Hi all, I’m new here and usually just view the message boards. I lost my dad in October 2025 to an alcohol overdose, he was 44 and I’m 24. Growing up I can’t remember a time where my dad wasn’t dependent on alcohol, one of my first memories is being stood in the kitchen while she cried and shouted at him because he was urinating on the kitchen carpet thinking he was in the toilet. My mum and dad divorced when I was 7 and I decided I wanted to live with dad because I felt I needed to look out for him and felt like my mum was abandoning him, my 2 little brothers also lived with me and dad and they were very young so most of my childhood was spent being a parent to my little brothers and my dad when he was drunk. He remarried when I was 10 and I was relieved at first but soon found out she was emotionally abusive and really spurred on my dad’s addiction to make him more dependent on her. From 10-16 was just chaos (I witnessed a lot of domestic abuse and was the mediator) and I went to a boarding college at 16 to get away from it all. We were never allowed to say he was an alcoholic outside of the house although everyone knew, no one helped us though. I was still very close with my dad but never moved back home and had a baby and got married when I was 23, the years up until his death his alcoholism was hidden from me by his wife and my brothers because they knew how much I hated it and I was always on his case. I didn’t know he was still drinking that much as he would always tell me he’d stopped and I was so busy with my own child I believed him. He died in his sleep last October which was a complete shock and no one understood why. Until the post mortem was released and his wife had given statements in it saying he was drinking a litre of straight vodka a day and was drunk the night he died, but she has never admitted that directly to me. His death was ruled to be as a result of intoxication after they did toxicology. And now I’ve cut off all contact with his wife.

I’m really struggling with guilt because I feel like I could’ve saved him if I’d known. Or I should’ve atleast tried and looked close enough to know he was drinking so much still.