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For a long time I stopped playing AD&D (2nd edition), and my books were left to sit on a shelf. Recently, I have started to play again with friends and family, and we are going start a new campaign with new characters.

I wanted to use more than just the basic races and wanted to use an illithid (more specifically an alhoon) but I can't remember which rule book gives the information to play monsters and the like.

All I need is the name of the rule book, but if you are willing to share the exact ruling of how to use this race of character, I wouldn't mind.

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You're thinking of The Complete Book of Humanoids. However, it doesn't present rules for how to play any monster, it provides only specific humanoid races with the specific statistics necessary to make a player-character of that race. Because of how AD&D 2e's player-characters work very differently from how monsters work, there's no way to systematically “translate” a monster's monster-stats into player-character–stats, and each new race option has to be designed (and playtested) by hand.

Notably, there are no options for mind flayers, and undead are specifically called out in TCBoH as inappropriate for PC race options, making an alhoon doubly unavailable.

That said, if you're the DM and want to provide that kind of option, there's nothing stopping you from looking at the race options presented and attempting to homebrew your own Alhoon option for your players. You're just mostly on your own, then.

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    \$\begingroup\$ The DMG has the most basic rules for playing monsters, under "Creating New Player Character Races". It's very limited and I think TCBoH supersedes it in every way, but it's there. \$\endgroup\$
    – ucbpaladin
    Dec 27, 2017 at 23:21
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The Complete Book of Humanoids has information on some monster races and Requiem: The Grim Harvest which is a Ravenloft book has information on how to make certain types of undead player characters. While they don't have stats for most monsters to use as player characters it should be simple enough to use the aforementioned books, the Complete Psionics Handbook, player's handbook and the monstrous compendiums to adapt the existing information for player character use.

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