This blog is my inside look at the mental illness and substance abuse history of a family. It happens to obviously be my family but maybe through analyzing them I can help myself and possibly help someone who reads this.
A couple things should be noted: My goal for this blog is to tell my story, not to evoke pity. My life is rediculously blessed. Also, this is my first blog and I'm pretty much just writing what I have experience with 
I got angry when my mother threw a box at me and told me to "get the f*** out of my house" but not as angry as I was when she started crying because I supposedly abondoned her by going to live with my dad. I know that she was probably drunk or stoned at both of these moments, but it was difficult for me to comprehend how she could act so irrational.
Family History
In 1980 after decades of drinking, throwing my gradmother into walls, and cussing his kids out, my grandfather commited suicide. This always intrigued me because I always thought of the victim as the "suicidal one". Why would someone with a job, a family and what he supposedly wanted (complete control) feel as though life wasn't worth living? As I got older and the events of the summer of 2007 unfolded I began to question if my grandfather had possibly been the victim of something.
After his death, his three grown children and widow went on with their lives. The one son became a doctor of accounting, married and lived a relatively stable life with only brief problems with alcohol. The two daughters both became involved with alcoholic men at some point, sought therapy for depression and were alcholics themselves. One daughter became addicted to coccaine but eventually became stable and has been drug free for many years. The other daughter, my mother, became a nurse, giving her access to pain killers. She went through a 15 year period of sobriety where she worked as a nurse, went to college (eventually graduating magna cum laude), became a single mother and maintained her financial independence.
This always puzzled me too. After 15 years of sobriety, she started taking pills and drinking. Eventually this cost her her job and house. We moved in with my grandmother and over a period of five years her depression and substance abuse spiralled out of control. Her behavior was extremely similar to that of her father without the physical abuse to family members.
Recent Events
In May 2007, my grandmother died. The next day my mother was drunk. In a period of 6 weeks she went to drug rehab twice, a psychiatric hosital once and the emergency room 3 times, once for bronchitis (smoking), once for a supposed heart attack (alcohol withdrawal) and once for a drug overdose.
Her symptoms were that of insomnia, weight loss, complete lack of hygene, mood swings, anti-social behavior, feelings of despair, paranoia, hoplessness, helplessness, intense anger and suicidal tendencies.
My Take
My mother is obviously addicted to pain killers, alcohol and nicotine. Because of these I believe her depression is exponentially times worse. She's always had the tendency to be depressed as do I. The unfortunate thing is that she will sit and think about her past, in terms of the negative events, and re-live them. When she is offered help she'll take it until she is sober (a period of about 4 days) and then go back to her independent ways with antisocial tendencies. Hence creating a pattern. She's not out of resources and she has people who love her. The issue is that she feels alone, or convinces herself that she is and has to take on life with it's grief and pain without any help. Thus, her problems seem bigger to her than anyone else's and lead to the desire for something to "ease the pain".
Physically the almost 25 years of off and on drug use has taken a huge toll. Her teeth are falling out, premature aging is extremely obvious, she has visible veins from poor circulation (a by-product of smoking) along with trouble breathing and a hacking cough.
The Point
Life is good but sometimes there are problems that are impossible to ignore or deal with ourselves.
I have watched my mother basically destroy herself. There is a interesting mix of pity and anger I have for this. I think that in today's society drug use and alcoholism are huge issues. In the drug rehab places there are dozens of people under 21 who probably have been there before. This isn't a story of my mother alone because it is similar in some aspect to every addicted or metally unstable person's story. They are unable to cure themselves but without the motivation to get help it's impossible to recover.
I have to watch myself, just like if my mom suffered from breast cancer, I have to check and re-check myself to make sure that my bad moods or introverted tendencies don't escalate into a larger problem. I believe that everyone has a bad day. But when you have a bad 2 weeks and you are unable to motivate yourself to live life...that can be a huge red flag that there's a problem.
Instead of turning to help, she turned to alcohol, drugs and sex. In a society that, atleast via advertising techniques, equates those three issues with happiness it is a bad situation for people with mental and emotional issues. One problem becomes compounded with another until reality is distorted. I believe that's what happened to my grandfather.
The solution to this would be if everyone were happy all the time lol. Unfortunately that's pretty much impossible. I do think that maybe by talking about mental issues and substance abuse it will prevent a couple people from suffering from it. And perhaps by realizing that our health physically, mentally and emotionally is our individual responsibility, people will realize that their actions effect themselves, their families and numerous future generations.
So by looking at my mom who curses "the disease my father gave me", I hope to bless my future children by breaking the chain.
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Like you, drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family. I think that writing about it is one of the best things that you can do. It helps serve as an outlet for the pain and all the negative emotions. I never used to talk about my family's problems and kept everything to myself. Eventually, I followed the path of many others in my family. The drugs served as my outlet, but I didn't think it was a problem. When I started treatment the first time, they told me that my use was caused by emotional problems that I had never dealt with. I thought this was a load of crap, I told them I didn't have any emotional problems and they didn’t know what they were talking about. Of course, not solving the underlying problems, my use didn't stop there either. It took 2 more years of rock bottom before I started to think there may be an underlying reason. I was much more open the second time around in treatment. The best advice I received was to talk about my feelings, no matter how stupid and small I thought the issue was. For someone to stop using, they have to face up to what made them start in the first place. It's not always easy to confront what haunts us. I hope for your sake and the sake of your future children, that your mom can begin the healing process. Unfortunately, no matter how much you love someone you can't do it for them.