MY EXPERIENCE AS THE CHILD OF AN ALCOHOLIC

I recently put some questions out on Instagram exploring drinking habits of parents. Off the back of that I received an extraordinary email from Elena who shared her experience as Child of an Alcoholic (COA) as well as raising some tough but important questions about the drinking culture in this country:

•  At 33 I still feel panicked and angry and desperately lost when I realise my mum has been drinking. My pulse races and I feel unsteady. It brings me back to childhood nights, knowing that something wasn’t right as a younger child, realising as an older child that it was alcohol.

• Confronting her to be told again and again that she hadn’t had a drink. So many times she would drive me home from gymnastics, my retail job, or a friend’s house and I could smell the drink, hear it in her voice. She would deny drinking and speed up to prove it. She clipped the curb a few times. I don’t know how she didn’t kill us. 

• When I read about gaslighting, this is what I think of. To this day she rarely, if ever, admits to her drinking. Blames everything on my dad, or on us. Even having been part of AA for years, which places admitting your alcoholism at the heart of its programme.

• I think with an alcoholic parent it’s the lying that’s the worst. You are brought up to trust your mum or dad implicitly. Our culture suggests that we only tell white lies to children, to make something magic or to protect them. An alcoholic lies every day with every part of themselves. That betrayal is what you never get over.

• Which is not to minimise the other stuff. Having an alcoholic parent can mean lots of drama.

• Things often got physical, and eventually, she moved from being a ‘functional’ alcoholic (I can’t stand that term, alcoholics aren’t functional) to spiralling out of ‘functionality’.

• She lost her job in a very public way which included footage on a national tv programme, a court case, nights in prison and several car crashes. And ultimately, the comorbidity (presence at same time as/combination) of alcoholism with other physical and mental illnesses and addictions is really high, which makes it even worse.

• Depression, anxiety and a whole host of other mental health issues can compound the problem.

• Many alcoholics will be using or will go on to use other drugs, prescription and illegal. All of which is to say that life with an alcoholic mother could be truly shit in a multitude of ways, but to this day it is the lying that gets me the most. It’s hard to forgive, and you really can’t build a relationship with someone you can’t trust. 

• When things started to get really bad, I was in my final A level year. It was at that point that I realised no one could make it all stop. As a fortunate child, and as a very fortunate adult, you can get away with thinking that if there is a big problem in your life, the various institutions that we have leap to action and solve it for you. Which thankfully is often the case, and my experiences in no way lead me to minimise the vital importance of these organisations and people.

• However, with parental alcoholism, I found there was no knight in shining armour for us.

• My mum’s alcoholism destroyed our family in a sort of slow-motion car crash way, but no one could really come to our rescue.

• My dad was a stable parent with a job, we still had a place to live. Social services were involved at one point, but she wasn’t ever identified as abusive to the extent that contact would cease between us.

• There were GPs and sectioning, mental health institutions, rehab trips, the police were involved with drink driving and other offences; we had plenty of exposure to people and places that are meant to help and protect. But none of them stopped her alcoholism. How could they? 

• – What’s more, and a really important thing to bear in mind, is that we were otherwise a very unexceptional British family. Our parents had steady, state-sector jobs, we had immigrant grandparents from rural Ireland who worked hard and had children who ended up going to university, we owned our house in the suburbs, we had cars, went to church, had hobbies, were complimented on our manners. In realising my mum was an alcoholic, and through connecting with other COAs (children of alcoholics) as an adult, I’ve seen how alcoholism is one of the most pervasive aspects of our modern lives in the UK. No class, ethnicity, gender or region is immune. 

• – Becoming a parent as a COA can throw up some really tough stuff. I can understand at the abstract level that my mum’s alcoholism was a product of various traumas in her life, as well as genetic predispositions.

• But what about my traumas and my predispositions?

