Being born into a family with problem drinkers and/or an ALCOHOLIC MOTHER can create a lifetime of personal and psychiatric issues for Adult Children of Alcoholics. If you drew the genetic short straw when it came to birth or adoptive parents, know this: you are not alone in thinking that the way they talk, think, and behave is socially abusive as well as toxic.
Children from the wealthiest families in the world can still be profoundly neglected by parents. Adults who drink heavily, regularly, or who tend to “party” a lot set the role model tone for not only the social inclusion of their conformist children but also teach children how to avoid developing healthy social, emotional, and health-and-fitness skills.
The following are a list of collected quotes accompanied by helpful research links relating to ALCOHOLIC MOTHERS. Without needing to go on at length to point out the obvious — that ALCOHOLIC FATHERS truly destroy lives as well — it’s important to note… like mother like daughter, aunt, girlfriend, sister, wife, etcetera.
When you hear the words “alcoholic mother,” you already have a mental image that’s disconcerting and confusing. It’s actually a dichotomy. Mothers are supposed to be nurturing, caring individuals, not falling-down drunks. How can the two possibly go together? The sad reality is that alcoholism knows no gender boundaries, nor does it pay heed to age, race, nationality, religious persuasion, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status. A woman can, therefore, be an alcoholic and a mother at the same time.
“The Dangers of an Alcoholic Mother” by Promises Treatment Center
Some women were alcoholics before they had children, and the stresses involved with being a mom is too difficult for them to deal with. They begin to rely on alcohol and drink to excess. Mothers may rationalize their drinking and deny the problem as easily as they did before, trying to hide what is really going on. But being an alcoholic woman and an alcoholic mom are not the same thing. A mom has to take care of children, provide for them and protect them from harm. A mom is responsible for the safety and health of their dependent. Furthermore, an alcoholic mom may need to protect their child from themselves, from their own anger, tears, abuse and sadness.
“Alcoholic Mom: When Mother is an Alcoholic” by Alcohol Rehab
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“Aged just ten, I certainly had no idea that my elegant, glamorous mother was an alcoholic. But to this day I still feel a tightening of my stomach, a nervous feeling in my core when I remember those evenings when she’d look at me and slur: ‘You’re so beeootiful, dahling!’ She would sway and stare and when I would protest, angrily, at her continued gawping, she’d always say: ‘But why can’t I look at my beeootiful daughter, dahling?’, breathing fumes all over me. It’s almost 60 years on since those sad days, but as I remember it today my heart still starts to pound faster, my mouth goes dry and I feel consumed by fury.” — quote
A report last year for the Children’s Commissioner suggested that at least 2.5 million children in Britain – including 90,000 babies – are living with a ‘hazardous drinker’, defined as someone whose alcoholic intake could have a harmful effect on themselves or others. Campaigners suspect the true figure is higher, obscured by a society where drinking to excess is commonplace.
“The Pain of Growing Up With An Alcoholic Mother” published by The Telegraph (UK)
“Growing up I’d always felt like I was different. Not different as in I had some amazing athletic ability or that I was blessed with a brand of intelligence that made me a shoo-in for Harvard but different in that I came from an alcoholic family that most people I knew couldn’t relate to. I remember once at a sleep over, in middle school, where I decided to open up to a select group of friends about my brothers’ heavy drug use. I thought for sure that once I filled them in on all of the sordid details my all access pass to the cool club would be revoked and I would be left to wade through the dramas of adolescence alone. I was surprised and secretly relieved when it appeared that my friends were hardly fazed by the details I shared. Which led me to believe that maybe, despite being both raised by and related to a bunch of addicts, that I really wasn’t that different after all.” — quote
“Five Characteristics of Adult Children of Alcoholics” by The Fix
Lots of people live with a parent or caregiver who is an alcoholic or who drinks too much. Alcoholism has been around for centuries, yet no one has discovered an easy way to prevent it… Alcohol can affect people’s health and also how they act. People who are drunk might be more aggressive or have mood swings. They may act in a way that is embarrassing to them or other people… No matter what anyone says, people don’t drink because of someone else’s behavior. So if you live with someone who has a drinking problem, don’t blame yourself.
