Protect your children, and don’t hesitate to keep them away from someone who drinks and does not respect your boundaries. Growing up in a home where alcohol use is common, can leave lasting scars. If you have children, it’s important to protect them from unacceptable behavior as well. Do not tolerate hurtful or negative comments addressed towards them.
When I was younger these things drove me to suicidal thoughts and problems that school tried to help. She lost it at me when she found out I’d been speaking to outsiders. Sometimes she’ll rage and be horrible but the next day when she’s sobered up she’ll cry and drag her feet around the house like a needy child. I no longer cry at everything she screams at me and occasionally I scream back which does cause me to cry because I hate loud noises or voices. Sometimes I’m walking on eggshells and she’s just psychotic. Whether or not she has any other problems remains a mystery but wouldn’t surprise me.
To learn how to see a counselor about your parent’s drinking, keep reading. When it comes to voicing your concerns, it is vital that you approach the situation in the right way and at the right time. Choose a time when your father or mother hasn’t been drinking and try to talk to them in a calm, understanding way. Your alcoholic parent is more likely to listen if they are not drunk and you will have a better chance of getting through to them. If you grew up in an alcoholic or addicted family, chances are it had a profound impact on you.
Expert advice on dealing with an alcoholic parent
Lean on the people around you, and, if you need to, reach out to a mental health professional to speak about alcohol brain fog your stress and what you’re going through. Growing up with a parent who has a drinking problem can profoundly affect children in many ways. Children of alcoholics are more likely to suffer from depression, struggle in school, and experience abuse and violence at home. Many find that they are still deeply affected by their parent’s drinking as adults – like Becky Ellis Hamilton.
However, a person needs to understand and accept they have an alcohol addiction and be ready to change for treatment to be successful. You cannot force your alcoholic father or mother into rehab but try to stay patient and persistent in your efforts to help them. 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).
When they reach the point in their substance use when they get a DUI, lose their job, or go to jail, for example, it can be difficult to accept that the best thing they can do in the situation is nothing. Many family members of someone struggling with alcohol dependency try everything they can think of to get their loved one to stop drinking. Unfortunately, this usually results in leaving those family members feeling lonely and frustrated. Throughout the whole process make sure your mother or father knows that you support them 100% and will be there for them when they get out of treatment. Discuss anything they would like you to do for them while they are completing their treatment programme to ensure that the transition back into normal life is as smooth as possible. Reassure them that you will visit if that’s what they would like and if the chosen rehab allows for visitation.
Taking care of or rescuing others even when it hurts you
If you’ve grown up with a parent who has suffered from alcoholism, this may have had an effect on your own emotions and mindset. When you’re worried about someone else, you can also forget to take care of yourself. However, remember that you’re important and it’s crucial to look after your health and wellbeing too. Plan activities that you enjoy, such as reading, watching TV or hanging out with friends. It’s days like Mother’s Day which can be incredibly painful for those who have experienced loss, but instead I’ve chosen to celebrate all the people who have helped raise me. There are so many moments when I feel, even as an adult, that I wish I could have advice and reassurance from my mum, but it doesn’t come.
You Don’t Outgrow the Effects of an Alcoholic Parent
However, for someone with an alcohol dependence, that expectation may turn out to be unreasonable. If the person is incapable of even being honest with themselves, it may not be reasonable to expect them to be honest with you. You don’t have to create a crisis, but learning detachment will help you allow a crisis—one that may be the only way to create change—to happen. This episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast, featuring multi-platinum award-winning singer Bryan Abrams, shares his sobriety journey and how he found a treatment that actually worked.
Then two years ago, around the time of her marriage to Jay, she realised she needed help, both for depression and to enable her to process the trauma she’d experienced growing up. “Mum had started drinking, got herself in a state, and disappeared with a load of tablets,” Becky says. Sometimes, on her grandmother’s bingo nights, Becky would find herself alone with her mother after school and would do whatever she could to try to keep her mum’s mind off drink.
Children of Alcoholics Week
There was an unspoken rule in Becky’s family about her mother’s drinking – you didn’t mention it to anyone. Addicts are often unpredictable, sometimes abusive, and always checked-out emotionally (and sometimes physically). You never knew who would be there or what mood theyd be in when can you drink alcohol while taking levaquin you came home from school. There may have been a lot of overt tension and conflict. Or you might have sensed all the tension just below the surface, like a volcano waiting to erupt. I’d move my siblings here in a heartbeat but they don’t want to leave their state which I get, they have friends there and their dad is there.
Becky didn’t even confide in her closest friends about what was going on at home, and would only invite mates over for sleepovers on weekends when her mum was away.
- Until they begin to contemplate quitting, any actions you take to “help” them quit will often be met with resistance.
- This is why an alcoholic parent will often make excuses for their drinking or their behaviour or act defensively when confronted.
- This will help you to plan what you are going to say and give you the tools and courage you need to help your parent into treatment.
- I’m an adult with my “own” family so I don’t live at home but my younger siblings do and my mom won’t stop.
- If the person is incapable of even being honest with themselves, it may not be reasonable to expect them to be honest with you.
- “I get scared and then I get very controlling because I feel like I’ve got to take on that motherly role,” she says.
Additional articles about codependency and Adult Children of Alcoholics that you may find helpful:
By Buddy TBuddy T is a writer and founding member of the Online Al-Anon Outreach Committee with decades of experience writing about alcoholism. Because he is a member of a support group that stresses the importance of anonymity at the public level, he does not use his photograph or his real name on this website. A support group such as Al-Anon Family Groups may also be a helpful source of support when you have someone in your life with a drinking problem. The group can give you a place to get social support and encouragement from others going through a similar situation. Natural consequences may mean that you refuse to spend any time with the person dependent on alcohol.
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. You describe your mother as being confusing because she is at times loving and at other times mean and aggressive.
When addiction gets its claws into a person, it can blind them to the reality of their situation and cause them to deny that they have a problem or that they are harming their family. This is why an alcoholic parent will often make excuses for their drinking or their behaviour or act defensively when confronted. When a parent drinks, it can affect the entire family.
“She would give me a hug what drugs was eminem addicted to if she knew she’d done something wrong, had upset me, or something dramatic had happened the night before,” Becky says. “That was her way of acknowledging what she’d done without addressing it. It was bizarre, to be honest, it was like she was a different person.” “She’d start crying and saying, ‘You don’t love me,’ and ‘You’re going to leave me,’ and then I’d have to creep back into bed and start all over again,” Becky says. 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. “I was constantly worrying and constantly on edge really, because once she’d have a drink that was it – that was me on guard, looking after her all night,” Becky says.