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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes! Huge help for me. I'm sorry you are going through this. Realize though, that your mom is an alcoholic and she's not abandoning your brother. She's choosing her addiction over him, as all addicts do. 
Your brother will be better off with his dad. She's no mother to him. 
Any "help" you offer her will be enabling unless she's in treatment. Unless she's ready to do that, tell her you will have zero communication or financial support with/for her. Stick to it. It's SO hard, but you have to protect yourself.
Please see a therapist and stay strong. [/quote]

I think her desire to take the easy way out and move nearly 600 miles away from him so she can live off me IS abandoning, though. If she signed over full custody but at least stayed in the area so she could visit him, or try to do better so he would want to maintain a relationship with her, I wouldn't consider that abandonment. She literally just wants to hand him over to his dad and then come live in my basement though so she doesn't have to deal with his problems with her drinking or answer to his dad or be responsible for ANYTHING. It's her pattern - scorched earth, then find someone who will scoop her up and take care of her so she doesn't have to deal with the fallout. [b]I understand the nature of addiction[/b] and have tried to be understanding of her limitations because of it but I cannot believe she would not only give up custody but intentionally move so far away she would never see him or be there in any meaningful way. He's 11; this would wreck him for life. [/quote]

I do NOT mean this in a snarky way so please don't take it that way.  You clearly do not understand the nature of addiction.  In your posts, you are still railing against your mother's behavior, you're angry with her, appalled by what she's doing and trying to understand how she can do what she's doing.  You don't understand addiction.

I agree with the PPs that a good counselor can really help you out.  Hugs.[/quote]

No, truly, I do. I was on the Lamar Odom thread discussing addiction. I get it. But I cannot support her in doing this to my brother. She's gotten away with so much. She's been sent to rehab- didn't work. AA didn't work. Enabling doesn't work. I am 30 and feel like I have been taking care of her since I was 11. Thank God for my mother in law or I would not feel like I had a mom. I GET addiction and I have given her so much leeway because of that and it's only made things worse for my brother. There is the reality of her addiction and also the fact that her base personality is selfish. She never put my sister and me first, and she refuses to do it for him either and he's all alone in it. His siblings are grown and gone. The other time I posted about her I was torn into for "enabling" her because I explained I help her because of her addiction. It's reached the end of the line though. I can't give my complicit blessing in what she does by helping her or excusing her. I GET she's an alcoholic but at this point, she isn't the one who ever pays for her actions, it's everyone else. Her addiction is no longer going to earn her a pass. [/quote]I think you DO 'get' addiction by virtue of living with one, but haven't yet 'got' how you need to respond to it, for your own sanity. I think a therapist can help you move from recognition to response[/quote]

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