[chicomandell]

Hello all,

I'm new to this site so I hope this is the right spot to post this. I've been scouring the internet for the past few months and stumbled onto this site. Tons of useful info I've been reading just lurking behind the scenes. I wanted to describe a situation I have been dealing with lately with my parents, specifically my mother, over the past few months. Sorry for the long post, but quite a bit has been going on so figure the more info I provide the better someone might be able to provide some insights.

I live out of state from my parents, but I do call them quite often to check in and as far as I knew everything was going fine. One day my mom calls me up and tells me that my father is coming down with Alzheimer's (it runs in the family) and that he is self medicating with some kind of illegal drug. She also said that he might be "running around" with another woman or women.

Now my father is only 58 years old. My father is very straight laced. According to him he has never even tried any kind of illegal drugs and rarely ever drinks. Also my mother is the only woman he's ever been with, and he's never shown an interest in other women. He's not the type to point out a good looking woman walking down the street or anything like that. So what she said didn't make sense. But my mom has never been one for exaggerations so it's hard to know what to think at this point.

The relationship between myself and my father isn't the greatest so calling him up and accusing him of all this was not high on my list of things to do. So I tried to get more information out of her over the next few days. The more she told me the more things seemed far fetched.

She said that my father had hooked up with a bad crowd and that he had them living under their house (a crawlspace that is less than 2 feet high). She said that my father was signaling them to drop off his drugs by turning the outside lights on when my dad would lock up for the night. Also that my father was constantly playing with his phone, but when we checked the phone bill there were no calls and text messages (other than the ones to her and myself). They have ancient flip phones so not like he would be accessing the internet on there or sending emails. Besides my father is the last guy in the world to send an email or anything like that. He'd be hard pressed to turn on a computer, much less actually use one.

I should also point out that my parents are constantly together. She takes him to and from work, and my father never goes out on his own with friends or anything. So my question to her when would he be doing any of this?

My mom insisted he was doing this in the middle of the night. But she had no proof. She never saw him getting up or woke up in the middle of the night to see him gone. My father wakes up for work around 5am. So I don't think he would last very long if he was up all night partying and then having to work all day. My parents do go dancing on the weekends, but my mom is always with him.

So this continues for a few weeks, with her stories becoming more and more fantastical. Then one day she calls me from the police station saying that someone was outside pounding on the side of the house. She picked up her stuff and the dog and took off. She went and stayed with my aunt for a few days.

So at this point I called my father and told him about the whole thing. He sounds normal and says my mom has been having problems for the past few months due to some issue that happened one time when they were out dancing. My father is quite good at dancing, and gets a lot of compliments when they go out. I guess some younger girl came up to my father and said she enjoyed his dancing and my mom got really angry. This seemed to be the catalyst to all of this behavior, when looking back at the time line. My dad said that my mother had stopped eating to lose weight because she was afraid my father wanted a younger woman. My father said he almost had to beg her to eat at times.

So after staying with my aunt they met up at church and then with my aunt and uncle present sorted things out enough that she was willing to go back home. Since then things seem to be OK for the most part, but she still seems to believe in this reality of mysterious people and that my father is doing some kind of drugs. I talked to my aunt and she also seems to think it is my mom with the problem and has said that my father seems normal.

Both of my parents are the type that hate going to see doctors and down right refuse to go get checked out. I'm sure the next step is to get a professional involved but I really have no idea what to do next. Any insights into any of this behavior would be much appreciated.

Chico

[Travelinglady]

Well, from what you have said, it does sound like she is delusional. I can't diagnose her, though.

The problem, of course, is what to do about it. Do you think you could at least get her to her regular doctor? She might even have a medical brain problem such as a stroke, a brain tumor, etc.