The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Hello, My adult daughter has struggled with substance abuse for 26 years, on and off. She recently graduated from and inpatient program and was doing well. She got an apartment, a job, and is out on her own. After about a year she confessed she was drinking again. She stopped coming to family events. She said she was coming to her birthday and didn't show up. She didn't show up for Christmas or other events either, but said she was coming. She says she doesn't have a mailing address, and the only way I can contact her is at work. I call there maybe 3-4 times a year. Recently we invited her to Thanksgiving and I doubt she will come. My question is what do I do? My husband's son died at 33 from a combination of diabetes and substance abuse and I am terrified she will be next. (Doesn't have diabetes.) My husband said we should just stop inviting her and let her isolate. I said I thought I should at least tell her that I was doing that and let her know that she is loved and welcomed but she will need to let us know when she would like to come. I'm afraid the next call will be her saying she needs money because her car broke down and she can't get to work or something and I will have to say "no." Agh! What are people's thoughts?
Aloha Minnehaha...welcome to the board and I hope you stay and read the suggestion and try them out. There is a lot of workable Experience Strength and Hope here and the majority of the membership are also Al-Anon Family Group members too. Both you and your husband's ideas are workable as long as you put all expectations of it to rest. You have a lot of time being parents of an addicted child so you know the outcomes. Most of what I learned to do with my alcoholic/addict son after I asked him to leave the house we shared was to always understand that he would find love and not any enabling of the disease. In other words I learned inthe program when, how and where the stuff that I was doing which I thought was loving really was making the program worse. "Loving them to death" came to mind then and so I had to learn the tools of loving and staying detached. I didn't attempt to fix him even when I had learned some great program for fixing me. He went on doing what it was that he wanted to do and earning the consequences with dignity.
Your daughter already knows who and where to get help from...allowing her to have the dignity of her present choices may send her right back to that source of help. In the mean time keep coming back here to MIP for support and unconditional love and go look for the the hot line phone number to Al-Anon in the white pages of your local telephone book and come to where and when we get together in your area. (((((hugs)))))
Minnehaha I am glad to read your question and post and also feel overwhelmed by it. My daughter is spiraling now and is only 22. Tomorrow will be the very first thanksgiving she has not joined us. She is choosing to stay at her new home she just purchased I'm sure with my niece who is also an alcoholic. I find strength in yours and Jerry's posts as I know allowing her to be alone is okay. It is a rip at my heart but I can not beg her to join us. She had planned on having thanksgiving at her new home and sent us all invitations only to back out of it last week, telling me I could have the decorations she'd purchased. She says she's not coming because a friend of my son's has talked bad about her and may be there at some point. I understand completely that this is 'out' to not come. I assured her she could come while he wasn't there but was told..."That's okay. Thanks though!"
She's been arrested twice in the past two months. Once for DUI and last weekend for Assault while at a bar. We left her in jail for almost 24 hours before my husband picked her up. I have begun to turn my phone off at night to avoid the middle of the night terror calls.
I would love for her to be there tomorrow, but I have to accept that my perfect picture of her and the day is shattered. I will not let her ruin the joy that I may have with other members of our family though. That is giving her the control to make us miserable and I refuse that.
Reading the long battle you have endured and seeing that you have little contact yet your daughter is making her way through her life gives me hope that I can achieve detachment.
My A son has been invited to join us at a cousins house for T'giving dinner. Several out-of-town relatives will be there and it's going to be fun. He has not commited to going yet but the invitation was issued - that's all I can do. The rest is his choice.
