How Addiction Happens

Question by Brandino: Need outside help on how to describe parent’s behavior?
Ok so for years now, I’ve lived with a very stressful home life. I was needing help from someone looking at the situation from the outside and what they could see to be the problem with my parents. I know this is long, but I really need someones help. In my last paragraph I said that I really can’t thank you enough if you read all of this. This is literally years worth of problems that have all built up. I would appreciate anyone’s help. So here goes…

We used to live in a house that my parents bought after we had lived in a few rented houses. Over time, they started getting behind on payments. I only noticed this when I saw letters for the mortgage laying on the table, then later the sheriff kept coming to the door. We had lived there for 5 years before this started happening. I think my parents (particularly my mom I think) had a bad habit of spending whatever money they had. She financed a van simply because “she’d always wanted one”. In hindsight, I found out that my brother finally moved out at 19 because they kept asking him for money. I had no idea they were doing this to him. He moved in with my aunt that lived in South Carolina, and again, I found out later on that they kept contacting him to ask for money.

So eventually they put the house up for sale and we moved into the apartments we live in now. We lived here for a whole year before anything major started happening to me. They came to me one day and asked to borrow a little money until the next Friday when my step-dad got paid, then they would give it back to me. And so it started…

They came to me again and asked if they could borrow some more to buy groceries. I let them borrow some because I felt like they were my parents, they’d pay me back. Until they asked me again. Then again. And again. It got to the point that it sort of became a regular thing. If I was laying in bed after sleeping in on a Saturday morning and heard someone come in my room, I automatically knew it was my mom coming to ask to use my debit card. Eventually I got tired of them constantly taking money and never paying me back so I started trying to ignore them and go back to sleep. A few times, I would wake up later only to find that she had taken my debit card after she couldn’t get me awake. This pissed me off tremendously! So I started hiding my wallet so she couldn’t get my debit card. And what did she do? She began withdrawing the money directly at the bank from the joint account that had her name on it with mine. Once I saw this happening a few times, I finally got fed up and changed banks completely. Before I got the first one closed out, she got desperate by trying to buy some stupid “Work from home” stuff and charged it to my account. Seeing as the account balance was $ 0, it sent my account into the negatives by $ 455 once all the bounced check charges and overdraft fees posted.

A few months later, she finally broke down and had to be admitted into the hospital because of anxiety attacks. While she was there, it was discovered that her prescriptions were conflicting with each other and basically had her in a different state of mind. I went to my step-dad to figure out what was going on. He told me that she seemed to have this “addiction” or complex about having money on her at all times. She didn’t like to be without money which might have explained why she was always taking from me. When she was released, she went to stay with my Aunt in South Carolina (my brother had moved away way before all of this). I tried to help my step dad out with getting them back onto their feet, in hopes that they could sustain themselves and eventually pay me back. I stopped counting their debt at $ 15,000 (I know, I cringe when I see that too)

Anyway, when she came back, she seemed to be doing a little better. So if I can finish this long story up quickly, my step-sister lived with us for a year. The whole time, my parents charged me and my step-sister the entire rent. They still seemed to be spenders, buying things they didn’t need and stuff like that. My step-sister has moved out, but they still occasionally ask me for money outside of rent. They took my DVDs out of my room to put on my step-dads shelf as if they were his. They get mad when I so much as get a bowl of cereal to eat, because they might not be able to afford groceries for a while. They had no sympathy for my step-sister and her 3 kids, even when she was struggling through a DIVORCE!

If you read all of that, I can’t thank you enough! I’ve never really talked about this to anyone and it’s wearing me down. Can somebody please help me and tell me what’s wrong with my parents?
One of the answers did remind me of something: When my mom did work, she would become fed up after only a few months and she couldn’t seem to hold a job. I also found out later that it was almost like she wanted to be promoted or recognized, but didn’t want to put in the work to do so.

I think now that she spends because it’s a way to distract herself from her problems. Like, if she has a nice TV, laptop, radio, etc. that she isn’t in as bad of a situation as she believes she really is.

Thank you for the answers so far.

Best answer:

Answer by 😀
Your mother and possibly your father, have a serious mental problem.

I’ve had something similar to this, but not even close to this severe. It resulted from a fear of working more than everyone else to get less, which was relatively true.

Later on it resurfaced as a way to quiet anxiety that came from living with in-laws and spending was a reason to get out of the house.

If you can find out why your parents feel a need to spend so much, you may be able to get a psychiatrist to help with the situation. Or find some literature on the psychological effects of spending and discuss them politely and kindly with your parents.

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