“Coping WIth An Alcoholic Parent” by KidsHealth.org
“I cannot begin to explain the pain and despair in knowing my mother is unable to deal with her own challenges and has to resort to oblivion from a bottle. It is difficult to feel loved, or believe the sentence “I love you” when it’s heard from someone who may not be lucid, or will not be lucid in an hour or two. The reason, as I feel it, is because proclaiming love for another demands a level of selflessness, and drinking, to be perfectly blunt, is purely selfish behavior. As I said earlier, I don’t mean to condone or criticize, and I know that everyone who struggles with alcoholism may have a thousand perfectly good reasons for why they resorted to this particular method of coping. But, I can’t begin to reiterate how important it is for anyone –especially a parent–to learn to deal with their emotions in the proper forums and stop damaging their families and themselves with this insane habit.” — quote
“An Alcoholic Mother” by TheJewishWoman.org
“Of course, having the DNA for addiction doesn’t mean you’re doomed. Other risk factors contribute to the disease, such as struggles with depression or a family history of substance abuse. My mother and stepfather modeled moderate drinking, but my biological father had a longtime battle with prescription drugs, which may have had a part in my alcoholism.” — quote
“Memoir of an Alcoholic Parent” on Parenting.com
Alcoholism is an addiction and a visible symptom of some unsolved physiologic or psychological problem that makes a person’s body dependent upon alcohol. The person may be obsessed with alcohol and unable to control how much they consume, even though they know that their drinking is causing serious health, relationship, and financial problems.
“How To Deal With An Alcoholic Parent: 11 Self-Help Steps” published on Wiki HOW
Living with an alcoholic parent, a “Dry Drunk”, or a toxic parent prone to both grandiosity and egocentrism can be psychologically, socially, and emotionally crippling for children. Many times, it takes going low contact to NO CONTACT with a toxic mother (or father) figure in order for their own offspring to remain successful in their own lives.
As Recovery.org shares, having empathy for the child while striving to put the adult’s free will choices and deliberately neglectful, toxic parenting choices into perspective is key to helping victims learn how to avoid the problems and pitfalls in life that inevitably arise for Adult Children of Alcoholic Mothers (especially).
In order to help men, women, and children who are NOT from toxic families where a parent or step-parent is a problem drinker, the website shares a bit of insight into what the realities of growing up with even the most socially proper or seemingly “functional” alcoholic parents feels like. They write:
Imagine not being put first in anything because your parent puts the bottle and himself before you. Imagine never being able to bring your friends over to visit or spend the night because of your alcoholic parent. Imagine not even mentioning when you have a concert or other activity at school because you’re terrified your drunken mother may show up and embarrass you.
Imagine going to bed hungry because your parent was too drunk to feed you. Imagine lying in bed terrified because you just know that your parents are going to fight at some point because that’s what they do when they are drunk. Imagine what it is like to be seven years old and your drunken mom puts a pot on to boil but falls asleep and you awake to flames but have to go get the neighbors because she won’t wake up.
Imagine what it is like to wake up to a different man in your mother’s bed regularly because she brings them home when she’s at the bar and gets drunk. Imagine everybody patronizing you all the time with such sadness in their eyes because they know your parent is an alcoholic and they feel so sorry for you.
Imagine spending most of your time in your bedroom because when your dad comes home he wants silence while he sucks down a fifth of whiskey before he yells at everyone in the house for something they did or didn’t do. Imagine the constant whispers behind your back because you are the kid with the drunken parent. Just imagine.
So, while problem drinkers and overt alcoholic parents are busy gaslighting their own children, friends, and families, about their addictions issues and free will choices to neglect and under parent their own children, adult children who seek out the truth about the true psychological effects on children raised in social environments where drinking not only happens but is glorified as a toxic family thinker tradition are finally starting to wake up and smell the proverbial black coffee.
Children of Alcoholics develop a rare form of Stockholm Syndrome, defending the over-use and abuse of alcohol when and if they themselves are raised to be CONFORMIST drinkers.
While many Adult Children of Alcoholics struggle with striving to keep their parents drinking and willful neglect of their physical, emotional, psychological, pro-social, and spiritual needs a secret, other adults psychologically ready to do a forensic study of their personal and family history are not as quick to leap to a toxic, egocentric parent’s defense.
Nothing seems to alleviate a need to actively engage in dismantling COGNITIVE DISSONANCE faster than the child of an Abuser fact-checking an abusive, arguably narcissistic and Machiavellian parent’s claims that anyone who suspects alcohol use is caustic to individuals that drink and anyone who the drinker comes into contact with in personal or professional social settings.
Actual reading or hearing about proven statistically backed facts, science, and medical journals, abuse survivor stories discussing alcoholic abuse and family neglect patterns usually immediately begins an eye-opening process.
