Is past extensive cocaine use and alcohol abuse treatable?!

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

hi rolfe
your mom sounds so like a girl i know, she is 52, 2 girls, 22 and 20, she was/is into cocaine, loves her beer and smokes cigarettes and pot. she claims to be ""clean"" for months but you can never rely on that, you can't or have a hard time believing them. she claims to want CA cocaine anonomous, and AA alcohlics anonomous, but she meets and befriends people that enable her behaviour.

this girl is also paranoid and can not hold down a job or does she want to, sounds a lot like your mom. the thing i'm noticing is that you sound like you are developing or are into a co-dependant relationship. if you don't have the support group or haven't looked into co-dependancy, then you need to do some research into the subject. its pain full and frustrating as i'm sure you love your mom, as i do this friend but i couldn't ""help"" her. i say ""help"" because we can't help them, we get sucked into the whole addiction , ocb < obsessive compulsive behaviour, i would say that you rolfe need to know that you may be enabling your mom out of sincere love, but she is using your good nature to justify her own behaviour. i'm not saying you don't love her and she you, but its an addicts mind here, forget who she was, because she's not that person all the time, maybe she is that person some of the times and that is what we hope they will become again.

i know that with my friends continued drinking and pot smoking and maybe even cocaine use, i had to distance myself, even though when we got together it was nice for a few days, her behaviour went to the familiar. she was constantly threatening "i want drugs", cocaine, cuz she was smoking the pot. in any crisis that was her refrain,"i want drugs" , was that her cry for help or was it real?

in additon to her addiction and ocb's, she claims many medical conditons, fibromyalgia, arthritis, thinning hair, insomnia, low appetit, constipation, hemmoroids, she feared being around people. she was not capable of simple chores, clothes washing, cleaning the house, shopping, even going out.

recently a good fiend of mine has been seeing a guy with gambling ""addiction"" whichhe doesn't see as a problem, and is self treating bi polar disease, she feel into the enabling hole with in 2 months. as we talked she realized that she was changing and becoming the enable co-dependant, she had no clue at the time we spokee, but slowly she's realizing what was beccoming of her.

good luck with that and take care of YOURSELF as you attempt to care for mom ..

It sounds like she has a personality that is very prone to addiction. She sounds like she may have other issues as well, which might benefit from professional help.

You can recover from addictions, but they don't really go away, in the sense that you cannot resume use of a substance to which you've previously been addicted without running the very real risk of falling into addiction again. Thus, alcoholics (for example) remain alcoholic for life, even though they may recover from their alcoholism by abstaining permanently from alcohol. A recovered addict is, for all practical purposes, the same as anyone else, except that he can never touch the substance to which he was previously addicted without the risk of a major relapse.

Try having her checked at a mental health clinic, she may be depressed, or have anxiety, or something treatable. Wellbutrin can break any habit, smoking, alchohol, it has some nasty side effects like it breaks every habit you ever had, you eat differen't foods, can't look at a cigarette, and have to relearn to love your loved ones, at least it was so with me, I only took it for 3 days, quit cigarettes for three years...bring her to a clinic and see if they can help her, is my suggestion. And make sure she eats healthy foods, taking vitamin c can help detoxify the nicotine of the cigarettes.