Become an Alcoholic, Marry One or Both — the Fate of Children of Problem Drinkers?
There’s a note in my diary I wrote around age 19.
I don’t know what to do about my social anxiety. I feel like I’m going to have to do something about it but what? Or maybe I can just become an alcoholic…
I was doing a degree which I absolutely loved and drinking a lot. Sometimes I got into trouble with booze but quitting was unthinkable.
Drinking unlocked my real personality. I needed it. And I loved it. I just sometimes drank too much.
Become an Alcoholic
My social anxiety was the only blight on the horizon. Luckily beer cured it. One bottle or half a pint and I felt normal. Confident. Able to talk. Pretty.
Naturally, I brought alcohol into every situation I could. I gravitated towards people who drank like me. Mostly men.
When my female friends said I turned nasty when I drank Stella I recognised their wisdom and made some changes; I stopped hanging out with them when I drank. It was a simple calculation. What drinker wants people around who will update them on what had happened during blackout?
It was ten years after what I now see as a clear warning sign that I began to seriously worry about my drinking.
The word alcoholic, referring to sweet lil me, first popped into my consciousness when I was about 30.
I was in my second unhealthy, unhappy, booze-fuelled relationship. Alcohol dominated all of our time together. We were either drinking, drunk or hungover. I knew I wanted more but I couldn’t seem to change anything. Life was just too difficult to stay sober.
Marry an Alcoholic
I worked hard to try and control my second alcoholic boyfriend’s drinking. I pleaded with him not to get wine on a weekday (we always did) and not to go to the pub on Friday night (we always did.) I was desperate for him to cut down because I so badly wanted to cut down myself.
I had created the most frustrating and ineffective method for drinking less on earth.
It was stressful and unpleasant and I felt insane. Also, it made my boyfriend resent me. It was a super depressing period of my life.
Why did I always end up with pissheads? Why was I doomed to nag men not to consume so much alcohol?
After a particularly upsetting drunken row, the thought occurred to me for the very first time.
Maybe I’m the alcoholic.
I batted it away. And worked even harder to control my drinking.
Or both?
Yes, reader. You guessed it. I am the protagonist of both cautionary tales. I 'married' an alcoholic and I became one myself.
Double prizes!
Growing up, drinking to drunkenness seemed entirely normal. I thought responsible, sober dads were boring.
My dad was the best by far. I mean, sure he wasn’t always consistently good at cooking (though he made a mean roast and excellent lasagne) and he wasn’t fantastic at leaving the pub when he said he would. But apart from that, he was wonderful.
My loyalty to my dad stopped me from seeing him clearly. It prevented me from recognizing that his relationship with alcohol wasn’t healthy. It stopped me from seeing alcohol at all.
How to fix this predicament
The first part of breaking the patterns you were born into is recognizing them.
At 33 I realized I had a drinking problem of my own, completely unrelated to my alcoholic boyfriend’s. I didn’t really believe I was an ‘alcoholic’ but I needed to be around people who didn’t drink, and so I went to AA.
There I found a group of people who were using the 12 steps to find a higher power in order to gain the ability to resist alcohol and find a new way to live. Like most newcomers, I worried it was a cult. Some articles argue it is.
But increasingly I feel like I had escaped a cult to get there. I had been brainwashed to believe that alcohol was essential and life-affirming in spite of all the ways it hurt me. In spite of the ways I had seen it hurt my family.
I felt myself being brainwashed and I felt ready.
Bring it on, I begged.
I needed a new belief system because worshipping alcohol had ruined my life.
If you recognize yourself in this story, please seek help. Therapy if you can afford it. From supportive friends who are sane around alcohol if you’re lucky enough to have them. From 12 step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families if not.
Learn about addiction and how it passes down family lines. Realize you are up against something much bigger than you - it could go back centuries! - and go gentle good soul.
My dad was a wonderful person who I loved and respected. He was one of the kindest and funniest people I knew. This isn’t about assigning blame but about confronting reality. You don’t have to live in the same way that your parents did.
Get support to better recognize your patterns and understand they come from, and then you can finally begin to change them.
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If you need help to cope, you’re not alone.
If you’re ready to try something different, read beautiful hangover and discover what I did to get freedom from alcohol. Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas.
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There is a whole community of people waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.
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Chelsey Flood is the award-winning author of YA novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers and a lecturer in creative writing at Falmouth University. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love, and is working on a non-fiction book about getting sober as well as a new YA novel.
She also has an illustrated newsletter about Autism.