Yes I have read and posted about your friend and her son. She needs help herself. She sabotaged the meeting.

She enables him.

My mother is 62 and an alcoholic. My middle brother is 39 and an alcoholic. He lives between her house and his lady friend's house. My mother is recently retired from the postal service. She went out on a disability retirement. She was a functioning alcoholic. She went into work at 3pm came home at 12:30am with her bottle of wine and got hammered, went to bed and then did it all over again. Never went to work drunk.

Now she is more disabled but has reached a point where she will not go to the doctor, she has kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, two bulging disks and a few other things. She still takes her scrips because she is living off of refills from her last hospital trip. Last fall she was drunk and fell in the bathroom and fractured two of her vertebraes. She came home and laid on the couch refusing to do any of the physical therapy, wouldn't wear the brace, just getting worse. Continued to drink only now she is drinking earlier and earlier in the day. Soon she is drinking as soon as she gets up. In the meantime my brother is bringing her food, helping her wash, when she does, doing housework, working in yard, buying her booze (she is buying his too because he doesn't work). She calls me crying on a Saturday saying she has hit bottom, she wants to check into a facility, psych ward, suicidal, on Monday. I beg let's do it now. No let's do it Monday. Tuesday comes no call. She has moved to the bedroom and no longer gets out of bed. Finally she calls me and leaves me a message saying that I need to call her lawyer and have her deemed incompetent because she obviously isn't going to check in to facility.

I start making calls and finally figure this is stupid and go to house and get her out of bed and take her to ER still half drunk. They evaluate her, keep her for couple of days, deem her in no danger, get her health stable and send her home. Tell her to check into inpatient treatment. I give her list of facilities that will accept her insurance, that sound like nice places, she is picky. Today it is almost 5pm and I am sure she has probably started drinking. By eight she will be smashed. My brother has already probably been there, gotten smashed, slept, staggered back to his lady friend's house.

My mother and I are very close but I have had to distance myself in the last two months because I have come to realize that she wants the help but is unwilling to do the work. I have done my part. I gave her the list of places all she needs to do is pick a primary care doctor and make an appt and then pick a place for treatment. I will be right by her side all the way. I don't think I can bare to watch any more. Who will take care of her when she can no longer walk?

My brother will have to be booted which I think may be a deterrent to her getting help because she cannot remain sober while he drinks, it does not work that way.

She has tried to make us promise that when she passes we will take care of him but none of us is willing. He is an adult.

Okay my story is done. There is more but this thread I am feared has been hijacked and I feel bad. Plus I have gone off on a side trip.