Expert: Jan Edward Williams - 10/7/2009

Question
my 41 year old son has been drunk since he was 17
he's had pancreatic, only tried sobriety for a total of 2 weeks . had a wonderful childhood, loving
home.  now i am the object of his hatred. he can't be in a room with me without lashing out for no reason. has convinced his wife i am evil, kept my grandchild away from me. his siblings can not understand why he hates me so much. i beg him to get help, that shouldn't make him hate me so much though, he admits he's an alcoholic, if i don't mention it, he brings up something to get me to ask him if there is anything we can do to help him fight
this disease. he seems to set me up for his rage. just walking into his house to run an errand etc. he will always find a way to tell me to get out. he threw me out of my granddaughters the birthday party by telling me he hated me in front of a bunch of people,  i didn't do anything to cause his rage.  do alcoholics pick one person to thrust all their anger and hatred on?

Answer
Hello Nancy,
What a painful situation for you! I regret you have to experience your son's anger. It is difficult to answer your question with certainty. I can make some educated observations. Alcoholics often use others to give them an excuse to drink, often a spouse, and go out of their way to create a crisis and blame the problem on the person they manipulated into the crisis and then can " drink at them", i.e., blame the person for their drinking. It also may be anger based on your seeking to get him to get help for his drinking. Unfortunately, the alcoholic's primary motivation is to protect his right to continue to drink, and any threat to his drinking is not interpreted rationally. By definition the alcoholic is irrational and deluded as to the reality of his situation not only about drinking but also in his relationships with loved ones. Have you considered attending meetings of Al-Anon, the 12 Step Programs for those in a relationship with an alcoholic (http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/meetings/meeting.html), and have you tried to put together an intervention to try to get your son into treatment? See this site: http://www.intervention.com/ Good luck to you.
Jan Edward Williams, MS, JD, LCADC
www.alcoholdrugsos.com