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Lucie Loves... Health and Wellness // Alcohol Awareness Week: the ugly side of drink and how to get help ~ trigger / content warning: alcoholism / domestic violence / recovery

Lucie Kerley

When did I first think that my dad had a drink problem*?

I need to cast my mind back. But first, why am I writing about this now?

Did you know…? 16 - 22 November 2020 is Alcohol Awareness Week — It's a week of awareness-raising, campaigning for change, and more. 

The stresses and strains of 2020 on people’s jobs, relationships and lives decimated by the coronavirus pandemic can be felt all around us. Unsurprisingly, when feeling the need to let off steam, our natural adult reaction is often to reach for an alcoholic drink — it’s not everyone’s I know, but for many, myself included, it is.

I know that our own wine consumption certainly shot through the roof during the first lockdown — something that I felt very aware of. It wasn’t out of control, but it did make me wonder how easy it is for alcohol to become a crutch. Propping you up when you’re not feeling your strongest, taking the edge off a bad day or mood. With gyms closed, the nights longer, there’s more inclination to drink to pass the time.

3-years ago I was on a flight to America, and – as always when feeling overwhelmed by something – I picked up my pen and started to write.

Alcoholism. A sticky, uncomfortable, taboo subject. A subject that casts a shadow over many a family around the world. An illness that blights relationships, childhoods, whole families, career aspirations and finances and most importantly, health and wellbeing.

I’m writing about this now, because it’s something that, ultimately, has made me who I am today - warts and all.

Over the last 5 rather significant years of my life, events have unfolded in such a way that I’ve begun to tire of the filtered ‘best version of you’ outlook on life. One that is put on a pedestal by the rapidly increasing consumption of social media. Why? because it’s not achievable or sustainable – it sets the bar far too high for anyone’s mental health to endure. It makes people strive for a level of perfection that just isn’t realistic, possible  or affordable.

It was during these last 5-years that a series of life events unfolded for me and really shone a light on this major topic that has tormented me time and time again, since birth and I thought: I need to talk about more ugly topics, the real ones — ones that social media tends to shy away from, but — if approached in the right way — can really resonate.

Alcohol. Alcoholics. Alcoholism. Drinking too much. Drinking to oblivion. Drinking recklessly. Drunkards. Piss heads. Boozers. Addicts. The constant feeling of being let down. Of letting others down. Again and again and again.

Flash back to January 2018. I get a call from my mum. This isn’t unusual, she often calls daily and checks how I am. But this time, something was off. “Lu, your Uncle Paul has been taken into hospital - you need to tell your dad.” Why me? Why can’t she tell him, you might be thinking… Well, at this point, her and my dad have been separated for almost 30 years and are highly unlikely to rekindle anything in this lifetime or another. Something must be up for her to be phoning with news to share with him.

Mum had me at 19. There’s a video of her walking down the aisle on her wedding day 6-months pregnant, me, in her tummy. The groom? My biological father, also a very young 19 years old himself. They separated when I was 4.

My mum and dad had a turbulent relationship. Why? Turns out they had incompatible ideals of raising a family. Mum’s preference: close knit, within a stones throw of my grandparents. His preference: independent, autonomous.

But there was another factor that I believe will have played a part in this not being a marriage made in heaven: drink. It has the power to show the less than flattering side of all of us, and with him, it could bring out the ugly side. Jekyll & Hyde. Utterly charming when sober. The total opposite when drunk - selfish and unreliable.

At 4.5 years old, they finally split. We moved to a new house, a short walk from my grandparents. By now, my dad was no longer a regular in the picture -instead, turning up every now and again for a brief cameo, more often than not, a dramatic appearance. My childhood memories are punctuated by intermittent and infrequent weekends away, my sister and him, mum packing out bags, us staying with him.

But the drinking didn’t stop when they split up.

I lost count of the amount of times that he promised he was coming to see us, collect us and look after us for the weekend. Made promises that never materialised. I lost count of the number of times he didn’t show. The number of times we got our hopes up, only to be let down. Repeatedly. He didn’t phone. Not often.

Then there are the memories of him taking us to the pub, of playing rounds of pool with my sister - childishly amateur. I can still see the two of us now, left to our own devices, playing on the fruit machines or accidentally smashing the lights above the pool table, as our tiny hands tried to grapple with pool cues that were too big and too tall for us – all the while, dad would prop up the bar. Drink after drink after drink. 

Now, I must add, I come from a very loving and supportive family. We have never been rich, but we’ve never wanted for anything either. And for that I am truly grateful.

