Edges Magazine Issue 36 - I still Struggle With Alcohol

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 36

March 2004

Anne speaks to Edges
I Still Struggle with Alcohol

As a teenager I didn’t actually drink. In fact the first time I was introduced to alcohol was when I went out for a meal with my mother and father-in-law and being from a big family we didn’t drink wine, we never had wine in the house. They bought some sparkling wine because they knew that I wasn’t used to it.

Then my husband and I started a family and we bought a business and money was a bit more easy even though it wasn’t money to be spent really, it should have gone straight back into the business. But we used to buy wine with the meal and at week-end we’d buy spirits. And I was used to the taste of alcohol by then I didn’t realise the effect it was having on me and so I used to drink as much as my husband, which was obviously wrong for a woman or for anyone to drink spirits in the way we were doing. It didn’t affect me for a long time, quite a few years. We had a business for 15years and I’d say for the first twelve the alcohol never ever affected me, it was the last few years, when the trouble started. Money wasn’t right, bills were coming in that we found hard to pay. So I think then I drank to stop the feeling of not being able to cope with bills and everything, which we hadn’t had before. So I was drinking to kill the pain of thinking “what am I going to do now. How are we going to cope? “

I had two teenage children by then and everyone knows it isn’t easy, they want to keep up with everything. They’d been used to getting everything they wanted. Tony and I had been able to provide things, named things and things like any teenager wants. When it came that we hadn’t got the money to provide it, I don’t think they actually put the pressure on us I think we put the pressure on ourselves, especially me. I hadn’t been brought up to have things because I come from a big family five sisters, one brother and the things we got we just passed down, we didn’t need to have the money there to buy things, but we brought our children up to provide and the drinking - I didn’t realise at the time it was affecting me and making it an illness which it was. I was using it as a crutch to try and keep things as they were. So I ended up with a problem. I was drinking before I went to work just to get through the day.

The very first time when I really found out I had a problem was when I couldn’t actually write on a birthday cake which I was doing. So I told the staff who worked for me that I needed some new tubes but it wasn’t new tubes that I needed to write the cake, I needed a drink to stop me shaking, because I just couldn’t write and I’m afraid that was one of my problems. I’m a bit of a perfectionist as well, if I can’t do anything right it’s no good.

So I went and bought a drink just so that I could finish this birthday cake off. Then I went to see my G.P. I had to go private to see her; she’s like a mental health doctor, psychiatrist, which I did go to see. My husband knew then that I had a problem. So I went to see the psychiatrist then I went into a clinic, I was supposed to be there for nine weeks but I ended up staying for six. I ended up having a drink whilst I was at the clinic and obviously you’re dismissed automatically.You cannot be in a clinic and have what you’re there for obviously, drugs or alcohol, but this was an alcohol clinic. And after six weeks I came home, I went back to work but I wasn’t right and I was still drinking, putting my family through loads of pressure, I can remember my daughter then was at senior school and one night I went for a drink and I didn’t go back home. So my husband and my daughter were looking for me frightened that something had happened and all I was doing, I can still remember, I was sat in what’s called a park hiding behind trees drinking and my daughter 13 years old was looking for me. I think even though she’s twenty two now she still cares for me, but I still remember that time when she was looking for me at 13 and I’m supposed to be the mother.

And yet I know I’ve got to stop this feeling, I don’t know how to do it. I feel like when I go to church I ask forgiveness and to help me but I can’t quite forget the feelings that I’ve put people through and I don’t feel like I’m going to get right until I can forgive myself really. I just hope that I’ve helped my son and daughter Gary and Emma to know about alcohol or anything that’s not right whether it’s drugs or alcohol, I don’t know it’s all the same, and I just hope that I’ve given them a lesson to not use it. Well I don’t mind, I think as a social drink it’s not bad, but it ended up with me from being a social drink to a problem and I think people should know that it does happen. I get my benefit money on a Tuesday, but now I don’t get it at the post office, I have it paid into the ...................

..... bank. I would get it and go to a supermarket and I would buy a bottle of Vodka. In my mind I was just thinking I would take it slowly, just have one, put it away, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t go away, it just kicks. Though in my mind my best intentions were when I bought it to just have one maybe buy a mixer so I bought some orange juice, but never ever got the orange juice into the glass, it was just the vodka.

