An alcoholic is so much more than their addiction

Hello, I am Tash, child of an alcoholic. My dad was always a heavy drinker and fell into full blown alcoholism when I was about 14. This coincided with his arrest and imprisonment for fraud and false accounting.

I was lucky I had a teetotal mum who looked after me, but by the age 18, I had dealt with a lot of chaos and pain.

Not just witnessing my dad’s decent into full blown addiction, but my parents’ divorce, the prison system, financial hardship leading to our house being repossessed. It was far from easy, don’t get me wrong, but there were good parts.

Living in fear

Layered onto this, my mum lived in constant fear of what would happen to me if she was not around. She always pushed me to be harder than what came naturally to me.

I am sensitive, emotional and prone tears, something she would often get angry and frustrated with me for.

There was also an undercurrent of her reminding me of how hard her life was, and all she did for me. It could not have been easy for her.

Combined with my dad’s illness led to me carrying years of shame, worthlessness, and a general feeling of not being good enough for anyone or anything!

I hid in work and empty situationships

Those feelings manifested themselves in bouts of anorexia, an inability to be vulnerable and let people see the authentic me. I was so afraid if they did they would run away, so I hid in work, and empty situationships.

Coupled with a love of escaping into hedonism on occasion myself to numb the pain and avoid facing my own demons. I was living a life so far from the life I wanted, I longed for someone to love me, to have a family of my own one day. I just had no idea how I was going to get there.

It was only when I was finally honest with myself and owned my childhood instead of running from it that my life started to move in a positive direction.

I so wished I knew about Nacoa when I was a child. Having a safe space to openly connect with people going though the same thing would have be invaluable to me.

I stand in my power

With age, perspective and life experience I now stand in my power. I don’t shy away from telling people an honest account of my childhood. There is no shame, and if anyone stands in judgement I know it is their judgement and I don’t let it affect me.

My dad was not born an alcoholic, no one is. There was a history of addiction in his family with alcohol, drugs and gambling.

His childhood into a fairly poor family in India in the ’50s, losing his sister to a childhood illness. Seeing his brother suffer brain damage because of complications to measles could not have been easy.

Then he came to London’s Bethnal Green one of the most socially deprived boroughs in the country at a time when there was open racism. So I am guessing he had his own demons he was battling.

Generational trauma

See, that’s the sad thing about alcoholism. It so often leads to generational trauma. I would love to have children one day, and hope the generational trauma stops with me.

My dad’s drinking was heavy but didn’t really spiral until I was about 14. Up until then he would always get drunk at family parties, celebrations and the weekend.

But he held down a job, so I guess he was perhaps what they term a functioning alcoholic.

There were episodes where his drinking negatively impacted me. I recall a few times he would have fallen down drunk and come home needing stiches.

Or one time he drunk so much he couldn’t feel his legs, and we had to call an ambulance. Thankfully, we had a nice neighbour who took me in during the mess of that episode.

Then when he lost his job, because of his fraud he lost structure and framework. The whisky glass that would only come out at night started appearing earlier and earlier until it was there at breakfast.

Nothing really gets to me these days

When my dad drunk, he was volatile. He would scream and shout at the top of his voice, usually a load of incoherent nonsense. One time he spat in my face.

Other times he would ask me to borrow a tenner so he could go buy a bottle of The Famous Grouse. There were times he would leave the gas cooker on or accidentally burn the furniture with his cigarettes.

I guess it has made me very resilient. Nothing really gets to me these days. I am told I have a ‘calm aura.’ I think it is a byproduct of trying to not let the craziness get to me.

Then, there was the next day when he was sober, where he would be full of remorse, cry and beg for my forgiveness and for me not turn my back on him.

Protecting my own mental health

I made the decision to stop seeing him. It was too much of a rollercoaster and I never knew what I was going to get. I needed to step away for my own mental health and peace.

In some ways it brought peace, but it also allowed me to further distance myself from it, pretending it never happened, or was part of my story.

I always knew the drink would get him, and it did. By the time of his death as a result of alcoholic ketoacidosis he was living in a hostel for addicts with a carer.

For a man who was once so proud, fully of ambition and life, I can only imagine the shame and despair he must have felt. The end of his life was ugly, he died alone disconnected from family and friends.

I don’t regret stepping away

Looking back, I don’t regret stepping away from my dad, but I do have immense remorse for not telling him I loved him. I was leaving his illness not him.

He also had the grit and resolve to want to get off the Bethnal Green council estate we lived on when I was born to move with my mum and I to our own shared ownership flat in Wandsworth which at the time was safer with better schools, and that gave me better opportunities.

I will always be thankful to him for that.

He had a voracious appetite for life. He lived hard and fast, with a devil may care attitude for the consequences. Sadly that cut him down young.

“Every man got a right to decide his own destiny”

I remember as a child I would always feel so frustrated and angry that he wouldn’t just change, that he chose whiskey over me.

But with age I make my peace with that by understanding as Bob Marley said: “Every man got a right to decide his own destiny.”

As part of my healing journey, I had the help of a great hypnotherapist and found my spirituality. The world works in mysterious ways as they say, because it was only when I met my boyfriend – an alcoholic in recovery – that my healing journey really started.

He showed me it was OK to be vulnerable, to be me. He patiently kept coming back despite me pushing him away through my own worthlessness, so I have seen both ends of alcoholism.

One that cut down, and the other that showed there can be hope and triumph.

If sharing my story openly can help anyone feel less lonely, less worthless, less scared it wasn’t all pointless.

Tash

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