However, later in life, after a run of bad luck in relationships, with a poor choice of partners who’ve cheated, or left me feeling let down, disappointed or rejected — I often wonder if it’s my formative years, and these “Daddy Issues” that are one of the reasons I sometimes experience separation anxiety, irrational feelings of rejection, and fears of abandonment. I put this post and my thoughts in front of my dad before publishing it wider, to get his point of view of the events from my childhood. I’ve removed some of the things that he contested, and a few of the other memories that this post can work without — but I’ve kept in how I feel, because: remember: nothing anyone says can ever take away from how they have made you feel.

What scares me is this: I come from a family of drinkers. On my mum’s side, we enjoy a social drink, but drinking to excess might happen a few times a year — it’s not a nightly thing to drink to the point of no return. On my Dad’s side: I feel it became something more, when one drink becomes two, and so on and so on until you just end up needed more and more to feel the same effects. Is it escapism we seek? Numbness from life? A confidence boost? A release? I don’t know. But when it’s in the blood, in the DNA. That addictive gene. I do wonder… Could it be in mine? My sister’s?

My dad’s father, I’m told, was a nasty, violent and cruel man, who would drink like a fish and pour any wages down his neck before his family or wife ever got a look in. The story from my dad’s youth shines a light on this experience. When he, as a young boy of 14 years old, returned home once again to the familiar sight of his mother badly bruised, the house smashed to bits and his is two brothers cowering upstairs. Why? Because his father had returned home from the pub after one too many. It is harrowing and traumatic.

I’ll never forget the time we went to visit him. The drink and age had not been kind; he looked shrunken and battered standing there in his tiny flat. Each time we went with Dad to visit him, Grandad would scribble down the dates of our birthdays, and every year he would forget them again. We never got a card or a present. Drink always took priority. Drink got in the way. There was one time we turned up and his face was a map of cuts of bruises; he’d “fallen over” he said, on the way home from the pub. The sad thing is, we were told he was a very intelligent man in his youth, full of promise — tipped to be a pro golfer, and an great accountant - and then he drank himself into the gutter and washed all of those dreams and opportunities away too.

One time, I sat with my Nana and looked through her wedding album. A tiny little thing, with gorgeous black and white pictures of what looked to be a very happy day. I oohed and aahed over the stylish outfits, the coiffured hair. Following the big day, she had given Grandad money to go and buy the wedding album — a sizeable thing, a fitting investment to house their precious day’s memories. Hours later he rolls home drunk, having spent the wedding album money on booze, with just enough change to buy one that was smaller than postcard-size.

Growing up as the child of an alcoholic* (*a label my dad would never give himself, but a point that will have have to agree to disagree on) leaves its mark. You are old and serious before your time - wise beyond your years. Terrified of doing wrong or getting into trouble. a victim of Parentification. It’s a thing I’ve only come to understand later in life, yet feels so familiar.

“Parentification is the process of role reversal whereby a child is obliged to act as parent to their own parent or sibling. In extreme cases, the child is used to fill the void of the alienating parent's emotional life.[1]” ~ WikiPedia

No child should ever have to tell their parent to stop drinking. No child should ever have to be the responsible adult. No child should ever have to struggle to get to sleep at night because their parent is playing music (Crazy Town - Butterfly) on repeat for hours on end at full volume until the small hours, despite pleading with them to stop, whilst their parent gets blindingly drunk. No child should ever have to sneak downstairs and take that very CD out of the CD player and hide it amongst books, so that it will never cause her or her sister a sleepless night again. No child should ever have to wait anxiously for their parent to take a breathalyser test in the morning before they are taken out for the day, because the parent knows they’ve drank to excess the night before and are at risk of losing their licence again. No child should have to watch their parent lose everything because of booze.

Back to my mum’s phone call. It turned out my dad’s brother had been taken into hospital. She had bumped into a lady in the playground when going to collect my nephew. The women used to know my dad too - knew my dad’s brothers. She told my mum she had heard that Paul was in hospital dying of liver failure. Another victim of drink.

I rang my dad, I wasn’t sure whether he even spoke to his sibling anymore - such an estranged family they are.

I told him what I’d heard.

He didn’t know. His silence quickly turning into action.

My dad has been sober now for over a decade. He broke the mould. Escaped its fate. How did he get there? After years of tolerating his drinking, an ultimatum was delivered by his partner: her or the drink. The result? He chose the drink and lost her. It was tragic.

