What is your "bottom"

You hear this question a lot when getting sober. People what to know what your turning point was. How did you finally pull yourself up from the pit of alcohol and realize you needed to change. Some unfortunately have to loose everything or get within reach of death to understand the wake of destruction that is their life. For some the bottom is the rabbit hole and occasionally you land in a falling chair, cradled for a moment only to slip forward and free fall again never coming to rest on the ground.

I was taking with my husband about my bottom and got on the subject of my mom and how she hasn't hit bottom yet. She has had everything taken from her. Or at least what I would call life taken from her. She hasn't passed away, more like suspended in a world of co-dependence. Because of the damage she has done to her body with drinking she will, for the rest of her life, be codependent on someone. She went from age 50 to 75 in one night.

When I was growing up my mom and I had some hard times, but typical teenage rebellion stuff. She was strong. She worked her way up in a Male dominant industry. She balanced 3 kids, work, and she took care of my Great Grandma till the day she died. She had energy and life. My mom had some demons though. Her mom passed before I was born and then her Dad due to drinking, smoking and a broken heart. She married young and struggled, but for the most part we had a great middle class life. I don't think she even drank until I was in my early teens. Then the wine nights, going out with friends, and beach trips with the girls started. I know it was her escape. I get it I was there.  Over the course of 10 years she slowly sank deep into a cycle of drinking. I was long gone and on my own before the real destruction started by unfortunately my Brothers were wittiness the worst. Growing  up as a teenager with a mom who drinks is like winning a ticket to an all you can drink carnival. My brothers thoroughly reaped the rewards of my moms belligerence. Over the years I would come home for a week at a time. We would sit and party by the pool. My parents house became the oasis vacation home. We would spend an entire week drinking beside the pool by day and bar hopping by night. My mom would hang with us and that was awesome. We didn't realize how much she was drinking because we were all drinking. For us, it would stop as we returned back to our normal work schedule and my mom would continue the daily party without us. Finally over the years as kids entered our lives we started to notice how much she was drinking. She came up to visit once and I was cleaning the room she was staying in and found a 12pk of empty beer cans hidden beside her bed. I thought that was so odd. We drink openly in my house. I didn't care how much she was drinking why did she feel she needed to hide them. But that fact she was hiding them was the beginning of all the red flags we would see over the next few years. Starting with my phone conversations with her.  They became repetitive and we would often have the exact same conversation the very next day. My siblings all talked about it but what could we do. Her drinking progressed more and more until she finally had a seizure. Which wasn't the first one she had....we finally figured out the black eye she had a few weeks ago wasn't because she tripped over the dog, the broken rib she got wasn't because she miss stepped. She was having seizures causing her to black out and no one was there to see them. She hid them with excuses. Actually I don't think she even knew she was having them. I think she just woke up and had to tell my dad something.
One night I got the call at work she was in the hospital. She had basically stopped eating and was living on Vodka and her body was shutting down. Theres a lot of emotion you go through when you hear something like this......WTF comes to mind. Your angry, sad, scared, etc. I can only imagine what my dad was going through, a nondrinker. The next month my mom was in a rehab facility. To this day she still will not admit why she was there. How much more Bottom can you reach. Hindsight revealed many more red flags and my brothers, sister and I went back through the time line and analyzed everything over and over. But really what could we have done. She was the master at drinking and nothing we would have done would have changed that.

 Even knowing and seeing the events in front of my face and watching what could be the potential of my life I still chose to drink. I had an ego feeding my mind nonsense of "I will never be that bad" "I will know before I get that bad". Well the last part was true. I was finally able to say "I don't want to get the bad, I need to change" I didn't need to self destruct and collapse my family to hit bottom and for that I'm thankful.