Dysfunctional Families, Put the "fun" back in dysfunctional

I am not too sure if what I am writing here will fit but lets see!

Our family is full of drinking and drugs. My dads side, they drink themselves to death, there is a history of wife beating and my dad so far does both.

My moms side of the family is full of mental problems like depression and just bad things.

I never talk to my brother, he drinks like a fish and does drugs which makes his personality awful! He truly is a gross person and he says filthy things so i cant talk to him. I dont miss him because he is truly a bad person. But with my dad, I worry because he and I rarly talk even though I miss him. We just do not know hwo to talk to one another. I talk and he judges. I think he is close to dying because his drinking problem is so bad. I live 3000 miles away from my mom and dad, I saw a picture of my dad on my family members myspace page and I was shocked!!! At first I didnt even realize it was him. He was tiny, guantly, and just pale and well i dont know. He is showing signs of liver diease.

Family is a tricky thing for me, I have 2 family members that I love to talk to. The rest scare me and I stay distant. The more I talk to my mother the more likely I am to mess up my family life inside my home.

I am so sorry to hear your going through all of this delainesunshine1978. This is so sad about your Dad. It sounds like your dealing with it all pretty well. It's a lot to deal with.

I've lost family members from Alcoholism. It's tough. Have you thought about going to any of the AA or NA programs? They help you to deal with it and understand it and learn your not alone that lots of people learn how to cope with it all in these programs.

That's too bad you can't speak with your mom though. Just remember none of it is your fault people choose to do drugs and alcohol themselves and they are the only ones that can help themselves. Unfortunately the rest of us suffer from their actions. Your in my thoughts and prayers. Keep us posted on how your doing ok..

Slainte

Dear delainesunshine1978

First I have to congratulate you on your bravery to disclose all these things in your family. You've got my absolute respect.

A lot of things you wrote are well known to me and I can tell you something about it (and maybe help a little bit too). But first I want to tell you something about me.
I am a clean alcoholic for r.a. 12 years. Afore I "drunk like a fish" too. I began to drink as I was a 14 years "old" feller.
A lot of years I drunk more or less but every time I had a bit alcohol in my blood...
On the end of my "active" drinking time I couldn't control it and it was unable for me to stop. I didn't want to see myself in a mirror, I couldn't think about other things than alcohol - my only problem in this time was: how to get the next ration...
One day I was in such a bad shape, that I began to look for a help. I passed an inpatient alcohol therapy (a half year) and after this I never started to drink again.
During this therapy I had a lot of abilities to learn a lot about me, about the alcoholism, about the development of this suffer, the effects to the social environment and much more. Later I began to study a new profession - and addictions was one of the most important things (for me) there.
I worked some years with troubled teens and (what a surprise!) almost everytime I found a kind of addiction...
I said, that I can tell you something about it, but I want to ask you for two things:
Please don't take offense, maybe are some things really hard and maybe you think that you'll never agree with them.
Don't notice this as a kind of "how to do...." The problem is so very complex and all concerned people are so very different - there is no standard way to solve this problem... if it is to solve...

I can read in your post two important things: How Can I help my dad? and How can I help myself (and my own family)?
To the first question is a short but very hard answer: No chance! I hope I can explain this with my own simple words. An alcoholic has (from his point of view) no problem. Therefore he hasn't no reason to change something. So long as he has access to the stuff he (thinks to) need(s) and so long as he has any kind of support (as drinking "friends", someone who wash his clothes, someone who gives him some money, someone who buys (donates) him alcohol - in a nutshell someone who care for him he never has a reason to change his life. He delivered all kind of responsibility for himself to someone other (the supporters)
If some day he loose the last support, then it is able that he begins to change something.
One of my therapists said: "Homeless, workless and up to the ears in the dirt - the perfect premises that an alcoholic can accept a help from outside." No family member can accomplish this - because all these trials are a kind of support again.
He (in this case your dad) has the first step to go. Maybe it is able for him - he have a good chance to survive a bit longer. If it isn't able for him - I'm sorry.
(I got my act together - my father didn't accomplish this - he tried to cure his stroke (created by alcohol) and his cancer of the throat (created by alcohol too) with the same stuff - the result was more unedifying. (he died in the "legendary" age of 62 years)
The second question is more difficult. Rindy has a golden idea. These AA/NA programs can be a really good support for you in such a situation.
But in my opinion two things really important too: To accept, that a help isn't able so long as someone drinks and to accept, that there isn't an own responsibility for the alcoholism of someone other.
This is to be a kind of self-protection - for you and your family.

