[ktesw]

Hi everyone, I’m just learning about asking for help and wondering if you can guide me. Also think I just need validation on my feelings.

Dad’s an alcoholic, I’m 36 and he has been all my life but I never knew it growing up. Parents split when I was in late teens due to drink and his physical aggression. For the past 4/5 years he has been getting worse. He lost his last job a few years ago due to drink. Many hospital visits, he drinks, panics, and calls for an ambulance. Once he even was resuscitated. I’ve been to his flat a couple of times in the last 18 months while he has been in hospital to clean the messes up, but it happened again a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the local rehab team saying they were concerned as he wasn’t answering his phone, police went over and he went back in to hospital. I went again to tidy and it was too much. One of my brothers had been in the day before and found tin foil. He warned me dad is now using meth and heroin. I just left. He had sold all his furniture except for a single bed and a broken chair. The weekend just gone he was moved to a halfway house as his landlord evicted him after the last binge. He would have been evicted sooner except lockdown happened. Police have been involved, community rehabilitation centres and his doctors call me when they are concerned as I’m the emergency contact even though I haven’t had much in the way of contact with him over the past 2 years besides him calling/texting incoherently. I don’t answer any more. My brothers and I have had enough. We have tried to help in every possible way you can imagine.

Is it ok to be done? This time round I genuinely thought the phone call would be to say he has gone. I spoke to him on the phone briefly when he was in hospital, I was talking to the ward nurse and she asked if I wanted to speak to him and I felt I could not say no, and it made me feel so sorry for him and I kept thinking this is my dad I can’t leave him be. But every time I hear from him it pushes me back and makes me feel low and I then want a drink. Maybe it’s a genetic thing? Can that happen?

I’ve spoken to my mum but she is very quick to turn it around on how she is feeling. Is this because she knew him as always being alcohol dependent? Our relationship is strained and she still treats me as a child who doesn’t know what to do even though I am 36 with 3 beautiful children.

I guess I’m just looking blindly for answers and for something to make sense. Any answers appreciated. Thank you x

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