`I stopped drinking last January 2nd, and this is my first Christmas without alcohol. It is difficult not to drink because of all the hype about alcohol everywhere you look. Because I'm an alcoholic, the first thing I see in relation to Christmas or any situation is alcohol. I hear Jingle Bells and I associate it with drink. I'm 47 years old and started drinking at 26 years of age. I did not drink alcohol before that because I was strung out on Valium, Librium and other medications. I was first prescribed tablets when I was not quite 17, because I was very depressed and tense. Over the years, the dose increased, yet I was always depressed and stressed out. Alcohol, for me, was really a cross-addiction so I was an alcoholic from the very first drink I took.
I'm only beginning to realise that my childhood was totally screwed up. My father was a chronic alcoholic - a lunatic when he was drunk. Christmas was terrible. One Christmas he burned down the Christmas tree. I remember my father tearing the kitchen apart - the cooker was gone, the roof was gone. I saw him twisting a bicycle in a knot with his bare hands. When he was drunk and angry, he had superhuman strength.
I used to lay in bed at night listening for him to come home. I'd hear him roaring at my mother and I would get out of bed for a drink of water, as an excuse to make sure that he wasn't hitting her. For some reason, I was always terrified of going to sleep. It must come from my childhood. It's only in the last few months that I have been able to sleep. I was an awful fidget as a child - totally hyper. Now, if I hear a man's voice in the street, I will jump up and go to the window. If I heard a man shouting at a woman, I'd have to open the door and make sure everything was okay.
I was always on a short fuse. It was a vicious circle: I'd start drinking, thinking this would calm me down. I'd have a short - or a double - and it would last for a few minutes or hours, then I'd have one too many and everything would come rushing back, the pain and the past and bits and pieces of childhood memories. And then you get paranoid and away you go again. My partner was often away working, so I gave myself the excuse that I was lonely. Vodka was my preference. I went through a bottle a day and it was nowhere near enough. I switched to cans of beer, because they lasted longer. Shortly before last Christmas last year, things got pretty bad. I was drinking morning, noon and night. I couldn't eat anything; I had problems with an ulcer and a hernia. If I ate I was sick, if I didn't eat I was sick. I'd have a beer in one hand and a glass of bread soda and water in the other. It was a miserable existence.
I was never violent or aggressive towards my daughters, but I was violent in front of them. I threw things and hit my partner and pulled his hair. Last year, coming up to Christmas things really got out of hand and he walked out. And my daughter walked out with my grandson. That was my rock bottom. My big incentive not to drink is my grandson and my daughter. They will be with me again for Christmas this year. My partner is back with me too.
IT's only now that I realise how much I missed out on with my own children. I was always responsible and put the children and home first - the neighbours never suspected I was an alcoholic - but the drink and the tablets killed the good feelings that I had, as well as the bad feelings that I was trying to get rid of.
I have asked my own two daughters whether they had problems with my drinking, the youngest says `no', but the eldest says `yes'. The eldest remembers my moodiness, she was always watching me. She came to an AA open meeting with me and afterwards, there were tears in her eyes. I have said to her, `look, I can't change the past, I can only improve the present so just please forgive me'.
Staying off drink is difficult. I go to AA meetings and read the `Alcoholic's Bible', which is about the 12 Steps, and I listen to tapes about the 12 Steps in bed at night. I hope and pray I never drink again."
In conversation with Kathryn Holmquist