I don’t think anyone with an alcohol problem can have one drink, people say they can but for me I can’t have one, if I have one then it’s drunk to the last. And I do believe it and I can honestly say, and I have been through AA and I’ve listened at meetings and I’ve heard people say that you can’t just have one. That’s the honest truth you can’t, you can’t have one. I’ve bought half a bottle thinking I’d be better with just half rather than a full one.

Recently I’ve just been buying sherry, I’ve mentioned it to my GP and he doesn’t think that’s a good idea either, because I might drink too much sherry just to make up the amount of alcohol units that I’ve been drinking in spirits. And at the moment I’m still afraid, very afraid that I haven’t given up drinking. As much as I want to, as much as I’m trying, I just don’t know, I feel, I just don’t know what to do. At the moment, my health is not right, I can tell with my weight loss, I’m losing weight on my legs and my strength isn’t the same as it used to be because I’m obviously low down in my vitamins and everything, which is all the doctor gives me now, vitamins to try and get my body back but I know if I carry on I’m going to be seriously ill, and I know this and that’s why I can’t understand , that I know all this because I’ve been in units, I know more about alcohol abuse, yet I’ve still been drinking and I can’t understand, and I just want people, young people to know that it’s not something that you can just stop to-morrow.

If anyone had told me this ten years ago I’m afraid I would have laughed at them. I would never have ever thought that I would have ended up with an alcohol problem, not because I think that I’m any better than anybody else but because I thought that I was stronger and I thought I had the strength to do and stop things. I didn’t realise what an addiction was. I don’t even smoke, but the alcohol, I’m sorry. Anybody any person young or old, it doesn’t really matter, I was in my thirties when I started with the alcohol problem. I was in an alcohol unit when the alco-pops came out and we tried to get them banned at the alcohol unit I was in, they tried to get them banned from supermarkets, because it was bringing the alcohol into young peoples’ lives. It was just like pop, but the alcohol was still there. But no! TV still advertised it, supermarkets put it on the front shelf. They’re still there now, I see it myself when I go in. And all I can think of is young people and I can’t believe they weren’t banned when they first came out about ten years ago.

The alcohol units were very good, I found the life story the hardest thing. In one that I went in for nine weeks you did a life story and I can remember writing my life story and actually it does bring things up that you forget about that’s happened in your life. You had to write back as far as you can remember, sometimes it hurts because you’re remembering things you don’t want to remember. The worst thing I can remember writing about was my father who had an alcohol problem and I can remember him falling out with my brother and I was frightened that he might hurt my dad and that he would go to prison if he hurt my dad. That was one of the biggest things that I can remember, but the unit itself, they make you talk about things and that’s why I think an alcohol unit is good. You talk about things that you put behind you and that you want to forget, but really you need to talk about them. They make you learn about yourself, where sometimes you don’t want to know about some things, you want to forget them. That’s why I think the specialist unit that I went to in Lancaster was good they did make you think about yourself and your family. I think sometimes they were trying to blame things on my husband for my alcohol problem, and I knew it wasn’t his fault, because we’re still together now even after the problem I couldn’t let them blame him, the drinking was my problem even though he still can’t accept it he still finds it hard but he’s brought me here to-day and he knows I’m going to talk about it. But the alcohol units – I’ve been to Manchester twice they were very good, that was drugs and alcohol and I think that being with people who also have problems helps because you’re listening to other peoples’ problems and it doesn’t make yours feel as bad because they have problems and have ended up with drinks and drugs.

Some time ago I had a really bad binge on drinking and I went for days just drinking alcohol, no food and I ended up unconscious and if it hadn’t been for my support team I might not have been here to-day to talk to you. I had to go to hospital, my liver was damaged, I became jaundiced, that was the alcohol and a lot of people wouldn’t have come through it. I was on a drip because obviously I had no fluids in my body, the only liquid was alcohol. That’s why I passed out and if it hadn’t been for my support team ringing my son to get into the flat I’m afraid I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t think I would have been here to-day. I could have died. I really would have died if no-one had got into me. The only thing I’m doing now is searching to get right, keeping up with my support, and help from my family, friends, my support team which I couldn’t do without and make sure they know where I am when I’m away from home. I don’t want them to go through what they had to go through last time. I know that all I can do is hope and pray that I will get right.