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How to help my child

Concerned-MumContributor05 Jan 2018, 9:19 pm AEDT

How to help my child

Hi, I am desperate to help my adult child who has severe anxiety and uses alcohol to self medicate. We have been to one specialist but he didn’t feel anything was achieved from the visits and felt the meds didn’t help, so didn’t proceed further. We have had been trying to assist our child since 2014 and at times the situation is dire and we feel we don’t know what to do to help. He has driven whilst heavily intoxicated which I cannot accept and have reiterated that to him and that he has no right to put other people’s lives in danger. He accepts that but has done it several times as the anxiety gets so bad he feels he needs the alcohol to go about normal life. I would like to take his keys off him until he is off the alcohol. He realises he has mental health issues but blatantly refuses to get help even at our expense. I have spoken to counsellors myself but they all say he has to hit rock bottom before he will get help. How bad does it have to get. We have other children at home so this is affecting the whole family and is changing our way of life. My current fear is he will cause harm to someone whilst driving or do himself in if he keeps self medicating, as this will increase his anxiety levels. He has no peer support. All he has is us and we so want to give him the assistance he deserves. Any advice of how we can help him would be grateful. We feel we are going around in circles. Thanks in advance.

14 replies

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In response to: How to help my child

Unknown userMember07 Jan 2018, 5:21 pm AEDT

Re: How to help my child

Yes great contribution Outlander.

In response to: Re: How to help my child

outlanderSenior Contributor07 Jan 2018, 6:15 pm AEDT

Re: How to help my child

thanks @Former-Member@candycane

In response to: How to help my child

Concerned-MumContributor08 Jan 2018, 8:19 am AEDT

Re: How to help my child

Thanks @candycane. Will keep that in my mind. It’s just so hard watching and not being able to help someone, especially a family member. Hopefully he gains more control of his life as he gets older.

In response to: How to help my child

Concerned-MumContributor07 Mar 2018, 6:17 pm AEDT

Re: How to help my child

Hi all, not sure why I am writing here but feel the need. Further to my earlier post re my child I am at a loose end and just don’t know what to do. He is suffering so much and now is talking more about suicide. Not sure if he would or he is just expressing his feelings but I feel so scared for him right now. I haven’t seen him quite this way before. He is seeing a GP recently but isn’t taking the prescribed meds. I can’t force him to but he just isn’t improving. I just don’t know how to help him. I would like him to have a therapist so when he feels like this he can go to for advice. He won’t go back to the GP right now while feeling like this. He says he is a failure, of which he isn’t but he won’t listen to me. My husband and I feel so out of our depth with this. I have spoken to counsellers in the past, but they all say nothing can be done unless he wants it to. Feel so helpless. Thank you for reading my ramblings but somehow it helps to get it down in writing. We have no one to speak this to personally as counsellors have advised that is not a good idea to with family and friends as he will feel differently toward them, etc. so thank you for taking the time. I do appreciate it.

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