• Added to the general mental burden of becoming a mother for the first time–how will I feed them, will I know if they’re okay, will I still be me, what if they never sleep through and so on and so on–COAs are in that unfortunate group of people who are also asking, how will I make sure this stops with me? How do I stop this pattern of intergenerational trauma and addiction? Or, simply, will I end up an alcoholic like her?

• I’m really confident that I’m not an alcoholic, but it’s impossible as a COA to have an easy relationship with drinking.

• If I enjoy a drink or have more than one, I can’t not worry I’m slipping into alcoholism.

• We rarely have alcohol in the house because I find bottles of alcohol in a home environment, especially spirits, really unnerving.

• I’m one of those ridiculous people who doesn’t like the taste of water, so I survive mainly on tea and recently, kombucha. But I do like the taste of wine, and I want to model an easy, responsible relationship with alcohol to my children when they are older, so I will have a glass of wine in front of them, but no more. I’m struggling to balance making them feel comfortable and staying comfortable myself.

•  I went into motherhood with a ‘plan’ of the type that many COAs would understand, but might seem strange otherwise. If I do become an alcoholic, my sister has promised that she will do every single thing in her power to take me away from my children.

• I look at my sleeping daughter and it seems impossible that this plan will ever be put into action.

• But when I think of my own childhood, I know that not having a plan like this is what’s impossible. For me, after years of chasing my tail academically and professionally over a definition or working understanding of addiction, alcoholism boils down to the lies. Do I lie to myself and others about how, when, and why I drink alcohol? As long as the answer is no, I feel I don’t have a problem. There is so, so much work to be done in the UK when it comes to alcoholism and parenthood. I find the focus on binge drinking in youth culture completely infuriating. While it is an issue, I think the media attention it garners is a comfortable way for the middle class and middle-aged to reassure themselves that their own drinking is okay. Often, so often, it really isn’t.

• I feel strongly that the ‘wine o ‘clock’ and ‘adult headache’ aspect of motherhood is one of the most damaging exclusionary discourses, and little to nothing is being said about it.

• Countless people and types of people are triggered, offended or excluded by the association of parent life and alcohol consumption. And what about the mothers who identify themselves as people in need of a drink? A drink is fine if you are fine. Why promote gin and tonic as a salve for the challenges of 21st-century parenting?

• Alcohol is many things to many people, but never is it self care.

•  I wonder if this might be one of the most unpopular positions you could take in the UK. I’ve often noticed that if you want to make conversation in Britain you comment on the weather, but if you want to make a friend, you joke about alcohol.

• It is (thankfully) increasingly recognised that we can be triggered by discourses around and depictions of assault, eating disorders, racism and other highly charged topics. But reacting negatively to depictions of drinking makes you a killjoy.

• Behind every alcoholic parent, there is a child of an alcoholic.

• These people are under-reported, under-researched, and largely go un-supported.

• They are being lied to by the people they are supposed to trust.

• The foundation of their life is very shaky.

• They feel alone.

• They are ashamed.

• I’ve worked with and researched addicts, and many of my closest friends identify as recovered addicts…

• I always say I can see a reason for addiction, but never an excuse.

• I love my mum, and it’s not her fault. But there is no excuse for bringing children into the world, only to subject them to alcoholism. 

• We need to continue to empower addicts as people who are suffering, and who need help.

• But we also need to collectively assume some responsibility for their children, too.

• Do we mask their problems and ignore or exacerbate their trauma through our alcohol-promoting culture of normality?

• Would it be so hard for parents in the UK to have a really big think about their relationship with alcohol? Or the way they talk about alcohol with other adults and their children? Is it really a ‘buzz kill’ to ask that we no longer promote alcohol as desirable? Is dependency on alcohol really that funny?

 

** For anyone wanting further advice support please head to Nacoa (The National Association for Children of Alcoholics) is a charity founded to address the needs of children growing up in families where one or both parents suffer from alcoholism or a similar addictive problem. This includes children of all ages, many of whose problems only become apparent in adulthood. **