I’ve spoken to my dad about it, and I know he finds it difficult, too – probably more so than anyone else in the family. He bears the brunt of 90% of her anger and vitriol and I think he feels the same about leaving. If he did I am confident he would have a fantastic, fulfilled life, but hers would be very different. I do feel guilty at thought of being so blunt with her about it. I feel if I said it to her face it might cause her to do more damage rather than go the other way.

Treatment & Support

1. My father’s family urged my father to take action to get me and my sister out of the situation.
2. After a while, she drank directly from beer cans.
3. My mum won’t admit it but she’s very similar to her.
4. If Pat realised there wasn’t any alcohol in the house she’d ask Becky to come for a walk to the shop with her.

My mum won’t admit it but she’s very similar to her. My mum drinks daily and in huge quantities. I always know when the wine comes out it’s gonna be tempers flaring. My mum is a very kind and considerate woman who is loving and hilarious, until she teaches for wine or cigarettes, or has to deal with her own mum. My Nana is a controlling narcissistic person who we hate with a passion but the person who really can’t cope with her is mum, which depresses her even more and makes her so aggressive to us.

I Need Help Dealing With My Angry and Alcoholic Mother

Once again, I became obsessed with her drinking. At one point, I convinced her to see a psychologist and I sure it the turning point – the road to recovery. My mother and father were extraordinarily kind-hearted, compassionate people. But my mother, who had a traumatic childhood, was an alcoholic before I was born. Every day, I wish I could do something to take away the hundreds of pounds of sadness she carries every day.

«My mum had gone, I had completely lost my identity – this secret life I’d had and all the pretence I’d been living through was gone. Everyone knew everything and I just didn’t know who I was.» «None of my friends knew a thing until she died, but that put me in a position where I was forced to accept that we had this massive secret that I’d thought was just normal,» Becky says. Becky ran straight out of the house, towards Brian’s. She stopped in the street when she saw the ambulances. She didn’t have any shoes on and was only wearing her night dress. On a good day – when she’d managed not to have a drink – Pat would draw a tick in her diary.

How to help someone who has an alcoholic parent or spouse

If she couldn’t highwatch online meetings drink for some reason, she’d be terribly irritable – snapping at me over trivial matters, even becoming as evil tongued as she did while drunk. It may be beneficial for you to seek help from a mental health professional such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker. They may be able to help you understand, cope with your feelings about, and improve your mental state over your parent’s situation and the impacts that it has had on you. Al-Anon is the largest and most well-known support group for families of alcoholics.

This prompted me to write a middle-grade novel for tweens that was published in 2012. Children with alcoholic parents often have to take care of their parents and siblings. As an adult, you still spend a lot of time and energy taking care of other people and their problems (sometimes trying to rescue or “fix” them).

How To Help An Alcoholic Parent

Having a parent who drinks can be very painful and confusing. Your parent may have promised to stop drinking time and time again, but they never do. It’s important for you to understand that alcoholism is an addiction and that your parent must commit to professional treatment in order to truly change. In the meantime, deal with their alcoholism by supporting your own well-being and keeping yourself busy.

When I was a young teenager, I became very close with my grandmother on my dad’s side. Never underestimate the power of friendship in helping someone who has a parent or spouse or some other loved one with substance use disorder. I could determine, with spot-on accuracy, how many beers she’d consumed just by looking at her face or hearing her speak one or words. I could also predict if she planned on drinking that night or not. If she had supplies, she’d act happy, even giddy, that day.

If you grew up in an alcoholic or addicted family, chances are it had a profound impact on you. Often, the full impact isn’t realized until many years later. The feelings, personality traits, and relationship patterns that you developed to cope with an alcoholic parent, come with you to work, romantic relationships, parenting, and friendships. They show up as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, stress, anger, and relationship problems. Most of the adult children of alcoholics who I know underestimate the effects of being raised in an alcoholic family. More likelyits shame and simply not knowingthat adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs), as a group, tend to struggle with a particular set of issues.

Mom would lock herself in her room for two days, leaving Brooke to care for herself. I spent my senior year of college basically commuting back and forth from class and work to home. That year, I even sometimes brought Brooke to stay for the weekend at my college apartment. When a Big 10 college apartment is safer for a seven-year-old girl than her home, the home is an extreme problem. My father’s family urged my father to take action to get me and my sister out of the situation. He really believed that Mom was a hopeless cause and that if he left her, she’d die.