thats helping now is realising that she will lose her loving husband and son, which she does not want to happen. They had a heart to heart and he told her that arguing and falling out with family and friends could not continue. My other sister and myself had refused to talk to her for months. We cannot help.

We talked about the cause of her drinking she says there is no reason for it. We have come to the conclusion that it is a habit. She now doesn’t go shopping on her own so she can be persuaded not to buy drink. If she wants a drink her husband is there to persuade her not to and it is working. She wants it to work and has accepted the help. She feels much better without the drink now and she didn’t turn anything I said into an argument.

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