Growing Up With a Parent Who is an Alcoholic
I’m a teacher in a secondary school and have done this job for 23 years now. On the first day back every year, the staff have a training day, before the kids come back the following day. There is always training on safeguarding. This year, as like the previous two, they played us a video telling the story of a teenage boy whose dad is an alcoholic. The option is always given to us of not watching, but I always do.
The video is so real for me and it’s almost as if someone is recreating my own childhood. It really captures the feelings I remember of not wanting to go home, of not knowing what I would find when I got home, and of just feeling so alone.
While the video plays, I see colleagues shake their heads, some even get teary-eyed. Then for the rest of that day, I always feel horrible. It takes me time to process having seen that video again.
Growing Up With a Parent Who is an Alcoholic is still taboo
Talking about having a family member who is an alcoholic is still taboo in our country. Yet it’s OK to crack jokes about being an ‘alchie’ or drinking too much. It’s much harder I would argue, to acknowledge that alcoholism wrecks people’s lives.
I’m so grateful for Nacoa even though I am now an adult. I feel more optimistic that things can start to change for the people who are of school age now and dealing with having a parent who is an addict, the stigma that still surrounds this, and the damage that can do you.
Not knowing what I would find when I got home
I can still remember the feeling I had as thirteen-year-old me, coming home at the end of the day, putting my key in the lock of the front door, and not knowing whether my dad would be drunk, sober, or dead when I went into the house.
As an adult now, it really helps to hear the stories of others who were in a similar situation. Some of the things that I think and do now are the result of the way I grew up and I now know that others experienced the same.
No support
When I was still living at home, I found my dad passed out on the kitchen floor after having drunk more than a whole bottle of vodka. I called Alcoholics Anonymous and asked them what could be done to help. I explained that I was the child of an alcoholic and what I had just seen. They replied nothing could be done to help me and the only thing that would bring about any change would be my parent deciding for himself that he would quit drinking and get help.
People who understand
I am comforted to know that if that happened to me today as a young person, I could get in touch with Nacoa. Whilst they can’t fix all of my problems with the wave of a magic wand, there would be people there at the other end of the phone who would understand and who had lived through the same experience.
John
To read more experience stories, go to Support & Advice.
