[af1996]

My mum is a heavy alcoholic and always has been as long as I can remember.

She is currently on a litre of vodka and two bottles of wine daily and that’s just the standard. She can binge on top of that regularly with a lot more spirits.

For the past year she has got progressive worse in health and is so bad today I am scared for her life and if I should seek emergency services.

She does not eat a thing and has lost all muscle and fat on her legs so she cannot hold her own weight. She has lost control of her bladder and bowels and is vomiting daily, non stop, and when she isn’t she is drinking as much as she can before it starts again. Fainting all of the time shakes and agraphobic with so much medication for mental health on top! I know she will never go to the doctors or tell me how bad she is feeling and I am really needing some advice on how to help her to get the help she needs. Thank you

[bt1978]

Hey bud.

Well done on posting.

Alcohilism, like addiction is a terrible thing – I don’t need to rattle on about it as you are seeing where it leads in full force right now.

It reads to me like your mum needs urgent help. This needs to be professional help too – it can actually be lethal for a chronic alcoholic to suddenly stop drinking, I say this not to scare you but purely for education.

This is a complicated situation as I can see you mention other issues with mental health and medication, in my humble experience those areas are usually linked with the drinking, but best to speculate later and look at right now.

The first thing is to have her reach out to her GP, if she won’t, you may well have to and you will have to be honest about what’s going on and the severity.

Someone to is that far advanced in alcoholism will need a supervised detox. Acrophobia is an awful condition and likely affecting her reaching out for help.

If she is receptive to any of this, and can get medical help, there is a ton of support she can get into – happy to share this with you but thought I’d focus on here and now as it sounds serious

Start with a GP asap.

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