Mom started drinking again after 43 years of sobriety. She has a companion/caregiver 3 days per week to keep her company, go shopping, prepare meals, clean house and do laundry. My brother and I pay out of pocket for this. I have POA, but that doesn't help when mom has started drinking again and is getting liquor delivered to her door thanks to COVID. I married less than 3 years ago at age 62. I feel my life has only just begun and mom is taking it from me. I offered to take her to AA meetings, but she has not gone but once with an AA friend. Mom was recently in the hospital for several days of observation after she became very ill from binge drinking. I left home at 16 because of the alcoholism. In my opinion, she cannot make rational decisions for herself if she's drinking, and she isn't safe. She has had 2 hips and a knee replaced, has spinal stenosis, and needs a walker to get around.
The advice about enabling your mom is true. Stop spending money YOU need for your old age, and mom will need to spend her money on her needs, not her booze. My family has been on notice, my entire sober life, not to enable me, should I go off the deep end, and forget. Very very doubtful at this point, but I have never taken my sobriety for granted, cause it saved my life, that moment of clarity.
Tell mom she needs to get back to whatever worked first her, during her sober years. Sorry for going on and on, wishing you the courage to be a realist, and honest, with your mom. No one likes it, I know from experience.
Yes, it’s mother’s right to stay at home and keep drinking if it seems to be her best option. The issue is providing the money to allow it to happen. Perhaps the best advice is to keep this going if OP and her brother are willing, but to stop worrying about the impact of alcoholism on mother’s health.
Live your life. Enjoy your marriage. Don't let your alcoholic mother ruin things for you. She's ruining her own life and there's nothing you can do about it.
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1. why are you paying for her caregiver?
2. why are you her POA? Unless she is not competent your POA is not in effect. (and the times when she is not competent is when she is drinking but other than that does she know what she is doing?)
She has chosen alcohol.
She is not your responsibility, nor your brothers. Live your lives. Let her live hers. I am sorry if this sounds harsh but as with most (if not all ) addicts SHE is the one that has to WANT to change.
If she will not go to AA meetings you should go for yourself.
Unless she's not competent, your POA isn't even active unless she wrote it to take effect immediately. If it is active, cancel her credit cards, and the liquor deliveries will stop.
It is so terribly sad to hear that, after all those years, your Mom returned to alcohol. Please attend Al-Anon, so you will be able to be in contact with those "in the know" about your options, and to learn what roles might help for family of the alcoholic.
You should continue with your life. If you don't clearly know that to the level of feeling it seek therapy to get it clear for yourself. Your Mom has had her life and made her choices; it is time for you at the ripe young age of 62 to make your own for your own good life.
What your Mother is doing will limit her life ongoing now and will be self limiting in and of itself for her care, for her life. There will be a disaster likely at least in part to drinking. The medical community will deal with this in the same way that they do for those without children. I have a dear friend, ex of my brother now deceased, dying of alcoholism. It is difficult to witness.
Your Mother in placement would be safer, but if she is of sound mind that isn';t your choice. I would relinquish legally my power of attorney were I you. No one can help an alcoholic except themself.
I am so sorry for this pain for you. Please seek out the nearest al-anon for support.
I may sound without sympathy but I am not. I know alcoholism and every single nurse in the world is very familiar with what it does to people and their families. I wish you the very best.
I am not claiming special in-depth experience or anything of the kind, but I have seen husbands, wives, adult children, loving friends and seasoned professionals fighting alcoholism and I haven't seen anyone win. It's horrible.
Take professional advice if you have access to it. For everyday purposes, give your mother only what time and thought and resources you can that do NOT breach your personal boundaries.
I am becoming more and more deeply imbued with the principle that we value all people and that no person is less deserving of esteem than anyone else - this is essential to the provision of ethical care services. But with alcoholism, it isn't a question of writing people off or judging them to have brought their troubles on themselves. It's a question of the sheer futility of attempting to intervene.
43 years, all that hard work. My heart is in my boots for you. It's just so sad.
" She has a companion/caregiver 3 days per week to keep her company, go shopping, prepare meals, clean house and do laundry. My brother and I pay out of pocket for this. I have POA, but that doesn't help when mom has started drinking again and is getting liquor delivered to her door thanks to COVID."
You are accelerating her decline by enabling her to binge drink. No, you are not buying her the alcohol, but you are enabling her to live in her home when she belongs in a facility.
Can you see this?
My brother & I contribute nothing, my brother does take her out to lunch a couple of times a month. I have not seen her for 10 years, I did find her the AL she is in and helped my brother clean out and sell her house, never seeing or talking to her.
She has been very abusive to me...my entire life, I am done with her.
Have you given consideration to not supporting her habit, by not paying for her special care and looking into placing her somewhere where she can't drink all day and will be safe?
Who has her POA? Is she on Medicaid?
Take care of you, she can live a long time...look at my mother!
I wouldn't give up my life for my mother as she cannot be fixed, for every bad action, there is a bad reaction. I had to make a choice, it was either her or me, I chose me!