EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 36

March 2004

  Katherine is a 45 year old recovering alcoholic from Dundee.

I had a very happy childhood; I was the eldest of three children and always felt responsible for the other two; we hadn’t much money but we were happy. I was a rebel at school. I was always in trouble and oddly enough I always felt on the outside looking in and never fitting in with the ‘in ‘crowd – I got on with people when they needed a listening ear, but otherwise I didn’t fit in.

I was brainy but left without qualifications. I’d wasted too much time on fooling about. I definitely have and always have had an addictive nature; when I was 12 I already had to do everything in an obsessive manner, never in moderation. I was only small in stature so I felt I had to jump higher than everybody.

It was a teacher who first pointed out to me how obsessive I was. I’m still like that now. I collect things and have to have the lot, if I clean it has to be spotless; if I read a particular author, I have to read all his/her works.

I remember the very first drink I had was at the age of 12 – my mum used to get Bailey’s at Christmas and I drank a lot, not because of the taste, but because I wanted to know what it felt like to be drunk. Oh dear was I ill. My drinking has always been purely for the effect of the alcohol on me, never for the taste of the drink. I got married at 19 to a man who worked away a lot. I hated being alone. I had never been without my parents and siblings before and I couldn’t adjust to the loneliness when he was away, so I bought cider – that was the start of the real downward slide into alcoholism. The descent was devastatingly fast. The more I drank the more I needed in order to get the same effect. Your body gets used to a certain amount, then you need to increase the volume of alcohol so that your body feels satisfied. In the end I wasn’t eating – the quality of my life started to deteriorate when I was 20 – I became unsociable and couldn’t be bothered with people. I had two children by the time I was 21. My husband was still going away for long periods and I used to sleep on the couch with the babies in the pram next to me because I was afraid of going to bed. I was frightened and miserable. It had been like this from the third week of marriage onwards. In the end I became so dependent on alcohol that the children would bring me cans of beer from the fridge when I was no longer able to get up for myself. Many a time I would put the television on for them, close the curtains and give them sweets etc. to keep them quiet so that anyone coming visiting would think there was no-one in. Yet through all those hugely alcoholic years I always fed my children and kept them clean – my maternal instincts were very powerful.

When I was at my worst, I had to have a couple of cans before breakfast before I could function reasonably. I always had stomach cramps early in the morning – I would obsess about how clean my children were for school so that no-one could say I didn’t look after them well. On returning home from taking them to school I would get through a bottle of sherry – then another one through the evening.

Eventually I was taken into a re-hab unit where I followed the 12 steps programme, following an incident where I had become violent. By then, my husband had left me and my children had been sent to live with him. It was the threat of not getting them back that gave me the kick I needed to face my problems and to get help. Nothing was going to take my children away from me permanently, so off to rehab I went! I had become aware of periods of time when I must have blacked out. Hallucinations and huge memory gaps were becoming a daily occurrence. I remember finding myself wandering through the town with no idea at all of how I’d got there. I panicked and ran home to find the children still tucked up in bed, thank God – but what a jolt that gave me! Anything could have happened to them.

Things started to improve for me when I came out of the re-hab. I’ve been dry now for twenty years but I still wouldn’t eat a rum truffle or eat sherry trifle! I don’t drink apple juice because of the taste being similar to cider.

My message to young people would be ‘don’t drink at all – you don’t know what it does to you and how it can affect you’. Because it’s legal and it’s always in your face and there is not the publicity about it that drugs have.

I still find a have terrible guilt trips regarding my past – sometimes I wonder how my children are so loving towards me. How come they don’t resent the difficult times I put them through? Whenever my son introduces me to someone he says ‘This is my mum and best friend’ I can’t have been all bad can I?
 

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