If she couldn’t 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. If one of your parents is addicted to alcohol, it’s important to remember that it’s not your fault. You may feel responsible, and believe that you’re the cause of their drinking problem, but this isn’t the case. Alcoholism is an illness, and your parent will need a doctor or medical professional to help them get better.
Addiction Awareness Week 2023
I had spent my entire life hiding my mother’s alcoholism from the world. No one besides my dad knew about the chaos and destruction that results from Mom’s drinking. For two years, I also hid this secret from my best friend. After graduation, I took a full-time job.
Treatment & Support
She will not, or cannot, take responsibility for her addiction. You can only support her if she decides she wants to change. Through her own research she discovered organisations that support people who’ve grown up with alcoholic parents. 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. There’s no way she knew how much I needed my mother’s voice on the other end of the line but it was powerful. And she helped me just by being a friend.
Caitlin, now 17, found it hard to confront her mum. But it was worthwhile because, after more than a decade of addiction, Tracey’s now in recovery and hasn’t had a drink for eight months. It draws attention to the undeniable fact that addiction touches many, if not most, lives – be it personally, within families, among friends, in the workplace or the community. We treat addiction as a serious mental health condition. Access to support so that recovery should be possible for everyone. Harmful drinking can cause significant issues not only for the drinker, but also for those around them.
- 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.
- Children of alcoholics are more likely to suffer from depression, struggle in school, and experience abuse and violence at home.
- She still continued to see the side of her family which enabled her drinking though.
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The five best ways to talk to mum about her drinking
Our statistics show 56 per cent of female members on Daybreak have children, and of those mothers, 7.4 per cent have over six drinks daily or almost daily. 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.
When Pat was drunk she’d cry, tell Becky that she just wanted to be loved, and go over all the bad things that had happened to her. Becky would sit and listen, and reassure her mum that she loved her. It would get late, and Becky would try to persuade her mum to go to bed. 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.
People often ask me how to help someone who has an alcoholic parent or spouse. After three months of sleepless nights, my sister said she couldn’t bear to stay 10 Signs That Someone You Know Is Using Crack Regularly there and watch Mom slowly kill herself so we moved out. It felt like I was abandoning a sick child. In those teen years, I was completely obsessed with my mom’s drinking. I was one of billions of kids who grew up with an alcoholic parent. 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.
At one point, I convinced her to see a psychologist and I sure it the turning point – the road to recovery. Around that same age, I remember apple juice being my favorite drink. One day, I asked my mom why her apple juice always had foam on top of it. It took a few years after that to make the connection between my mom’s dramatic mood changes and her consuming the foamy apple juice.
