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.
Usual story: Dad lifelong heavy drinker, now textbook alcoholic. He has liver disease, quite advanced but not quite sure what stage. He has jaundice so its bad.
He has good days and bad days. He cuts down, get stronger and then crashes and becomes a raging monster. I live 200 miles away and he is alone having alienated everyone. I'm soley responsible for helping him and its getting to me after nearly a year of this pendulem.
I'm looking for any help, similar experiences, tips on coping, anything. I can't let him take over my emotions like this.
If you are half a day's drive away, it is difficult for you to be able to monitor basic things like whether he is eating regularly or whether he is getting to doctor's appointments. Is he a senior citizen? Can you try to involve any services like a Meals on Wheels program that would bring him a hot meal each day or a senior transport service to get him to appointments?
Welcome Skytraveler...the best suggestion I can make from my experience now is going to the telephone book white pages and looking up the hot line number for Al-Anon in your area if you're not already a member. If you're not, call the hotline number and find out where and when we get together in your area and make the first meeting that you are able. Get your chair and sit down and listen. You don't have to share and we identify by first name only. There is lots of information there for you to read. Go regularly over the new 90 days (you can do 90X90 if you like) adn listen, learn, practice. This program works when you work it. Keep coming back here also. ((((hugs))))
My ex.AH succombed back in Nov. 2012. His alcohol abuse was not easy to accept. The results of his abuse were numerous health issues along with financial problems relationship problems ect ect. As Jerry suggested get involved in Al-Anon. It was the best thing I ever did for myself! I now have a daughter in rehab. who had a rough time of accepting her father's death. Leading up to this I was able to cope with her drinking differently than I did her father. While it hurts deeply and I would like to 'fix' her I know I can't. It is up to her how to broach HER problem. I love her, will support the good ect. Summation....thank you AA and Al-Anon!!!
I can really relate. My dad also died of liver disease. He had the jaundice. He kept going into liver comas. When he woke up he would binge drink himself into another coma. It was very hard to watch and for many years I was angry at him for not stopping the drinking back when the doctors told him he still had time for his live to repair. He died in 1976 and he was only 56 years old. At the time I didn't have alanon. Years later when I found alanon I finally started to heal. I was able to see him as having a disease. Not as a stubborn man who refused to follow doctors orders. I learned to see him as a man who was doing the best he could at the time to be a dad and yet having an addiction so strong he was willing to lose everything including his life to continue in his disease.
My suggestion to you is to really get involved in your alanon and if possible ACOA. YOu can heal by working the program. Just reading the message board here is not enough. It's great for in between meetings, but I know until I actually attended meetings and worked a program, I could not totally understand how to heal.
Just don't forget he has his own higher power and it's not you. You are not solely responsible for him cuz he is responsible for himself too. You are the only one left trying to help him is all. There will come a time when that gets to be too much due to both his disease of alcoholism and the consequent health problems. It might help to draw out some boundaries for when you will know it's beyond you so and to really accept that. Him drinking himself to death is nothing you have control over. It's hugely sad but at some point it will become the issue of medical professional, nursing home, ALF...
He will present in the hospital and they will know exactly what the deal is and what recommendations to make. He is not the first late stage alcoholic to be on the verge of needing to move from being able to live at home to needing a facility. He will detox whenever he has a serious medical issue in the hospital and they will go from there. There may come a point where the social workers in the hospital wont let him be signed out to go home and live by himself without a team of nurses or something that he may or may not be able to afford....hence the nursing home or ALF.
Of course you could benefit from more Alanon cuz I'm sure this has been a nightmare and it has affected you on multiple levels, but you might also benefit from a caregivers support group because there are a lot of people out there trying to take care of their ailing parents and that is not easy (even though you are working your hardest from 200 miles away and not literally tucking him in and sponge bathing him).
Do not lose the characteristic of compassion and empathy...not ever otherwise as he takes on the look of jaundice you will take on the appearance of being jaded and uncaring. That is not the solution. This is a disease a horrible and fatal one. It precedes the life of the Christ by thousands of years and so my belief is that the human race and condition is altered by it and can't hope not to be. When you question "how can the alcoholic do this...come so very close to death and still bome rushing back to the poison (it is a poison that is why being drunk is called "intoxification")"? you will come to understand somewhat the characteristic of addiction. If he doesn't come rushing back he hurts badly and when he does it kills him. Blessings to all alcoholics and addicts who have broken away and remain broken away and still present for others who try themselves. Mahalo Akua for both Al-Anon and AA.