But, fair play to him, he battled with addiction alone and has since come out on the other side. Years later, now 10+ years sober, him and his partner have got back together and he’s, thankfully, not touched a drop since. What I’m trying to emphasise here is that it was only when he lost everything that he finally felt the need to change something, to take a hold of his own life, to regain control, to take action and give up drinking. 

Dad had been aware that his brother Paul had respiratory problems, but his liver problem was something new. He took a trip to the hospital to see on him.

And the sad thing is, Paul didn’t realised how poorly he’d become either. He thought he was going home. That everything would be ok. But it wasn’t - far from it. Paul had cirrhosis of the liver, a very devastating but common side affect of alcoholism and excessive drinking. The doctors said he was dying, and may not even last the week.

My Irish Nana hadn't yet been told. How can you tell a 80-year old woman that she might have to bury her own son? That he drunk himself to an early grave? She found out eventually and was able to say her goodbyes.

Sadly, Paul didn’t make it through – the drink took him before old age had a chance. They buried him at the end of January 2018, in a coffin draped with the flag of his favourite football team, Leeds United. The service was filled with friends and loved ones from the charity youth work he had dedicated his life to. I asked my dad was it like looking at how his own future could have turned out? It didn’t bear thinking about.

That old saying: You can can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. The same can be said for alcoholics - you can beg and plead for them to stop, you can love them to the ends of the earth, but if they want to drink, they’ll drink. You cannot change people, no matter how hard you try, how much you love them. Believe me, I tried.

So what is life like for the adult children of alcoholics? It’s said that many adults who had an alcoholic parent end up also with partners who display addictive personalities. The turbulence of a childhood, the hit of extreme highs and lows, relived all over again in adulthood.

“Many [adult children of alcoholics] lose themselves in their relationship with others and sometimes find themselves attracted to alcoholics or other compulsive personalities – such as workaholics.” ~ Searidge Foundation

It was in later November 2018 when I first sort out a therapist through The Headroom. I was coming out of a very difficult relationship - the first since my divorce, and invested in 10 sessions - once a week, with a psychodynamic therapist to guide me through this period. It was the best decision I ever made. I’d somehow regressed back to childhood and ended up dating a man so remarkably similar in personality and addictions to my own father. As a result, I experienced the pain - all over again - of what I felt like as a small child, trying to stop their parent from drinking to oblivion. Wincing each time he picked up another and another. I realise now why I found this so painful; it reminded me of dad. I wanted to be the one who saved him from himself. But in the end, I had to leave, for staying in the relationship was doing more damage to my own health and well-being than good; I knew I couldn’t be his life raft. People have to save themselves.

If you or a loved one are struggling with alcoholism or addiction please know that you are not alone and there are so many organisations and initiatives set up to help you/them beat this. I have listed a few of them below. Alcohol has huge links to mental health, find out more about the impact of drinking.

Book ~ Recovery: Free from addictions by Russell Brand

Worried you might be drinking too mUcH?

Support for you

If you would like to talk to someone about how alcohol is affecting your relationship or need help to stop drinking, support is available. Following current Government advice, a number of organisations have set up support online or by phone.

Domestic Violence

if you Are a victim of domestic violence and feel in immediate danger please cOntact 999, for eMergency assistance:

Alcoholism

  • The Alcoholics Anonymous helpline is open 24/7 on 0800 9177 650. If you would prefer, you can also email them at help@aamail.org or live chat via their website at www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk.

  • Drinkline, a free, confidential helpline for people who are concerned about their drinking, or someone else's. Call 0300 123 1110 (weekdays 9am–8pm, weekends 11am–4pm).

  • Drink Wise, Age Well helps older adults make healthier choices about their drinking as they age. Their webchat tool offers free support and is available Monday to Friday from 10am to 4pm and 6pm to 9pm.

  • You can join a SMART Recovery meeting online here.

  • We Are With You offers a free confidential online chat service. Available: weekdays - between 10am-4pm and 6pm-9pm; and on weekends: 11am-4pm.

  • National Association for Children of Alcoholics - free helpline: 0800 358 3456

  • Al-Anon - worried about someone else with a drinking problem? Find your nearest Al-Anon group.

Your local alcohol service may also be offering a remote service. You can access these services in a few key ways:

(Resources for stopping drinking — resources & links taken from the Alcohol Awareness website.)

Thank you for reading. I hope you’ve found this post helpful. Please do share with anyone who might need to read this right now.

Stay safe x