Christmas dinner worries
My Mum is a borderline alcoholic. I say this because she functions well and only drinks past 3.30pm but when she does drink, she gets so very drunk, manipulative and aggressive. This happens every night. I have long moved out of the family home but she continues to drink and verbally (sometimes physically) abuse my Dad - she accuses him of things, calls him names and breaks his heart every time she gets like it. She has been drinking like this for many, many years now and at the age of 26, I decided to stop drinking because I’ve had my fun with it and also seen the negative sides of alcohol (and I hate, hate, hate those negative sides tbh! It’s nearly ruined my life in more ways than one)
Anyway, I do not drink alcohol but my mother is manipulative and vindictive and will try to introduce alcohol whenever there is a social gathering of any kind and will try to force it onto people to make herself feel better about her drinking. She has secretly added alcohol to dinner before where I watched her pour wine into the spaghetti bolognese and then later deny it at the dinner table.
I am so vehemently against drinking alcohol that I will not even drink those 0.5% non-alcoholic things - I don’t care what others drink but I won’t touch it.
I don’t want to dictate what my mother makes for the dinner but even thinking about this is giving me anxiety and slight panic because she loves to control people in this way. What can I do?
Posted Dec 8, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC