Woman's battle to beat pain of a childhood ruined by drink

Published on Thursday 8 January 2009 08:50

GIGGLING and laughing, the two school pals jumped up and down on the bed, knocking the covers off and sending pillows flying. Some youngsters might have worried about a parental ticking-off for such a game but ten-year-old Alison* wasn't worried – after all, her mum often happily jumped on the bed with her daughter herself.

But when the bedroom door opened and her mother appeared, there was no smiling indulgence at the school friends' antics.

"She was furious," remembers Alison, now 52. "She got out a strap or belt and gave me a good belting in front of my friend. It was really horrible."

As bad as the pain from the beating was the embarrassment. "It was never mentioned again but I didn't invite anyone home after that," she says.

It would be 30 years before Alison realised why bouncing on the bed was only sometimes acceptable.

"My mother was an alcoholic," she says starkly. "I just thought it was normal, but I realised that her drinking was not just a part of her daily life but it was getting in the way of her life.

"My mum would get really aggressively angry and I would always be, as a little girl, trying to anticipate that.

"I never knew where the lines were; sometimes we would be jumping on the bed and it would be fun.

"That chaotic upbringing gave me coping skills but it meant I didn't learn to trust people."

Unconsciously, she was affected by her mother's problem for decades, with a string of relationships with men heavily dependent on alcohol. It was a pattern she only recognised ten years ago, when yet another relationship broke down. At that point she decided to ask for help – and began attending meetings at Al-Anon, the worldwide support network for relatives and friends of alcoholics, which has seven groups running in Edinburgh.

Now she says she has learned just how deeply her mother's drinking affected her – and how to break free from the cycle.

"Sometimes what people say at meetings is things that I can't put into words or have never heard out loud before and it helped me understand what was going on with me," she says.

And her story is not that unusual, according to Janet, a longstanding member of Al-Anon in Edinburgh, which is holding a publicity drive ahead of a public meeting in February.

"We have wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, even workmates who come to meetings," she says.

"We have people who are living with active alcoholism, who were brought up with alcoholism, who are living with sobriety – because sobriety isn't easy either – and who have left the family home because they can't cope anymore."

She says many people brought up in a home with an alcoholic don't realise for many years just how much of an effect it has had.

"Sometimes they have never addressed what's happened – it doesn't have to be physical abuse, it can be emotional neglect."

As for Alison, the youngest of three children, she believes her family knew there was an issue with alcohol in the home but it was never mentioned.

"We lived on a farm and dad was out of the house a lot.

"He made his own way of coping with it. He would come home at 12 and lunch would be on the table, no matter what.

"It was the same with dinner, which had to be on the table at exactly 6pm. If mum couldn't cope, I would cook and pretend she had done it to make her look good.

"My mum said she had a rule that she wouldn't drink unless she had friends around, so our house was sociable and always full of people. The majority of alcoholics just look like social drinkers, but their lives are dominated by drink."

The notion of self-imposed rules to justify drinking was one Alison accepted as a norm.

She found herself expecting these rules along with mood swings and even violence from partners.

"The last relationship that I had did include some violence. There was a lot of alcohol drunk. There was a rule that he couldn't drink before 4pm so at around 3pm onwards he would get twitchy. Then, with a drink, he'd relax but at some point in the evening an argument would always start and on two or three occasions there was a bit of fighting."

It was just the latest in a string of relationships dominated by drink, including the father of her three children, who Alison left after an 18-year marriage. There was no one incident which sparked the spilt, she says.

"Something just happened in my brain that said: This is crazy, even though it was the same that day as yesterday." It was at that point she ended the relationship.

"He didn't identify (himself] as an alcoholic, but there was always drink around and irrational behaviour and drunkenness. I don't drink very much so I just think everybody else drinks more than me and I don't have a very good barometer of how much drink is healthy. If I had acknowledged what was happening I might have left him sooner.

"My children were pretty sheltered from it, but I've talked to them about it since because I didn't want them to blame their father. I wanted them to know this was a situation I got into and wasn't all his fault.

"In all my relationships I think I liked being the hero, so they could be unreliable and I would be the rock. I was buying into it. I wanted them to be unreliable but I resented them for it. I had a belief that I would put up with any amount of terrible things to prove I loved them.

"Through Al-Anon I realised that was something I had used as a way of defining who I was, that I didn't see myself as valuable as a person in my own right, just for what I could do for other people. I always thought I was quite an intelligent person, but I wasn't acting very intelligently."

Alison is now happily single and living alone in the city centre. She says she has good relationships with her three grown-up children and pays tribute to the support Al-Anon has given her.

She says: "I went to Al-Anon and found that people were coping with similar situations. At first I found it quite strange, we sat round in a circle and spent an hour going round talking about our experiences.

"Slowly I realised I had spent my whole life being there for somebody else. The solution wasn't just to dump the alcoholic, because I'll just go and find another one. I had to look at ways of looking after myself."

*Names have been changed.

A PROBLEM SHARED

AL-ANON is run on similar lines to Alcoholics Anonymous and was set up by the wife of the AA founder.

"There was a realisation that the family is equally affected by alcoholism," explains Janet, a longstanding member of the Edinburgh branch of Al-Anon. "You get this other person when they are drinking. It might not mean physical abuse but perhaps it could be verbal abuse or mental cruelty. You may be coping with a difficult financial situation because of the drinking."

There are seven meetings held across the city, including one which particularly focuses on children brought up with alcoholics in the home.

Janet emphasises that the group does not offer advice. "We don't have a magic wand. You have to look at your own behaviour and find your own solutions.

"But it helps bring things back into perspective and to live one day at a time. And it allows people to share and listen, and lets people pick up what is best for them.

"Potentially, Al-Anon should be a lot bigger than AA because it affects a lot more people – we believe six people are affected for every one person who drinks."

And she says the organisation is holding an awareness drive now because Christmas, with its associated drinking, can often be a flash point.

"There will be people now who are really struggling, having had a horrendous couple of weeks," she says.

&#149 For information on the Edinburgh groups, call 0141-339 8884. A public meeting will be held on February 3 at St Bride's Community Centre on Orwell Terrace at 7pm, where four Al-Anon members will tell their stories.