I am confronting my alcoholic dad tomorrow and need help.?

Question

This is about the 10th time I have confronted him and I am doing it one last time tomorrow and letting him know that if he does not seek help immediately then our relationship is over. My mom and dad are still togther and I see my mother on a daily basis because we are best friends and hang around together. He deals my mother and my 16 year old sister misery when he is drunk (which is constantly) and he sleeps all day and keeps them up at night by slamming doors and so on. I am 13 weeks pregnant and have spent the last 4 years of my life crying myself to sleep because I cannot deal with him anymore. I have dealt with him my whole life and he is bipolar and very manipluative and to be honest-I just dont like the guy anymore. Another thing I am going to bring up is how he hasnt went out to eat with the family in 10 years but he goes out to eat with his friends atleast once every 2 months. I just need help/advice on how to word everything and let him know I am serious as it gets and he

will not see his grandchild or me and my husband if he does not clean up his act. Also-how do I quit stressign myself out over every little thing he does when he is drunk. My mother and sister call me all the time and tell me that he is doing this or that(my mom will call and say he wont let her out of the garage and i will come pick them up and they sleep at my house) My husband is about fed up with it and he is sick of me crying every night. He even cries when I cry and it is ruining the whole family. please help i cannot take it anymore

Answer 1

Honey I feel for you because I've been there too. I got married at 15yr just to get away from all the fighting. Just like you, my mom would call & say, "Come get your father down from the tree, he's trying to hang a wind chime & has fallen 2 times". My husband was very loving & knew if we didn't help someone was going to get hurt. But read this part very close since you are pregnant. My son was 6mo old that night & when we finally got him down & inside sitting, waiting for his meal to be served. My mom told him she wouldn't serve him until he got rid of the knife in his boot. My son was on my hip while I was standing in the doorway. He missed my baby's head by inches. That's the last time I went when called. After drinking for 40yr, my dad quit drinking cold turkey a few months later. He lived 32 more yrs sober. God has His way of waking people up. I will prayer for you & your family. With all my heart, I feel for you. Remember, YOU, YOUR HUSBAND & BABY come first. My son is now 36yr old & doesn't remember anything about his paw-paw but the sober one. Honey, if you've tried 10 times & it hasn't worked, it's going to take something traumatic like my encounter scare him enough to quit. You guys have to learn to empower yourselves, ignore the fact he doesn't go out to eat with you guys. The meal will be so much more pleasant anyway. Good Luck with your baby & your dad. Prayers are mighty strong when you are not!

Answer 2

Sounds like he has some serious problems. If you have already confronted him 10 times though with no results I'm guessing you are going about it wrong. Perhaps you should try to have an intervention of some sort with your mother, sister, and yourself all together (strength in numbers). Try to get him to realize he has a serious problem and is ruining the lives of others. Depending on the co-operation of your mother and sister perhaps you can tell him if he doesn't go to rehab (or a psychologist) and get some help he is looking at a divorce or something. Don't do the same thing you did the last 10 times though because I'd guess it won't work. Most alcoholics won't admit they have a problem, you need to make him realize that he does have one and the problems his alcoholism is causing and also what will happen if he doesn't stop. If he is abusive make sure you have a phone nearby will an emerengy number on speed dial.

Answer 3

OK hun. My fiance just got her bipolar and alcoholic father the help he needs. You need to get the whole family together to confront him. It will also help if you can get an interventionist there from one of your local rehabs to be there when you all confront him. As for the stressing out all you can do is take one day at a time and keep telling yourself that you are not going to let him get to you and that you are better than he is. What your father is doing is self medicating and it is very popular in bipolar people.

Answer 4

Don't go it alone especially since you are pregnant, contact local AA and ask for Intervention, but first make sure your mom, husband and sister understand and are well informed to be part of it. They will take him to a center, also, if he is verbally, emotionally, and/or physically abusive, those are all necessary reasons to help him. Threats don't work with alcoholics.
Do your homework first, then you and your family prepare, then get the intervention team to help you pull it off and get him into rehab. After his brain begins to clear - he will begin to see the consequences and potential consequences of his lifestyle and behavior. Your mom has a lot to do with either enabling or stopping this. She might be so used to it, that she herself cannot see the wrong in this. She will also need help via AA support or some organization like that. Hope that helps! My oldest sister died of alcoholism and left two kids a mess, so I feel your concerns!

Answer 5

#1- If you are going to talk with your dad, have your husband there as "muscle". Meaning, if your dad decideds to do something foolish, like hit you, your husband will be there to protect you.
#2- Being pregnant, you need to relax and be selfish. You have a life growing inside of you and it is 100% important for you to be happy. Everything you feel goes to the baby, including the bad feelings.
#3- Explain to Mom & sister that you love them, you've helped them numerous times and that they cannot rely on you getting them out of every jam.ESPECIALLY since you are pregnant. They need to move out and just leave him alone. He does not care and it sounds as if he has violent tendancies along with this alcohol abuse. If they are willing, help them find a place without him knowing and move them as far away from him as possible. You need to communicate to them that this does not mean that you dont love them, cause if you did not love them, you would not say anything to them. But they need to change the situation by getting away before he hurts someone.
#4-When he straightens up his act, Im talking about in a year or two, then they can talk about moving back in together. BUT, that is only if he gets clean and gets daily help.