For that reason, do consider spending time educating YOURSELF as well as friends, family members, and children about the true effects on developmental psychology that parents with drinking problems foist off on their children.
There’s nothing glamorous about people who assert stupid catchphrases like “It’s WINE-thirty” as a way to avoid dealing with stress issues or about people who party until they puke after trolling the local bars starting at happy hour.
Drinking wine with every meal promotes ALCOHOLISM — not “cosmopolitan” behavior.
Is it true that alcohol was developed for mass consumption years ago during a time when clean drinking water was NOT available? Yes.
But it is also equally and more so true now — in the 21st century — that the toxic effects of routine or over-indulgent alcohol consumption destroys lives. Perhaps not the life of the problem drinker who is oblivious to their own toxic thinking and hedonistic self-indulgence, but certainly for the men, women, and children who — after being told by a gaslighting parent that “EVERYONE DRINKS” and “DRINKING IS FUN” or that in order to be cool and accepted at family gatherings, dinner parties, and holiday functions that it’s rude not to have a drink with family and friends — wake up to the truth.
People who drink alcohol at the expense of their family’s well-being and their own physical health are some of the most toxic, narcissistic thinkers on the planet. When they make up lies and stories to enable their own drinking or that of others, they are guilty of GASLIGHTING while UNDERMINING.
And that, friends, is the true meaning of the phrase MISERY LOVES COMPANY. All problem drinkers, toxic friends who are into partying, and routine drinker or alcoholic family members want is to see other people embrace their highly socially destructive, boredom-alleviating, chaos-manufacturing, COPING MECHANISM.
Why?
So they themselves can drag everyone else around them down to their own dysfunctional level. After all, if you have one beer a month — how dare you say something about their 24 last Saturday? Or if you enjoy a cocktail out with friends once in a blue moon, then they will claim you are a hypocrite when and if you point out that 5-7 nights a week they start drinking wine or martinis at 5 pm and continue to drink until they pass out, pitch a fit, fall down, fall asleep, or behave abominably while acting stupid?
The FEWER children and adult children of toxic thinkers know about their parent’s personality disorders, problematic thinking patterns, and destructive life patterns, the better it is for the Alcohol ABUSER. That’s why pamphlets and literature that children bring home from school discussing the issue are so readily invalidated, disregarded, and called “quackery”.
Concerned children and Adult Children who dare to bring up their concerns about their own parent or family member’s drinking are oftentimes ridiculed and shunned actively by Machiavellian drinkers. Be incredibly leery about any person or group who cannot make it through a meal without a drink, who denies the scientific correlation between DNA and people having a genetic propensity to develop issues with alcoholism very easily, and never trust a mother who encourages (rather than simply ENABLES) her child, spouse, friends, family, or life partner(s) to DRINK.
Alcoholic Mothers and Women who are PROBLEM DRINKERS are the root cause of the destruction of many families. Don’t let a toxic parent, Covert Narcissist manipulating, Dark Triad parent GASLIGHTING for personal camaraderie gain, or a neglectful parent who actively engages in glamorizing liquor to make you feel stupid for caring.
You are NOT being overly sensitive to think their drinking during your childhood impacted your psychological well-being or social development. You are not delusional and you do NOT have a “vivid imagination” to have been affected by their behavior in ways they deny — even when and if they try to gaslight you and anyone who will listen into believing you — their CHILD — is or ever was the problem.
You are not WRONG to seek treatment or counseling for your own drug or alcohol issues — especially for those habits developed early in life while striving to conform in an abusive, dysfunctional, alcoholism-promoting family unit. If you started partying as a child, teenager, or young adult in order to FIT IN, understand YOU WERE AN ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILD.
Conversely, if you have always strived to avoid including routine alcohol consumption in your life, have “partied” responsibly throughout teenage years and your adult life, and are still reeling from that nagging, gut rot feeling wondering why your relationship with your own alcoholic or DRY DRUNK mother has never felt quite right — know this…
You are not alone in suspecting your mother’s habit of turning to alcohol for recreational use or as a coping mechanism — rather than as an occasional taste-choice beverage to pair in a tiny or modest amount with an occasional food choice — had a profound impact on your life. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Drunk Driving, “At-Risk Kids” physical safety concerns set aside, every time you mother drank, she deliberately and purposefully set your own psychological, developmental, and emotional needs aside.
Some kids who have parents who are heavy active drinkers are lucky enough to make it out — but no child of a problem drinker or functioning Alcoholic truly makes it out of childhood 100% healthy, intellectually awake, or emotionally alive.
