Alcohol

I grew up in a semi small town, less that 30,000 people. For California that was a small place and everyone knew everyone. It was one of those towns that you ask who their parents were and who they were related to before you asked someone out on a date. Didn't want to kiss a second cousin.

While growing up my siblings and I we taught to not bother my grandfather. That we would never be as important to him as his other grandchildren, and this was because my mother was convinced that he hated her. She told us horror stories about how he beat her so bad when she was a teenager that she had to crawl to the neighbors house for help. She would point out at birthday parties how much attention he paid to the other kids and how little he paid to us.

When my grandfather developed cancer and there was not stopping it, my mother was the first one to offer help, the first one to stop working and take care of him. I dropped out of high school so that I could move in and help. My grandmother also had cancer, So I took on home schooling and being a care giver. I didn't notice but my mother slowly stopped helping as much when I moved in. She stopped doing much other than picking up meds and dropping them off. It never occurred to me until recently just how much she didn't do.

My mom was diagnosed with fibromyalgia when I was 12. Almost a full year after she met and married my step dad. One day she was up and at it and then suddenly she was bed ridden and needed a wheel chair. I never questioned it, I also never questioned how many pills she needed to take a day. No one did, they were prescribed, so they were safe right?

Jump forward 22 years. My mom first went to rehab in 2015, I remember it well. I had no idea she even had a problem, but after taking pills for pain for so long a bottle of 1800 ML Vicodin was nothing to her. It was a snack , and she had started taking from my dad who needed the pills for his rheumatoid arthritis. Until she went to rehab I never questioned the times she begged me to go to the hospital and get pills for my hurt back, that didn't hurt so bad. I never questioned the four boxes of wine that would be gone in a days time.

When you live with something for so long and no one ever questions it, it becomes normal. It was normal for my mom to be sick every few days when the pills ran out, or for her to do a 360 and want to go have a drink with her daughter. This was our norm.

When I got married in 2018, I married a struggling alcoholic. Someone who could openly say I have a drinking problem and I need help. When I met him he would drink until he passed out. He was sober for work, but as soon as he clocked out it was drinking time. With a little help and the reassurance that life will get better , he stopped drinking. There were stumbles and plenty of ups and downs, but he did it and its been a long time.

My mother on the other hand, struggles a lot more. She has been in rehab/hospital 17 times in the last three years. She is 55 years old. She has a drinking and opioid problem. I have called the cops on my mom 22 times in the last three years, I have turned her dealer in 3 times, I have picked my mother up from work drunk 10 times, I have sat and listened to her tell me the same sad story countless times over and over again in the same hour.

I finally had enough of doing it on my own in July of this year. It got really bad , so bad that we sent her to another state for rehab. I contacted her family and asked for help. You would think that they would be concerned and rush to help. No, as much as they wanted to, they had seen this before and they could only offer words of comfort.

My mothers childhood was not as bad as we had been led to believe. My grandfather doted on her like he did all of his children. My mother had had an on and off drug addiction since she was 14, which is why she moved out at 15. The abortion she swore our grandmother made her have at 14 was not real, the abuse was not real, the stories she told us were not real. My whole world shifted. Everything I thought I knew growing up was wrong.

How was I supposed to ever trust anything my mother had ever told me. I talked to my aunts and they explained that they had helped for years. They had tried to get our mother to stop being so controlling and wanting to be the top dog in everything. It wasn't until then that I realized just how much my mother took credit for when we were kids. She was never really around as she was 'disabled' and couldn't be. Looking back now I see just how much she had to be the center of attention. She always had to be the one giving more and doing more for everyone, but only if everyone was watching.

I love my mother. I am hardened to anything that she says and skeptical of anything she does for me and my family now. But I love her.

My dad called me about an hour ago and told me that they have taken my mom to the hospital. For the first time in 3 years, she is not in the hospital because she nearly drank herself to death. Mom got COVID six weeks ago. She has not recovered well. My dad has been helping her around as she cannot walk on her own. She has fallen a few times and despite us begging her to go to the hospital she has refused. This morning she fell down the stairs.

According to the CDC excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the United States each year, or 261 deaths per day. That is almost one person every day that dies from alcohol abuse. the NIDA says that more than 67,300 Americans died from drug-involved overdose in 2018, including illicit drugs and prescription opioids.

I used to think that it was a choice that she is making to be drunk all the time, to medicate so that she didn't have to feel. Now, to some extent I know that it is what she chooses, but I also know that it is a dieses. AUD is a chronic relapsing brain disorder characterized by an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse social, occupational, or health consequences.

If you know some one who has a problem please urge them to get help. Just remember, you can tell them to get help, you can hand them all the recourses they need, but you can make them do it. That is up to them.