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Post Info TOPIC: Advice For Alcoholic Daughter Wanting To Come Home


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Advice For Alcoholic Daughter Wanting To Come Home


Our daughter has been gone for days at a time for the last month saying she was working 80 - 90 hours a week. She has gambling and alcohol addictions, but she just recently admitted the alcohol problem. She gambled heavily in June and July with huge losses, but then turned almost exclusively to alcohol in August. She will not answer her phone or communicate with anyone during this time, saying she can't talk on the phone at work. She and her newlywed husband live in a basement apartment in our home.  Her check came yesterday, she really only worked 2 days before she was fired.  She was staying with an alcoholic guy with 4 DUI convictions, a drug conviction and a vehicle with whiskey plates and a Breathalyzer.  She promised she wouldn't go back to his house.  When she tried to get into our home, she found the doors locked and her Dad had left a note on the door that said "Go back to where you have been staying the past week".  She left her dog tied outside our house, then went straight back to the alcoholic house.  She told me she just had to pick up her stuff and say goodbye, but she was there at least 3 hours.  When she finally came home at night and found the doors locked, it was her husband who let her in - even though he told me not to earlier. Her husband and father said they didn't want to let her in the house at all.  I thought we should let her in if she was willing to get treatment.  Since I haven't really had much experience with alcoholics myself (though my husband was raised by one), I'm not sure what is the correct behavior for us to have.

  • Should we let her live here again if she admits she has a problem and is seeking treatment?
  • She has no money to make her car payment because she lost her job.  She told her husband he had to because "if we have separate finances then we might as well be separated". Should her husband pay any or part of the car payment?
  • She says she doesn't want any of us taking her to treatment, but she lies constantly and we don't trust her.  Should we insist one of us goes with her?
  • What kind of boundaries do you set for people you know lie all the time and have multiple addictions?

 



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~*Service Worker*~

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Posts: 971
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Bless your heart.

I can't imagine how hard that must be. Thank goodness for her husband that he has you and her father with him.

I have no experience with a child with addictions. People recommend a book Getting Them Sober by Toby Rice Drews. That reinforces the fact that we can't change other people. People who have been where you are recommend Alanon face to face meetings, Alanon pamphlets for the newcomer that are available there.

It must be so hard to think about not "helping" a child, and yet not helping seems to be the best help a parent can give.

She isn't being truthful, because she's deep into her disease. I would think that if she moves back, she'll bring chaos with her.

Somebody with more to offer is sure to come on soon and respond to you.

Glad you posted.
Temple



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It's easy to be graceful until someone steals your cornbread.  --Gray Charles

 



~*Service Worker*~

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As I said before, when we do anything for them we are helping and encouraging them to continue the same behavior.

The A needs to be ready to get help, then they do the call and figure out how to get there. That part is ez, the doing is the very hard part, so THEY need to do it all.

Losing her car is a consequence of her behavior. Just like if a child steals something they must take it back, not us. She will learn nothing if you clean up for her.

Her telling you she is seeking treatment is manipulation. She won't even allow you to take her there. again she needs to do it all herself.

Boundaries are not allowing her in your home, not paying any of her bills, not feeding her, not talking to her, she will just lie.

She is an adult, allow her to find out for herself how she wants to live. The husband did not do her any favors. He just gave the disease that has control of her comfortable and gives it strength to clean up to drink again.

i sure know it hurts!! We love them! Its hard to think that telling them no, will help but it does.

she can make money, she can find food.

What I say is, "I love you and I have faith in you, you will figure this out." Allow her to do this! If you bring her in, her disease will destroy all of you!  Getting Them Sober, by Toby Rice Drew, volume one is a GREAT book for you to read and consider. You will find your A there! hugs and hope!

 



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Putting HP first, always  <(*@*)>

"It's not so much being loved for ourselves, but more for being loved in spite of ourselves."

       http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/meetings/meeting.html            Or call: 1-888-4alanon



~*Service Worker*~

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Posts: 7576
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As a Mom who sees a sick kid, it is hard not to do what we want to do which is to protect them and try to nurse them back to health. Unfortunately, this very same thing we did when they were kids won't work when they are adults. I felt like I was abandoning my son when he was down by setting boundaries for myself. Then, when folks would ask me his age in the fellowship, I'd recognize that now "Wait a minute. He's not my baby, not my toddler, not my 5 year old through 18 year old. He is past being of age. I'm not abandoning him. I'm taking care of me. I can't take care of him anymore because he isn't getting any better. He's actually getting worse. And my ordered, serene and fairly controlled life is becoming unmanageable again. I can't live the way he wants to live in my house. He must live the way he wants to live somewhere else."

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"Darkness is full of possibility." Leunig



~*Service Worker*~

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VM, I do believe that you should all hurry to an alanon meeting so as to regain your ability to see the insanity and irrational behavior that you are agreeing to live with. I know that you are aware that alcoholism is a progressive fatal disease over which we are powerless. Her behavior can be attributed to symptoms of the disease, however accepting the truth of the disease ,means that we need to learn to take care of ourselves in a healthy fashion by drawing important boundaries.
Looking objectively at the situation, it is apparent thatshe has no means of support. -She lost her job, has moved in off and on with another man .while leaving her husband alone in your home. She cannot pay her car payments and insists that her hubby must because if they separate their fiances they might as well separate. What kind of a marriage does she think she has? He does not have a supportive partner and for all intent and purpose they are separate now .no

I can agree with the position of not permitting her back into the home and directing her to a detox,or  and a treatment program and AA .. No one needs to take her. If she needs assistance  AA has an extremely supportive hotline that will be able to assist. I would give her a telephone number and suggest that she call.

You really are not alone so please keep coming back and sharing



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Betty

THE HIGHEST FORM OF WISDOM IS KINDNESS

Talmud
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