(no subject)

[poison-parlour.livejournal.com]

Has anyone else had their family use their mental illness as an excuse for their own bad behavior? About 9 years ago now (wow... that's a long time...) my mother and her now husband were starting up a business and under a lot of stress. To cope with the stress my mother started binge drinking but when I reacted in a negative manner I was accused of being unreasonable and my disapproval was blamed on my mental illness.

Now, I admit, I was very, very sick back then but my mother was drinking so much that she was coming home, throwing up in the drive way and then falling into a drunken stupor in bed. It was so bad that she didn't remember a thing from the night before. But my disapproval and unhappiness about her behavior was blamed on the fact that I was sick.

There were times when things were because of my illness but my disapproval most certainly was not. I had attachment issues and if I didn't know where my mother was late at night I was terrified - what if something had happened? What if she was in an accident? I lost my father when I was a month shy of 7 and have, since then, been absolutely petrified of losing my mother. I still am, despite living on the other end of the continent and being a lot healthier these days.

But blaming everything on a mental illness is just a cop out. It was their way of excusing their bad behavior.

I count myself lucky that I did not, in those formative teen years, follow their example and start drinking my problems away. Even today I don't much see the point of alcohol and only drink if someone else is paying (I'm a cheapskate) and I have never drank so much that I cannot recall what I did.