Advice…
Hello everyone. I am new to Al-Anon and this is my first post.
This may be oversharing, but I want to paint a clear picture because I feel emotionally exhausted and honestly lost right now.
Growing up, my mom was a bartender and my dad owned his own landscaping business. For the earliest years of my childhood, things felt relatively normal from what I can remember.
Around 6th grade, both of their alcoholism suddenly became significantly worse. My mom would come home drunk constantly. My dad would isolate himself in the garage drinking all day, avoiding both me and my mother.
There were constant fights ranging from small annoyances to money issues. My dad struggled financially because he would let his clients not pay him, while also spending thousands on useless equipment and trying to hide it from my mom.
In 8th grade, my mom attempted suicide in front of me.
I was at a school dance two doors down from my house when she called me begging me to come home. Because she was intoxicated, I honestly didn’t think much of it at first. The next few hours were a blur. Eventually the police showed up at the house shining flashlights through the windows. She had left work intoxicated, taken dog pain medication after our dog had recently been spayed, and was saying she wanted to kill herself.
I remember the police coming inside and at the same time she passed out in the kitchen before she was rushed to the ER. Thankfully, she survived.
During all of this, my father slept through the entire situation because he had gone to bed drunk.
After this happened, my mom went to rehab, left bartending, and became sober for several years. Meanwhile my dad’s drinking became even worse. Our relationship deteriorated badly. His homophobic comments intensified and deeply damaged my confidence and self-worth growing up.
Eventually my mom gave him an ultimatum: get help or move out.
He chose to move out.
He spent the next couple years living in a motel and barely spoke to me. After my high school graduation, he went to the bank to get my graduation gift, then stopped for a large amount of beer on the way home.
Later that summer he moved into his own house, while I moved into my own apartment.
During the next year, I only saw him once when he came to jump my car battery.
A few weeks later, shortly after Father’s Day, he passed away. Honestly, he drank himself to death.
After my father died, my mom stayed sober for a while. I moved back home partly to support her emotionally and partly because I was struggling financially myself.
About a year later, my grandmother (my mom’s mom) became seriously ill and declined quickly. During this period, my mom relapsed.
I eventually found out during my grandmother’s funeral. At the time I was traveling back and forth between Arizona and Ohio for work. I understood why she relapsed. Her mom was her best friend, and the loss devastated her. She hid the relapse from me because she knew it would strain our relationship. I told her very clearly that I did not want to be around the drinking or exposed to it.
At first she kept it away from me, but eventually the boundaries completely disappeared.
One time, my mom and her friend picked me up from the airport. I overheard them talking about missing oxycodone prescriptions from my grandmother and her sister knew my mom took them.
Another night, while I was at a casino with friends, my mom called me heavily intoxicated saying the police were at the house accusing me of stealing a phone. It turned out one of her friends had stolen a phone at Walmart and thrown it into our bushes.
After that, the drinking escalated to almost the same level as before rehab.
About a year ago, I purchased my grandmother’s house two doors down from my mom’s house. Since then, she has repeatedly shown up at my home heavily intoxicated despite me clearly expressing my boundaries and how triggering this is for me. Multiple times I have picked her up to spend time together only to realize she was drunk, forcing me to immediately leave or take her home. Multiple times she would "jokingly" ask for my pain pills I never used after my 4 wisdom teeth removals.
At this point, our relationship has seriously deteriorated.
What hurts me most is that whenever I try to express my feelings or boundaries, I feel immediately shut down. Conversations become about her pain, her addiction, or why I “need to better understand alcoholism.” She frequently tells me I need Al-Anon to understand her addiction better.
The thing is — I do understand addiction. I lived through it my entire life.
I am 4 years sober from heavy nicotine use myself. I am also a year removed from heavy marijuana use and now only drink occasionally.
My struggle is not understanding addiction. My struggle is feeling like my feelings, boundaries, emotional safety, and pain are constantly dismissed in favor of protecting the addiction or avoiding accountability.
Recently she has started placing heavy emotional pressure onto me again by saying things like:
“You are the only reason I’m alive.”
“Without you I have nothing.”
I feel emotionally exhausted, angry, guilty, resentful, and honestly overwhelmed.
I joined this group because I genuinely do not want to live consumed by anger and resentment anymore. I want to learn healthier boundaries, healthier coping mechanisms, and how to stop carrying the emotional weight of another person’s addiction on my shoulders all the time.
Thank you for reading.