Alcoholism isn't a weakness of character but a suffer and alcoholics aren't bad people innately - alcohol turn they into such people.

I hope I didn't "build in" too much (langauage) mistakes and the text understandable yet.
Regards from Austria

Ingo

Rindy, thank you for being so sweet! AndInRi I am going to read your post tonight, at the moment I have a lot of people making noise around me and I have trouble reading. So tonight I will come back and read this! Looks like you put a lot into it, thanks kindly!

And to the others going through so much, I am thinking of you as well!!!!

Well I think what you wrote is true. And based off my moms decsion to let him back in even though she said enough months ago, he will keep falling! She is letting him get away with it by letting him drink around her and live with her again.

I think I will do my best to remember the person I think he used to be, hope he will stop, and get ready for that phone call because it was too late.....

Dear delainesunshine1978
You describes a situation, which apparent isn't understandable at the first moment. But (and it seems to be paradox) it is a current behavior in families they are involved in a addiction problem. There is a name for this kind of behavior - codependence. The name became already in the 70's and describe the behavior of family members in families with a addiction problem.
I found a good item at a Austrian website, which I want to translate for you. Maybe it will help a littlebit to understand your mother - and maybe it shows you, how deep every familiy member is involved in such a addiction problem.

Here is the (maybe pretty clumsy) translation:
The term Codependence became in the 1970's and dealt with the relations between a alcoholic and those people, they're to them.
Meanwhile this term is applied in an advanced meaning: to describe a close personal - but in its character destructive - relation to a addict (there can be varied kinds of addiction - alcohol, drugs, pharmaceuticals, sex, affairs, gambling, Internet, food, work and so forth)
Therefore is Codependence a disorganization of relations, in which one person goes dependent from an addict in self-harming kind.
A codependent defines themself (and its own merit) on the base of other people and look about his acts to the other only so that he gives up the might to decide about his own life in its own responsibility.
He looks about in his doing outside very strong, shepherds the other, looks out, that the other ever have well, feels responsible for the welfare and luck of the other - and forgets there his own needs. Everytime the other is more important as themself - it's better to abstain from the fulfilling of the own needs, as not to fulfill the needs of the other.
As a consequence comes a codependent into a backer-/victimhood, which he can act until the totally self-denial and self-abandonment.
To start a relation to an addict, who needs support and help in extensive quantity - maybe to keep saved - is a further consequence of this behavior pattern.
Where are the reasons for such a self harming behavior?
Codependents very often raised in an enviroment, where it was essential for survival to disable the own feelings. It was not allowed to express the own feelings - they learned to feel, what they have to feel.
This oppression for many of years is the reason, that they lost some time the access to their feelings. They are unsure, if that what they feel is really "real" and correspondes with the reality. Because of this lacking belief in the own emotions they look one the one hand orientation and authentication by the other. On the other hand they have a very sensitive sensorium for the needs of the other - most as a consequence from live together with addict or diseased family members.
All codependents hold a lacking self-confidence. His right to exist he derives to be perfect - in fulfilling the needs of the other. He learned that he'll get love and acceptance only, if he postpones the own needs and instead fulfill the needs and the expectances of the other.
Codependents have to learn to get an access to their emoctions again, to see the own needs as important and to detect the own merit.
If there is somebody who can translate this better, here is the link: Codependence

I have to say that I found in this item a lot again I saw in my family (my mother), in the "new" family of my father but also in my own family as I drunk.
I don't want to scare you (or somebody here) but I think it is important for the own well-being sometime to think about such things too. Especially if in the own family is an addiction problem.

Regards from Austria

Ingo

Again, thank you for your posts! I am yet surrounded by the people I live with They are loud and always saying hey Delaine Look at this!!!

So once it is late and they are either asleep, or playing a game in the other room I will come back and focus.

I have a hard time taking in info so it takes all my focus, I am sure you know what I mean! So I will comment on it as soon as possible!!!