How about....talking to your parents about drugs?

Merika · 09-30-2004, 09:05 AM

Not this last time....but the 3rd I evacuated (haha) my elderly aunt was also at my parents. She had enough quantity and various qualities of pan killers to keep a drug dealer in a NY apartment for 3 months! I had never seen anything like it.

SHe got them all confused and forgets what to take when. This once very vibrant woman is no doubt a 'legal' drug addict. I discussed this with my Mom (the health freak who doesn't take pills unless really needed) said that many of my aunts and her friends take 'that stuff' (as she called it) all the time.

I wonder if we are making this knowledge available to our children...but forgetting we have a whole elderly group out there who are killing themselves.

I mean, at some point, it wouldn't matter if you were close to death anyway. But what if you still had a life and things to accomplish if you weren't so MESSED UP on prescription pain killers.

Duke · 09-30-2004, 09:21 PM

I've tried the whole talking to my parents about substance abuse and made little or no headway. I love my parents dearly but it took a medical scare to make my dad "tone down" the alcohol consumption. Having two sons and a few grandkids didn't even enter into the equation for him to stop or slow down. I have no respect for this.

Star · 06-15-2005, 11:45 AM

I talk to my parents about alcoholism once in awhile.

I'll never forget how devestated I was to find out that my parents went out on their anniversary to a nice restaurant and shared a bottle of wine after being sober for years. My mother had been sober for at least 18 years and my dad was for about 15. I sat there beside my dad on my couch and cried. I told them both how disapointed I was in them for even having that first glass and how wrong it was for them to go there again. I let them know how their drinking affected me as a child growing up and how proud I was of them when they did stop and now it was all blown into the toilet.

My mother's logic was that they're older now and they can control it now. I told her she was in denial. It was her idea to have that wine knowing full well that all my dad needed was her approval to have a glass for himself. She started him drinking again.

Well, now my mother has stopped again and is going back to AA meetings but my dad is still drinking. He doesn't drink like he used to by no means but he still is drinking and that bothers me. My mother started complaining to me about my dad drinking with his friend and I shut her down immediately. I told her that she's the one who got him back on it, now she can deal with it. She doesn't talk to me about it anymore since I said that and that's fine with me.

My dad used to drink all day from morning until night every day when we were growing up up until he stopped. I used to go pick him up at the bars and drive him home most times when I started to drive. Now, my dad will only drink one or two beers here or there. it's not an everyday thing anymore and i seldom see him drunk.

I'm still extremely disapointed and I think I always will be but my dad does have some sense of control now that he didn't have back then. I still wish he would quit it completely because just the smell of it on his breath brings back a lot of bad memories for me. I hate alcohol breath. grosses me right out.

Vautrin · 06-15-2005, 01:54 PM

I have tried to get my parents to stop smoking time and again. Or at least smoke less, and not smoke the minute they have finished dinner. It is such a joy to eat the last bits of your food, when you are already breathing in the smoke.

So far no success. For my dad, it is the only bad habit that he has. He may not drink, due to his medical condition.