Hi everyone
My mother, who has VD, got to the point where she was consuming far too much alcohol. If it hadn't been a problem, I wouldn't have interfered, but she has also had severe arthritis for 45 years, resulting in serious mobility problems, and the amount of alcohol she was drinking ... up to a bottle and a half of wine every day ... was making her very prone to falling. That, plus the fact that she was on a nasty drug called methotrexate which makes your liver more vulnerable, made her regular consumption of that much alcohol very dangerous. She also got very argumentative and quite nasty when she'd had a lot to drink.
Once the VD set in, she completely lost track of how much she was drinking - would swear that she'd only had one or two glasses when, in fact, she was onto her second bottle. The doctors kept telling her she needed to cut down, but she wouldn't, often starting at 4pm and drinking through the evening. When challenged, she said it was "her only pleasure in life".
So I thought I'd share our strategy, which has worked very well, in case anyone else is experiencing the same problems and at their wits' end, as I was a few years ago.
Firstly, we started telling her that it was dangerous to have alcohol in her stomach before she had her evening medication, and that she had to wait for half an hour after she had her pills. That caused a number of battles, pretty much every evening for 6 months, but continual reinforcement finally got the message through and she stopped drinking before 6 or 6.30pm. Eventually, she started regulating herself with regard to time.
At the same time, since we were now doing her shopping for her, I started buying much lower strength wine. She always used to buy 13% proof, at least, but I started buying Tesco's 10.5% proof, which helped a lot.
Once she had got used to the lower alcohol content, I gradually started replacing some of the wine in each bottle with alcohol-free wine, pouring the rest into an empty bottle, and then topping it up with alcohol free as well. We're now up to about a quarter of a bottle alcohol-free, which makes each bottle about 8% proof.
Thanks to the dementia, she hasn't noticed, and so is still able to happily drink 4 or 5 glasses a night without getting so drunk she falls down or risks liver damage. Fewer trips to the hospital, fewer arguments, and she still has her little 'comfort' of wine in the evening.
I'd love to hear from anyone else who has experienced this problem, or found other ways to address it without upsetting the PWD.
Hugs
Jo
My mother, who has VD, got to the point where she was consuming far too much alcohol. If it hadn't been a problem, I wouldn't have interfered, but she has also had severe arthritis for 45 years, resulting in serious mobility problems, and the amount of alcohol she was drinking ... up to a bottle and a half of wine every day ... was making her very prone to falling. That, plus the fact that she was on a nasty drug called methotrexate which makes your liver more vulnerable, made her regular consumption of that much alcohol very dangerous. She also got very argumentative and quite nasty when she'd had a lot to drink.
Once the VD set in, she completely lost track of how much she was drinking - would swear that she'd only had one or two glasses when, in fact, she was onto her second bottle. The doctors kept telling her she needed to cut down, but she wouldn't, often starting at 4pm and drinking through the evening. When challenged, she said it was "her only pleasure in life".
So I thought I'd share our strategy, which has worked very well, in case anyone else is experiencing the same problems and at their wits' end, as I was a few years ago.
Firstly, we started telling her that it was dangerous to have alcohol in her stomach before she had her evening medication, and that she had to wait for half an hour after she had her pills. That caused a number of battles, pretty much every evening for 6 months, but continual reinforcement finally got the message through and she stopped drinking before 6 or 6.30pm. Eventually, she started regulating herself with regard to time.
At the same time, since we were now doing her shopping for her, I started buying much lower strength wine. She always used to buy 13% proof, at least, but I started buying Tesco's 10.5% proof, which helped a lot.
Once she had got used to the lower alcohol content, I gradually started replacing some of the wine in each bottle with alcohol-free wine, pouring the rest into an empty bottle, and then topping it up with alcohol free as well. We're now up to about a quarter of a bottle alcohol-free, which makes each bottle about 8% proof.
Thanks to the dementia, she hasn't noticed, and so is still able to happily drink 4 or 5 glasses a night without getting so drunk she falls down or risks liver damage. Fewer trips to the hospital, fewer arguments, and she still has her little 'comfort' of wine in the evening.
I'd love to hear from anyone else who has experienced this problem, or found other ways to address it without upsetting the PWD.
Hugs
Jo
