My mother is 84, widowed, doesn’t drive, and is extremely lonely. She is an alcoholic who drinks around a 12 pack of beer a day. She has had numerous terrible falls, health scares etc. due to drinking, swears it off for about a month then starts back up. I clean up the mess. Blood all over the carpet, picks her up and drags her to bed when she falls drunk etc. She is in EXTREME DENIAL. Says drinking is not a problem regardless of pictures I show her etc. I do everything for her. Feed her, take care of her cat, pay all her bills, laundry, bed changing, appointments etc., yet she is still never satisfied, lonely, and won’t let anyone else help. I cry when I check on her through the Blink camera and see her sitting there lonely and by herself. I know days must seem like forever. I am 62 and don’t have a life due to always taking care of or worrying about her safety. Dementia has also set in. I don’t know how to help her. She says no to everything I suggest for enjoyment. Help.
And in the case of this OP, who says she/he has no life(your choice by the way)continues to enable her mother in her bad behavior, by not only buying her beer, but also by picking/cleaning up her messes.
This nonsense has to stop TODAY!!!
Next time you see that your drunk mother has fallen on the Blink camera(and dear God I hope and pray that you're not living with her, though it sounds like you probably are)just call 911 and have them come and take her to the ER.
Once there you let the social worker know that your mother is an unsafe discharge and CANNOT return home as there is no one there to care for her. They will then have to find the proper placement for her.
And then you get yourself to some Al-Anon meetings and start learning how your enabling is actually hurting your mother and not helping her.
You are NOT your mothers keeper, and you owe her NOTHING!
But you do owe yourself a whole lot, so I wish you the very best in getting the help that you need with therapy and Al-Anon.
There is NOTHING you can do for her. She is determined to drink herself to death. Leave her to it.
Can you take her cat or have it re-homed to a loving home?
First things first. You can't truly help her until you take responsibility for why you don't have a life and it's not your mother's loneliness or neediness preventing it. You're choosing a self-imposed guilt trip and you are letting your own enabling of your mother's poor choices take over your life.
She is not independent anymore. You propping her up with a false delusion that she is by doing everything for her is not helping anyone.
Like so many demanding, ingrate seniors with and without the start of dementia, she is playing the popular game of won't "allow" or "let" anyone but a person of her choosing help. Do both of you a favor and stop playing that game. Give her a choice.
Speak to her plainly and tell her that she's an alcoholic who cannot care for herself and you will not be meeting her every need and demand anymore. That the stubborness stops and she gets compliant with homecare doing for her or she will be going to a nursing home because she'll have a serious injury from a fall and will have to.
At her age she is not going to stop drinking. A nursing home or AL facility will not allow her to drink. Facility placement is the likely outcome at some point. Try homecare first though. Let her know that if she doesn't get compliant with homecare coming, she will be getting placed and if this happens, she loses her beer.
If you need to let her fend for herself for awhile to make her agreeable, do that. Many seniors have to learn the hard way that being stubborn will not keep them in control and will not get their families to fall into place for them.
Also, you cannot be her social life and that has to stop. It's an unhealthy dynamic for both of you if you're her only contact. You don't take every call and you don't go running every time she demands you do.
I strongly recommend you find an Al-Anon meeting. You will find people there who know exactly what you're going through because they're either living in it now, or like me they've been there in the past and lived that life. Good luck to you.
I have no tolerance for drunks or addicts either. My first husband drank himself to death and there's just been too many addicts in my family and we all know the manipulation, lies, and everything other behavior that comes with it.
You need to face reality and do it differently, whether she likes it or not. Read the options the other posters have advised, and pick what seems best. It can’t be more useless than sitting crying while M drinks herself to death.
You keep wanting her to be someone she isn't and can't be if she just got enough or the right help. Others will be more effective in helping her in appropriate ways. You just need to accept that it won't be from you. You need to go to Al Anon.
If she has been an alcoholic for a long time, she may now have "wet brain", which is a form of dementia specific to alcoholism (Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome).
I agree with the suggestion or Al Anon and/or a counsellor who specializes in addictions for you.
It's very easy to lose oneself trying to help others when, in fact you are enabling their disease and harming yourself.
Please get help for you to make healthy changes and also get help for treatment and proper placement for your mother. Others may be able to do for her what you can't. You need to develop a life apart from your mother.
Help is a big concept. What does 'help' mean to you here?
What do you want if it was possible? Eg
- Mom to STOP drinking
- Mom to WANT to stop drinking
- Mom to drink at a SAFER level
- Mom to have more supervision, provided by a TEAM, not just you
- Mom to live SAFER, even if that means having to be live restricted in a nursing home
Al-Anon serves as an outlet and support system for its members. The goal is not necessarily to help the person with the drinking problem, but rather to teach the family and friends of that person how to cope, stay safe, and accept the things that can't be changed.
Then you could call APS, they’d decide she isn’t capable of living alone, and maybe that would be the start of getting her help other than you.
Addicts are impossible to deal with. She’s very sick. You’re in over your head, and you need help too. So sorry.
You will learn more in one Al-Anon meeting, get more support and be guided to more resources in one meeting than I could write here in a week.
Saving your mother MAY be helped with placement, which did not however save my brother's ex partner who got alcoholic encephalopathy and continued to drink listerine, cleaning products and about anything else he could get ahold of. There is a reason you see those monster bottles of Listerine on the ends of the aisles all stacked up pretty, and it isn't bad breath. Cheapest drunk out there. Quite the most lethal to the brain, as well. And not like that isn't known.
So sorry, but there is nothing to be done for the alcoholic lest done by him/herself. Eventually something will take your Mom down. Then it will be the little pink elephants, so please, when she enters care with broken bones be certain they understand she is an alcoholic and how much she takes in daily if you can know; this will help them to medicate her though withdrawal, which, by the way, at this point and without help can be very deadly.