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Hello, I have a question to ask please. As I have posted before, my Father is a very heavy daily drinker which causes much dismay and worry. It is however how he is and I don't see it changing, only worsening in time. My question is this. My Father lives pretty far from the nearest liquor store (he just moved a short while ago) He could walk it but it is several miles and we have very cold weather here come Winter. A sibling of mine has now started buying his bottles of liquor for him. He keeps some at his own home and then when our Father runs dry he brings him some more. I understand why he is doing that, my Father gets very very agitated when he is running low for fear of not having any alcohol at all. I know this is enabling him and yet I understand why my sibling is doing this. Just thinking about it makes me both very angry and very sad. The alcohol is literally a needed drug for him now that he can't do without,,,,,I tell myself if it was heart medication would it be almost the same idea? I guess I'm just feeling such despair thinking of how he is being supplied now by his family just to keep him comfortable. Somehow it still doesn't ride right with me but I am powerless to change it and should be grateful it isn't me who is buying him his booze. Do you feel it is maybe 'okay' to supplement an alcoholic with alcohol if he can't get it himself ? Sorry for the length of this,,,,,Thank You,,,,,Leah
I think what you're asking yourself is if there is any way to make it okay that your sibling is enabling your father's disease.
What if you stayed out of it? What if YOU didn't enable, personally?
Whatever goes on between your father and your sibling is within their relationship. It is their business. If your father at any time was ready to commit to sobriety, a physician and a team of medicall personell could safely supervise his detox from alchol.
What I think you are also saying is that it is upsetting you because you can't control it. What if you came to the realiziation it is not yours to control? Each person's path is between them and their higher power. If your sibling asks you for money for your father's liquor, you can set a boundry for that. If your sibling sets expectations for you when it comes to your father's disease, you can set a boundry with that, too.
The only person you can honestly control, have insight over, and make viable changes for is yourself, dear. Start there.
That is great that you don't participate in making easy for your father to drink. That is where it has to stop. You aren't responsible for what other do. Your sibling, really may think their helping you father, or for his safety, fear of father angry with him. The sibling just may not get the fact of enabling. The most loving thing we can do is not to enable our alcoholics. It is possible through our actions, others may see.
If it were me. I would approach my sibling and only speak of why I do not make it easy to drive one more nail in our father's coffin. (In a tactful way). I wouldn't try to change my siblings thinking and if I see the conversation is getting heating I would stop it. All I can do is plant the seed.
This is only what I would do. I am not you. You are doing wonderful though.
It is enabling. But you aren't the one doing it. That is between your father and your sibling. Alcoholics can die from withdrawl. That's a fact. But I think you have to ask yourself, can you live with the fact that your sibling is enabling him? True you can't control them, but you can control how you react to them. But if your asking me if it's okay to enable another person? Not to me. But that's me.
Live strong, Karilynn
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It's your life. Take no prisoners. You will have it your way.
Hello and I thank you all for your thoughtful responses to my original post. I don't know if my sibling realizes he is 'enabling' ,,,he is in his eyes merely trying to prevent something bad happening to our Father should he trek out alone to find more alcohol or worse deal with the reprecussions of withdrawal until he can get some more. I think I am in fact enabling as well as when my sibling told me what he was doing. I said I understand and therefore accepted him purchasing the rum and beer in advance for our Father. I think sadly, that my Father will get it somehow, and right now because he is in a new home we are both always worried so about what he will do if he doesn't get it. I was told he even went to different neighbour's homes asking for alcohol. That shames me beyond words, and now all I can think is what those new neighbours of his must think of him. What else can one do I ask,,,,,I mean really,,,what else can one do but to supplement the extreme alcoholic with his drug of choice so he will not wander looking for it. My Father was hit by a car once carrying his beer, my Father ran the sidewalk and nearly hit 3 people,,,all for his booze. I feel tremendous guilt as he now lives much closer to my other sibling and that somehow allows me to give myself the excuse that he isn't as close to where I live (even though where he is isn't all that far away) I know I need to do more, to help more, I just find it so darn difficult going to visit my Father who sits there so drunk and doesn't even really know if I am there or not. How fortunate are those who can go and see their parents, see them and visit with them and not have to deal with 'how they might be',,,,,or 'what they might say' ,,,,,, for those who have that,,,,,,,,please embrace it and know how fortunate you are. Leah
My opinion in this matter is: it is not ok to enable....however, you have to do whatever it is that for you to get thru this life of living hell....that is what loving addicts is to me a living hell...we all have our own way of dealing with it....your sibling is just doing what is best for them...
Leah, when I first came here, a gal I now love very much, bought alcohol for her husband. I was horrified.
I was new to alanon. What I remember was the support she was given.
She was in the UK. Her husband was so ill he could not go get it himself. Detox was out of the question.
I shared years here at mip with her popping in to update us. There was no way he could stop using. He was found to have cancer. She nursed him and cared for him. No greater love.... The last bit of his life, I want to say days, he did not ask for alcohol anymore, she was blessed to see the man she loved before he passed.
I never met them in person. But I tell ya she was my sister. She went thru so much as we all do. But the courage she had, the love she gave, was so unselfish.
The support was, live and let live.Take care of your own inventory, the serenity prayer and more.
We cannot control what anyone else does. It does no good to try to analyze either. It is all insanity. Not helping your father is not going to stop him. He will stop or continue if someone is supplying him or not.
The A stops when they do, we do not have anything to do with it.
If it were me, I would probably buy it, with the boundary that he know I will not be around him. Unless he was a drunk who was ok to be around. And I don't know one of those.
It is actually a paradox isn't it? We want them to get so sick of their drug that they will do anything to quit. So supply it. But then by getting it for them, we are feeding the disease, or enabling.
What is enabling? I mean there are all kinds of degrees of it. I am at the point that if I do ANYTHING for the A I am enabling. I won't feed him, house him, talk to him, nothing. As long as he is using and not on a program, i will not have anything to do with the disease. I want him as miserable as possible.
But it took me years to get here.
Well suffice it to say, their body craves it, they are in horrible physical and mental pain if it is cut off with out any medical intervention. My father in law died this way. He decided to quit cold turkey and died.
I believe it is up to each individual. I can only answer for me.
I used to be obsessed with what the neighbors thought, too.
Then I realized something: The neighbors lived in florida 8 of the 12 months of the year. They thought about keeping the bills payed more than me.
Your neighbors don't think about you as much as you think they do. I promise. And besides, what other people think of you is none of your business. I promise.
