My Mother-in-law is a drug addict and also doesn't handle alcohol well. Anyone have any idea how to handle this?

Avocado1, the same thing happened to my parents after retirement. I had a wonderful childhood but sometime after I moved out of my parent's house they started drinking more and then after retirement the drinking creeped earlier and earlier until it started at 7 am when the nearby convenience store opened. My parents had been health and fitness nuts, but by their late 60s were becoming isolated in their home, drinking all day, bickering, etc. Now after about 8 years of this, both are suffering from the impacts and it's left me in a real mess to try and care for them.

Alcohol abuse among the elderly, I believe, is a growing problem and I can tell you that the doctors do not care. I have approached my parents doctors and the emergency room doctors with my concerns and, even when the doctors know the problem is alcohol related, they just do the minimum and send the patient on their way. The only doctor that cared was an awesome neurologist who really helped my dad, but then when dad started drinking again, the neurologist declined to care for him anymore. It's so frustrating because you see the falls, the lack of proper nutrition, and yes drinking and driving, but there is nothing you can do.

I told people that having my parents live down the street from me, and behaving the way they were (drinking heavily all day), was like having two 10-year olds living in their own house with the keys to the liquor cabinet and two cars. Everyday was the day I expected to receive a phone call that their car was in a ditch, or that they had hit a tree head-on, or, worse, killed someone else.

I really wish the medical community paid a little more attention to this. It seems as if the doctors pretty much wrote-off my parents drinking as irrepairable but yet kept prescribing Benzo's which interact very badly with alcohol. Both of my parents have ended up in the emergency room during the past decade due to the effects of the alcohol on their bodies but they are just given some fluids, electrolytes, potassium, etc., and then sent out the door to do it all over again.