I’m scared my mum isn’t going to survive her drinking problem.

This is a long post so sorry in advance. I (22f) found out 4 days ago that my mum (43f) had relapsed with her alcoholism. I had been on the phone with her when she had fallen and couldn’t get up and couldn’t find her phone in her fully lit bathroom. My partner (also 22f) and I got a cab to her house and were there within 15 minutes. In this time i also called my brother and got him to get home from being out with his friends because he’s a lot bigger and stronger than me physically and I didn’t know what was happening. By the time we arrived she had gotten up but then she fell again just as we arrived so I rushed to help get her to the sofa and sat down. She kept insisting she was fine but she couldn’t keep herself upright even sitting down, it looked like she was either having absent seizures or a stroke, because when she was veering to the side, she would stop speaking mid sentence. I called an ambulance that said they’d be at least an hour. My brother arrived shortly after we did and started helping keep her upright. The inability to stay upright got worse and worse, me and my brother had to basically carry her to the toilet, she couldn’t put one leg in front of the other and was crying saying she didn’t understand what was going on, but within a minute would be explaining how she was fine and calling the ambulance was dramatic and a waste of services. After 10 minutes or so, she leaned and fell sideways (we’d already put extra cushions down on the sofa because she has so many) and went almost completely unresponsive. Her eyes were open but her pupils were sort of flickering side to side, she had tears falling but she couldn’t move or speak despite mine and my brother’s pleas. My partner grabbed her hands and was getting weak squeezes in response to questions. I called the emergency services again and told them the updates. I’d already called twice before that and they’d advised me to do stroke tests on her (check her smile, her speech and have her hold her arms out) and she passed the stroke tests fine. I was panicking and so was my brother. He was crying and hitting things because he didn’t know how to manage his fear and I was trying to calm him down, check on my mum and speak with the operator. The ambulance showed up 15 minutes after the call. I’d also called my mums parents in this time and told them I’d keep them updated incase she needed to go to hospital or if it escalated. Once the paramedics arrived, my mum started behaving normally again almost instantly. She could walk, talk and keep herself sitting upright no problems. I was confused and watched them do their tests, taking her blood pressure and doing another stroke test on her, and I was confused and telling them she needed to go to hospital despite her protests that she was fine. One of the paramedics moved a sofa cushion out of the way, and underneath it, buried next to some clothes was a litre bottle of vodka. I kept my composure despite the fact I was so angry I was between wanting to scream and vomit. I asked my brother if he had known she was drinking again and he said he’d known for months. I didn’t want to blow up on him so I just nodded. I excused myself from the room and asked my brother to tell my girlfriend to leave the room with me, where I had a quick cry quietly to her.

For context. My mum has been an alcoholic for more than half of my life. I don’t remember when it started. I have watched her go into hospital for sepsis multiple times, internal bleeding, nerve damage, stomach issues. I’ve watched her get into multiple abusive relationships, where I’d have to comfort my brother at night because he wanted to go and stop the guy from hurting her but he was too young and small to be able to do anything. I’ve begged her to get help so many times. I’ve been on the receiving end of her abuse, a few times got so bad I’d run away because I couldn’t handle the constant screaming and berating and slamming things. One of those times when I ran away resulted in me being assaulted by someone I thought was offering me a safe place to sleep because I was 17 and had nowhere to go. It took me weeks to tell her what had happened because not long after, she went into hospital for internal bleeding. I remember having to mix and pour her drinks into smaller bottles to take with me to the hospital to visit her. I remember her bowel issues getting so bad she had to relieve herself in a bag in the car on the side of a motorway. I remember how often she drove drunk, over 100mph with 16/17 year old me in the front seat, while my brother was left home until 2-3am. I have mental health issues, depression, anxiety, ptsd, and there’s possibly other stuff that hasn’t been diagnosed yet, but she has always been my biggest trigger for harming myself. Every relapse reminds me of all of the horrible things I’ve put up with because she’s my mum and I didn’t have any other options. I’ve tried to take my life a few times, I’ve spent time in psychiatric units, and nearly every single time it’s gotten that bad, it’s been around the time she’s been drinking again. She signed up to a program and did an at-home detox with them in April 2021, and on New Year’s Day 2023 she started drinking again, although she had recently admitted to a friend that it started before that. She’s been on and off the wagon since. In one instance, she had been caring for my cat after a surgery he had (I wasn’t able to at that point and she lives very close to the vet and drives whereas I live a fair bit away and can’t drive) and she couldn’t remember the symptoms he had had the day after he’d had them, which were urgent, and to this day still maintains those symptoms never happened the day they did, and I’m the “cruel manipulative b-word” who “slated” her online after it happened. She recently also got diagnosed with COPD because she smokes like a chimney. The paramedics and other doctors have said she’ll be lucky if she can even make it to the bathroom alone in 10 years based on her current situation.

While the paramedics were there, I called my nan and told her everything. She insisted on both her and my grandpa driving over. I told my mum and she was angry at me but I didn’t care. They have more influence over her than I do. The paramedics said they could smell alcohol on her breath, but she maintained that she did not drink that day. I said some horrible things while trying to convince her to go to the hospital (my brother could wake up to find her gone, does she think we want to watch her pass away, and the harshest: does she want to be another insert her friends name who recently passed away from an OD) I didn’t care what I said, I just wanted her to get help. The paramedics left, she didn’t go with them, and my grandparents arrived shortly after. She did give me a half-hearted apology, but I was too angry to really be receptive and I told her her apologies don’t mean anything when it keeps happening. When my grandparents arrived, I handed them the bottle she’d hidden and told them she needed rehab. She cried and said she wanted to do the at-home detox again, saying she didn’t want to leave her cats or my brother at home by themselves (I don’t live far, a 20-30 minute bus ride and I have a decent relationship with my brother, maybe a little distant but we get along well and he does frequently come to me for advice or help, so she knows i could be there for him if she went to rehab, she just doesn’t want to). I also talked privately to my brother and asked why he didn’t tell me she’d got this bad and he said it was because the last time he told me I got into an argument with her over it, which resulted in her taking it out on him and he didn’t want the stress because I can turn my phone off and ignore her but he has to live with her (he doesn’t make enough money to support living by himself). I understood that and while I’m angry about it, I get it. I ended up leaving her house shortly after that because it was late.

Since that night, I’ve had a voicemail from her (it was 4 minutes long and I was too angry to listen to it but I have it saved to listen to once I’m more stable), and I’ve talked to her best friend, who has told me that she has either lied or genuinely is remembering the night wrong, because the story she’s selling isn’t matching what actually happened that night. I got some advice from a couple people. One suggested going no contact digitally and only writing letters back and forth, once a week or so. (When I cut her off around 4 months ago for a different issue she tried to break into my flat and harassed me to no end.) I think it’s a good idea, but I’m not sure what the repercussions would be, because she’s become more unpredictable in the last year. I do love her, but she’s not been a good parent. My grandparents live too far away and they’re too old to be my main support and I don’t have any family or many friends locally. I’m sort of alone in this, apart from my brother. I don’t really know what I expect from this post, maybe some advice on what I can do to get through to her, maybe some success stories if anyone’s had similar experiences, maybe just some validation because it’s an incredibly difficult situation and I haven’t felt like I’m managing it well at all. Thank you if you read this far, and if anyone wants an update about the letter idea or anything I’ll share when I can.