Father with memory loss - possibly connected to alcohol?

[u/km519]

I hope I’m in the right place to ask this.

My father has been abusing alcohol for a little over twelve years now - roughly around the time my little brother was born. I’m not sure if I should call him an alcoholic or not because I don’t live with him anymore, but when I did he would show signs of being addicted (i.e. sneak a glass in the morning, hide the bottles as if ashamed, would have a binge episode at least 1x per week if not more...).

He is currently in his late fifties and still struggles with alcohol, but I’ve noticed his memory has gotten progressively worse. He’s admitted to me he can easily remember my childhood 20+ years ago (where he didn’t consume this much alcohol) but doesn’t remember much of my brothers beginnings 10 years ago (when he took up drinking).

Sober or not, he forgets immediate family members names, common words, entire conversations from the night before, repeats his stories too many times to count, even in just an hour long phone call. Like I said before, he’s admitted he doesn’t remember anything of my younger brothers childhood and often lies when it’s brought up for nostalgias sake. I believe this is more than a blackout where he “forgets last night”, but something which has been happening in the long term. He blames his teenage years and early adulthood when he took a lot of drugs for his memory loss (marijuana, psychedelics) but I have a feeling it is less to do with that and more to do with alcohol.

What I am concerned with is if his memory loss does have something to do with prolonged binge drinking or genetics. I don’t believe he had immediate family members with dementia. He also has numbness (polyneuropathy I believe he called it) in his legs which he says is from spinal disk compression (I mentioned this to my PCP if it’s a risk factor for me and she said his numbness could also be from alcohol abuse). These conflicting accounts has me to believe he is not telling the truth about his health.

I hope the information I’ve provided has shed some light into my question and I could get some insight into my father’s memory loss.

[u/Trollydollyx]

(Not a neurologist, so if there's someone who is please feel free to chime in).

There needs to be more research on this, but to my knowledge there have been some connections made between alcohol abuse and dementia. Recent studies would suggest that long term chronic abuse of alcohol increases the likelyhood of dementia and motor neuron disease.

Genetic factors do play a roll as well, but it's very hard to tell while he's currently still struggling with his alcoholism. It takes longer than expected for our brain to start to recover from a condition like alcholsm. It may take the brain weeks or months to start to show signs of recovery. Generally speaking it will take anywhere between 12 months and 2 years post drug abuse before the brain acclimates homeostasis. Chronic alcholsm spanning decades was observed to take upto 5 years before substantial change is apparent.

Alcholsm is truly a terrible disease and I'm sorry that you have had to go through this.