Be careful and take care. I will pray for you and your family.

Answer 6

Girl, you just have to remember that this is YOUR life! Not him or anyone else has the right to make you feel that way.

The best thing to do is ask him if he will let you help him. There are plenty of rehab facilites out there. AA meetings are even free. If he resists your help, then it would be best to cut off all ties with him...and stick to it. Don't keep going back and going back. Let him know that what he's doing is hurting you and the entire family and that this time if he doesn't seek help, he will lose you for good. Any parent that will let their child walk out of their lives due to their own selfishness doens't deserve to keep them in their lives.

I pray that everything works out for the best for you. Just be sure to take care of YOU and your family...best of luck.

Answer 7

im sorry for you rmisery. i understand how you feel..first of all, think about your baby, you're going to be a mom so if you can, stop crying..your husband would also feel bad and i know for sure that you will feel bad if something happens to your baby. About your dad, if he cant be controlled, then i guess you have to place him in a mental agency. Alcoholism would not wear off that easily. it needs time to get over that bad habit. just keep your mom and sis away from him, let them stay at your relative's house or somewhere to keep you at peace. if worse comes to worst, ask help frpm the authorities before your dad can make something that can hurt the whole family and risk someone's life..sometimes we have to sacrifice something for the good of the majority. hope this can help you..just relax..dont cry and be depressed that much, your going to be a mom soon..ok??

Answer 8

There are books and websites that tell you how to handle this situation, and if you follow them, your results might be better.

You need to realize that that drunken monster is not your father- your father is buried in there somewhere, but if you treat the monster like your father, it will only make things worse for you and for him.

You might want to put your demands in a letter and print several. Because he might not hear you when he is drunk, but the letter might be around when he is sober later.

You have to be strong and if you say something or make a promise, you have to carry it out no matter how painful or how much he tries to lay a guilt trip.

Remember that you can ask him to change, but you can't make him change one bit.

Good luck.

Answer 9

Might be this will motivate a bit :

im recovering from drink problem 4yrs sober in 12 step prog with psychodynmic counselling 2 yrs for depression would they interfere with recovery side by side. ive become very angry pushing people who help me is this part of therapy I feel worse than ever but therapist just replies with ~the answers i need lie inside me~ what does she mean by that ? im desperate to know



In the initial stage of recovery from alcoholism, some form of social support—such as a 12-Step program—is critical. Through group support and pressure you have to learn the cognitive-behavioral skills necessary to resist the temptation to drink. During all of this, it really isn’t important to understand the deep unconscious reasons why you drink. All that matters is that you don’t drink.

After you have become established in recovery, then you can start psychodynamic psychotherapy to get to the cause of—and heal—the emotional wounds from the past that your drinking has served to cover up and hide. Through group pressure, 12-Step programs only ward off the craving to drink, but real psychotherapy can bring you to the place where you no longer even want to use alcohol as a defense against your emotional life.

But, as I say throughout this website, the psychotherapy process can be difficult and painful, so there’s always the danger of relapse in moments when the emotional pain seems to be overwhelming. If you do relapse, then you have to tell your psychotherapist, and you have to tell your sponsor and everyone else in the 12-Step program. And you have to go back to step one of the program and start over again from the beginning. If you persevere through it all with patience and discipline, though, you can actually achieve a state of mind in which you “see through” the illusions of comfort that alcohol holds out, such that alcohol cannot even tempt you anymore.

Now, in your case, it seems that your psychotherapy has been successful so far in helping you uncover the depths of your unconscious anger. This anger you feel now is not the result of your psychotherapy; in fact, it’s really nothing new, because it is anger that has been inside you all along and that you have been trying to avoid until now by drinking. This sort of “anger turned inward” is also the cause of depression. So of course you feel worse than before, because now you have to feel the anger, rather than drown it in alcohol and turn it against yourself in depression. This is the core of the therapeutic work: to feel emotions and talk about them, not to hide them, push them away, or run from them.

When your psychotherapist tells you that the answers lie within you, she simply means that if you do the psychotherapeutic work with dedication and courage, you will encounter your deepest fears—and your deepest strengths—and you will find true healing.

Answer 10

He needs an intervention. If the whole family cannot get together to confront him and make it stick, you can only do one or two things more.
You can have your mom commit him to either a rehab or to a mental institution.
Second, your mom is going to have to leave him, If he can't take care of himself, let him deteriorate till you can then have him committed.
Tough love is really tough. Good luck!