I can relate! Both my parents were alcoholics and no matter what I said or did to try to stop them, nothing worked! The anxiety and guilt that I held on to for so many years, triggered an addiction to drugs and alcohol, later in life and it was from going through therapy that I was finally able to heal.

We know you love your dad and would do anything for him if he would just be like normal dad's but you can't stop him. He has to want to help himself.

You see what his alcoholism is doing to him but Look and what his drinking is doing to YOU!

You need alot of support for yourself and alanon is a great place to find support:

https://al-anon.org/

You can google meetings in your area.

We will keep you in our thoughts and Prayers. Good Luck.

God Bless

Hi Daniel. Everything you are feeling is "normal" in an alcoholic home. That doesn't make it OK, or mean that you need to accept it. In fact, the most important thing you can do is accept that nothing will change unless your father decides to change himself. I don't know why you're living with him, but I would really like to see you get away from the cruel and negative influence he is having on your life while still drinking. Not just drunk, but still an active drinker.

A sober alcoholic is still an alcoholic. There is much work to be done on one's character after getting sober. Remember, drinking is a symptom of an underlying problem. A problem that you did not cause and is not yours to fix. And even if it were, and hear me on this, you cannot help him.

My father was a late-stage, physically violent alcoholic. My mother's decision to flee across the country (from CA to NY) may well have saved her life, my life, my sister's life.

With my father's alcoholic gene in tow, and wounds so deep they robbed me of any chance at being a whole person, I threw myself into the bottle for decades. It worked at first. Then it became its own hellish prison. I am grateful that I can say today that I've been sober for 23 years and 8 months.

Again, I don't know what circumstances keep you living with him, but my suggestion for YOUR emotional and spiritual health is to move out. You may inadvertently be helping him continue to drink. As long as there's someone to catch him, he'll continue to let himself to fall. If moving is not an option, I would put as much emotional distance between us as possible.

Tolerate nothing. Don't carry him to bed. If he passes out on the kitchen floor, leave him to wake up there in the morning. Shielding us from the consequences of our behavior only allows us to continue doing it. Intervene only when there is a life-threatening medical emergency. If he ever chooses to seek recovery, you can be very supportive of that effort.

Finally, dear Daniel, please keep an eye on yourself. If he's your biological father, you have the alcoholic gene. And the emotional damage done by being raised by an active alcoholic can make anyone want to seek relief in a bottle, however temporary. Predisposition + emotional pain = a real threat of substance abuse and addiction.

As someone already said, Al-Anon could be very helpful to you as you deal with the monster of addiction in a loved one. You'll be shocked and yet comforted to hear other people talk about "shameful" secrets from their homes that you thought only you had suffered. Remember, his alcoholism is his problem, not yours. Your problem is how to care for yourself in the midst of his insanity.

I know it's hard to see a loved one suffer. But ask yourself this: Is he even aware of the suffering that he's causing you? Chances are, he isn't. An active alcoholic is supremely selfish and self-centered. That's not to say he doesn't love you; he probably does. But I bet it's buried deep under his addiction, where it does you no good at all.

He has to get help for himself, and you need to take care of yourself. His behavior has inflicted many wounds on you. You need to be loved, understood, and reminded that you are a valuable person who has much to offer, and you don't have to sacrifice your soul at the altar of someone else's narcissism.

You deserve better than that. I hope that you will try Al-Anon. If you follow their suggestions, your relationship with father will change as you disengage from the insanity. Who knows...he might realize that he has to change too. But regardless of whether he changes, at least you will begin to recover lost parts of yourself that you unknowingly sacrificed as an unwilling victim of his disease.

Wishing you all the best as you navigate your way through this.

Thank u all . I live with him for many reasons, and I think I am going to pick up more shifts at work to stay out of the house

I have been sober for 10 years, 8 1/2 months, and I have nothing to add, Nosidamdanniel, except that, in my humble opinion, there are years and years of remarkable wisdom and excellent advice in MT1's message, above.