Im new at this... Over the past couple of years, doctors and nurses in emergency rooms have taken me aside and handed me Al Anon family group flyers. They begged me to go, to talk, to listen. In truth, the thought of talking about my alcoholic dad was very frightening. My dad has been an alcoholic for nearly half of his life and all of mine. It has gotten worse in the past eight years.

            He has been to rehab and to jail so many times. Recently we paid $400 dollars for a two week detox program. He got out looking healthy. Then he was passed out the next day. He goes to jail because his drunk-in-publics add up. And we call the cops a lot, because we would prefer him to be in jail. He cant drink in there and it gives his liver a rest. I feel that his stints in jail have saved his life. Is that awful of me? Its just so hard to be with him when he is drinking. A few times I locked the house and sat with him all day, watching him, only to have him creep out a window or ingest rubbing alcohol or mouth wash and have his stomach pumped. I follow him when he sneaks out to find his hiding places. He hides his bottles in bushes around the neighborhood. Ive cornered him when he is sober, and pleaded with him. Ive recorded him and showed him what he is like. He blinks rapidly and denies it and just doesnt want to talk about it. Sometimes I dont even mention anything about his alcoholism for fear of that alone driving him to drink.

 Ive never allowed myself to attend one of these meetings because I thought that no one else could possibly understand or know an alcoholic as bad as my dad. I feel that there is no hope. I feel that it is far too late. He is so sick mentally and weak physically. His addiction is too strong. Im scared. There is no limit to my own self-loathing because I feel that I could have done more earlier on for him and that I can do more. Im angry at him for being weak and not being able to stop. I feel sorry for him because I can only imagine the torturous thoughts and feeling that go through his brain. He is a good man. Very loving, but just weighed down by too many demons; demons of the past and depression, I think. Hes tried AA, too, but he hates it. He says that it is for addicts. He is so in denial.

I cant move on or leave him or forget about him. I wish I could just not care, but he is my dad, I love him so much, and he will die much faster if I do any of that. He hasnt eaten for two days. We are taking him to the ER tonight because he hasn't eaten; he has been getting really drunk and forgetting to. Right now he is passed out. Im starting to fear that he wants to die. I cant bring myself to talk to anyone in my family about any of this. all of my aunts and uncles have had it. Everyone just sighs or cries silently. My mother, brother, and I are the only ones fighting. I want to save him, but Im starting to feel that it is impossible. Im stuck. Please help.

By the way, I have been reading some posts on here and, surprisingly, I feel a bit better already. Alcoholism affects us all in one way or another, doesnt it? There is nothing more painful than addiction, for all of the victims involved.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. 

Aloha Andrea and welcome to the board...what a warm and wonderful and caring description of your relationship with your alcoholic father.  For those of us who have ever loved an alcoholic it usually amounts to the most painful, confusing and insane thing we have ever done. Love not returned is how my first counselor described it to my addict wife as our marriage life was ending..."It's as if you are having an affair behind his back", he went on to say and I thought "How does he know these deep feelings in me"?

I know what you are going thru Andea...I was born inside of the disease of alcoholism...I was raised with its actions and reactions.  The alcoholic/addict relative were well known as I'll bet the stories of what was going on in bothsides of our families.  I found Al-Anon toward the end of my second failed marriage to yet another addict/alcoholic and I didn't understand that I was doing exactly what it was the disease of alcoholism had taught me to do.

It's painful and scary and insane watching them die seemingly on purpose and then I didn't know the disease not like Rellik's counselor described it below.  I didn't know it was a compulsion of the mind with an allergy of the body...that there is a craving for more while there is the awareness that it is killing them.  I've heard alcoholic talk about feeling that if they didn't get the next drink they would die and if they did get it the drink would kill them.  I understand now in full contrast...I am also alcoholic.  Your father sounds like he is in "end stage alcoholism".  Alcoholism is a fatal disease and can only be arrested by total abstinence.  Even with you and God standing guard at the gate it owns your father and directs his thinking, feelings and behaviors.   Even as we all know that you didn't cause it and cannot control it and cannot cure it; the disease holds no prejudice...it doesn't care.  For me this is the mother of all diseases because as bad as it is and gets it is enabled to grow.   

You didn't cause your father's alcoholism.  You cannot control your father's alcoholism. You cannot cure your father's alcoholism.  What you can do is run to the next most early Al-Anon Family Group meeting you can get to and sit down and listen with an open mind...wide open mind.  Learn about this disease and how it has affect others just like you and what they have learned and now do differently to heal from it's fatal affects.  Yes it can kill you just as surely as it is trying to kill your father.   Alcoholism is a four fold disease of the mind, body, spirit and emotions.  It is a registered AMA primary disease and if you care to you can go to the American Medical Association website and look up alcoholism.  That won't help you much in learning how you have been so addictively treated and what you can do to change whether your father is still drinking or not.  Get to the meeting...speak with others...get the literature and read it all...ask the hospital if AA meets there...ask AA if they have members who do hospital visits and would they go talk with your Dad while he is there.  Will they come talk with the family.  I know they will and do...that is what I have done myself.

Welcome to MIP...Miracles In Progress.   (((((hugs)))))