Quote:
Originally Posted by joeysteele
I accept all you say there, however we were not there as she was saying this.
I may well be wrong here and maybe being too soft on alcoholism but it does become a functioning mechanism, many alcoholics dread even the thought of not being able to feel as they do when they drink it.
A lot of external bravado in fact hides massive insecurity,fear and even screaming for help inside.
It is something that has to be kept plugging away, at to first get the acceptance of the problem from the person affected, and then hopefully guide them to get the real deep help needed.
Which often succeeds for a time but they can fail again and drink again which is why they are alcoholics.
I have come across people who say they will take their chance and live as they have been but once that breakthrough maybe comes and they are 'ready' for help then the old bravado and their on the surface confidence gives way to conceding the need for and receiving that help.
This person may or may not be arrogant in her attitude to her alcohol problem or she may be putting on that bravado act borne out of massive fear of the treatment she will hopefully one day accept.
As I say, maybe I am myself too soft,I just don't see how giving up on anyone who needs help but refuses to see that they do at present will be of any help or right even.
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In the case of my mother (who died of pneumonia brought on by liver failure, at the end of March this year) it seems like there were many reasons. When she was alive I was endlessly frustrated by the fact that she wouldn't stop and didn't ever seem to try (she hadn't been sober more than a couple of days at a time since it started, around 15 years ago when I was in my early teens). It drove me mental, to the point where I was only just about putting up with her, and didn't particularly like having her around my kids. Sh wasn't a bad / horrible / nasty / aggressive drunk like some, but just tended to get "weird" or upset and my 4 year old would just look confused... I didn't want her around it.
I thought pretty much the same as what's being said in this thread, throughout my entire teens and for my adult life up until the point of her death. Why was she so selfish / why not just stop / if she was so miserable why keep doing it / what a waste of money, time and resources (she was in and out of hospital a few times a year).
I only actually started to understand why when we cleared out her house, and I found a load of notebooks / "workbook" type things from the times that she had been in a hospital rehab unit. It basically turns out that she had many complex issues from her childhood, her parents put extreme academic pressure on her and far too much expectation, and also there was some trauma from my grandmother (both of my grandparents were in WWII, a soldier and a nurse) telling her some pretty horrific things about what they had done during the war. I won't go into details but... messed up stuff.
Anyway, her alcoholism started when my grandmother died (my grandfather died before I was born), and a lot of it starteing was being unable to handle those old issues.
What I found most interesting was the mechanism for being unable to stop, though. She had been very social / confident and her family had some "standing" in the small village we were from. She started drinking and felt like a mess. When she was sober, she felt like people were staring at her like "one of the town drunks". Over a couple of years she basically began to suffer with extreme anxiety to the point that she couldn't set foot outside her house without having a drink first, and even at home, when she wasn't drunk, she started to panic about what a mess everything was. So anxiety leads to more drinking, which lead to her sliding further downhill (she started to look pretty awful after 5 or so years) which lead to more drinking... ad infinitum until she inevitable killed herself with it.
I don't have any anger at all about it any more. I think how her life panned out is tragic, really. I was barely affected by her death, because I emotionally cut off that connection over a decade ago... and that itself is tragic, because she never did.
ANYWAY... err... now that I've finished sharing my life story... the point is, I just don't feel like I used to about addicts any more. I feel awful for them. I wonder what happened in their past, or why their present is so miserable, that they have to dull it with substance abuse. The ones who proudly announce that they have no intention of stopping - I just feel bad for them. It definitely is bravado. It's pretending that there's some element of control when they know full well that they have none... that they're on a hurtling train with no breaks heading for a broken track next to a cliff.
No one would choose that life... if they truly had the choice.