Genuinely so sorry to anyone who has sent me one of the three asks currently sitting in my ask box. I haven't forgotten and I will get to them at some point

I feel conflicted though with how a lot of the discourse about parents who are addicted to alcohol goes online and a lot of the advice I see. I understand that in a lot of cases people were dealing with abusive and very manipulative parents but I feel like often people don't really draw a distinction between that and the alcoholism. I do have my fair share of issues with my dad but he is not abusive or even neglectful and apart from stuff related to the alcohol he has been a pretty good parent to me. I don't feel that it's fair to blame him for an addiction as though it is something that he has done to hurt me personally, and I do think he deserves to have someone looking out for him and making sure he doesn't accidentally hurt himself while going through a tough time regardless of whether he is willing to try to quit. I wish we lived in a society where that burden didn't fall on family members by default, but I also don't feel like people who have an addiction and are unwilling or unable to break out of it should just be abandoned. Maybe I am just misunderstanding what people are saying when they talk about enabling and codependency and stuff but I feel like a lot of people discussing this seem to be conflating addiction with abuse and buying into the idea that people need to get rid of an addiction in order to be worthy of care

After trying to get my dad to go in for his blood work all week to see what is going on with his health and being told day after day that he would go the next day or two days from now because he was too drunk or too sick or could barely get out of bed, he is now feeling fine, relatively sober, and able to walk around normally--and he says he just doesn't feel like going and will go on Monday! And this is after yesterday we went in for an appointment and were planning to do them afterwards but he was having such bad tremors and feeling so weak that he asked to go straight home instead. I'm really worried about him but I guess it's true that you just can't help someone who doesn't want help

Does anyone have advice for how to help my dad. I think there's a lot of issues with how addiction gets treated and I don't want to take away his autonomy but I also am very scared that it poses a fairly immediate threat to his health/safety and I feel a big sense of fear and responsibility about it

Finally managed to convince my dad to go to the doctor today! Apparently he has a number of health issues that could be signs of something bigger so it's a relief that he's getting medical attention. I decided to cancel my trip to make sure he gets to his appointments and eats and stuff.