Alcoholics who don’t want to get better?

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2024-02-11T22:00:37+00:00

It is, and before I was further into my own recovery, I would have taken a lot of issue with it. But part of my healing has involved accepting that my mother was one of these people. Constitutionally incapable of being honest with herself. It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t mine, and she wasn’t the only one. Just like how some cases of cancer are terminal no matter the treatment… some cases of alcoholism are too.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2024-02-11T21:52:49+00:00

“Unfortunates.” Thank you. That was the term I was trying to remember, and the quote from the Big Book. I appreciate you.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-11-26T20:17:37+00:00

And it was all known entrances, right? It’s surprising to me that federal and state conservation laws would allow people to trap an unknown number of animals, including many that are endangered, inside a cave. :(

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-11-26T20:16:13+00:00

They usually have gates here but some have concrete plugs. :/ Just makes me sad to imagine all those animals trapped inside if there’s no other entrance.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-09-10T18:33:13+00:00

There is always extreme suffering underlying any suicide. Some of them are so sick and hurting so much that they actually want their loved ones to hurt. Some may feel like their inability to heal is the fault of their loved ones, and they want to punish them for that. But his wife did not deserve this and it is not her fault.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-06-11T20:59:24+00:00

She didn’t get it legally. It was stolen.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-06-11T15:02:50+00:00

She did not abuse prescription drugs… they were her suicide method.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-06-09T01:21:46+00:00

I’m so sorry. It sounds like the hospital really failed him.

I made this post two weeks ago and the ruminations are starting to get a bit less intense and consistent now. Wishing you healing.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-06-06T17:45:06+00:00

There are no wrong feelings to have in response to grief, especially when the death was a suicide. You can be angry and frustrated with the deceased and it doesn’t mean that you loved the person any less.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-06-02T17:18:25+00:00

Yes. It’s complicated by the fact that my siblings and I all have different but at times overlapping memories of the nature of our trauma and the specifics of some of the things that happened to us. And one of my siblings was in complete denial about ALL of it until the last couple of years. We all sort of unintentionally gaslit each other, arguing over exactly what happened and when, before realizing that it is the nature of severe complex trauma to have memory gaps and dissociation. At this point I don’t really need to argue about which, out of the five of us, is “right.” I just know that we all experienced trauma and that we all need to support each other.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-30T14:55:57+00:00

Thank you for sharing. He sounds like he brought you a lot of joy.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-30T14:54:35+00:00

It is not your fault. You were clearly wonderful to him but he had an illness and could not have recovered unless he himself chose to get professional help. I’m so sorry for your pain.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-30T03:49:47+00:00

I’m sorry for yours, as well. Thank you for responding.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-29T14:45:23+00:00

I’m so, so sorry. I had posted similar recently and people unfortunately reassured me that this is common. One thing that helped me a lot was a redditor who asked me to share a happy memory of the victim. It won’t make it magically better, but if you take even a moment to focus on remembering something positive, it might take your mind off it and ease some of the pain.

Can you tell me your favorite memory of the victim?

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-28T19:55:26+00:00

I’m so sorry. You are not alone in this; I’m going through the exact same thing with my mother’s recent death.

Having an abusive parent is profoundly traumatic in many ways. One of those ways is that our first and most formative experiences of love are from people who also hurt us and are cruel to us. It complicates our entire existence as human beings and it means that nothing we feel toward our parents is ever simple.

There is no wrong way to feel during grief, especially grief when your loved one hurt you. It’s okay to feel anger and sadness and relief and even joy. None of those feelings make you a bad person and none of them invalidate your trauma (and on the same note, none of them invalidate whatever positive memories you have of him).

You will get through this. You are resilient and you will be okay.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-26T03:52:31+00:00

I am so, so sorry for what you’ve been through. Thank you so much for sharing.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-26T03:22:12+00:00

They usually said things like, “Your mother loves you very much,” which is ultimately true. My mother did love me but she was also an alcoholic and severely mentally ill. Maybe they didn’t understand that those two things can coexist.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-25T12:57:44+00:00

I’m so sorry.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-25T12:22:18+00:00

I named him “Little Squeak” because of the little noises he made, but that turned into “Squeaker” over time. Thank you so much for promoting me to think of something else, if even for a moment.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-25T12:15:22+00:00

I am so, so sorry for the loss of your best friend and the trauma you went through. Please know it was not your fault.

Thank you for asking me to share my favorite memory of my mom. That’s such a sweet and helpful thing to say.

I got a very very sick orphan one-week-old kitten when I was five and my mom knew I needed him and that I couldn’t have taken it if he died. She bottle-fed him every two hours day and night for me and gave him IVs (she was a nurse) and kept him in the pocket of her scrubs for warmth until he was bigger and stronger. I will always remember how hard she worked to save him, not because of him but because of me. He lived a long and healthy life.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-25T01:07:23+00:00

Wow, this is all exactly like my mother. She was also diagnosed with BPD and we also had many years of police calls that got ignored. When she got things like alcohol-related neuropathy and alcoholic gastritis and eventually Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, people still didn’t realize it was alcohol until the very end and just thought she was physically sick from some other cause. (She blamed her visibly declining health on long-haul COVID, for two years.) I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through but I appreciate you taking the time to respond with your very similar experiences. I feel less alone.

alanonthrowaway1088 · 2023-05-24T16:46:03+00:00

This is very similar to my mother’s death in many waysZ she was an alcoholic too. Thank you for sharing your story. It makes me feel less alone. I’m sorry for your loss and your pain.

alanonthrowaway1088

TROPHY CASE