Quote From: the_indianHowdy! And congrats on your sobriety!
Your comments seemed a bit surprising, however, and I even wonder if you were truly an alcoholic. For one thing, when the lady says that "no one comes before her beer" -- why does this strike you as unusual? It's the textbook definition of a chemical dependency! I have 15 years of sobriety, but during my drinking days, I was the exact same way. It does not mean the situation is hopeless, as you seem to suggest. It means she's definitely an alcoholic.
Also, you seem to think that rehab doesn't work for people who aren't begging for it. The truth is, most people in rehabs aren't there because they woke up one day and decided they needed a better life. They're usually there because someone has "forced" them into it - either a spouse, other family member, an employer, the courts, etc. In both of my rehabs, I was just about the only one there who had made the decision all on my own, and in both cases it was a medical issue.
And when you call her weak and say she's to be pitied -- this doesn't sound like someone who has been to AA! Since when does this make someone weak? Of course, she is fully responsible for her bad choices, but when someone is in the grip of a chemical dependency, they lose their ability to think rationally. And that's because their body is screaming for the chemical! If loved ones get in the way, the love gets trampled every time - that's the whole horror of addiction. The love may be genuine, but that's irrelevant.
Finally, on your earlier post, you called rehab humiliating. I had a totally different experience. Both times, especially the second one, the experience was really awesome and, even in an odd way, fun. I went through far worse hell before rehab than anything that happened in the facility, and I ended up making good friends.
The first rehab didn't work for me and there's one easy reason for that: I wasn't ready. I hadn't hit that "bottom", where getting and staying sober was the most important thing in the world to me.
I think rehab is not gonna help her. If she can't even think about her children especially when she has one on a ventilator and doesn't know from one day to the next what's gonna happen to him she needs serious help. To say she is depressed because of it get over yourself. I have a child on a ventilator also and it is a very difficult situation to deal with and I was only twenty when I had him. So for her to use that as an excuse is just wrong. She doesn't need AA and needs parenting classes, to go to jail and she needs her kids taken away from her.
