04-12-2021, 08:39 AM
One in five children in the UK is adversely affected by their parents' alcoholism and the effects can extend into adulthood.
Four women - Karen, Liz, Hilary, and Lynne - spoke to the BBC about what it's like to grow up with an alcoholic father.
"Some talk about the books they have read, or the movies they have seen, but we talk about how drunk our parents were," says Karen.
Karen and her friend Liz met at work in their twenties and quickly became close when they realized they had a common history.
"It is not the same talking to someone who does not know what it is about," says Liz.
"I drank so much alcohol that my 12-year-old daughter had to prepare food"
Black humor helps to deal with horrible memories. Like when Liz's mother sold her toys to have money to buy alcohol.
Or when Karen's alcoholic father went to the pub instead of picking her up from after-school activities.
They both remember how they dreaded the time to go home from school.
"It's so heartbreaking," says Karen. "You think, 'Well, I've had a good break in school, but now start over. I'm going to be very polite and very nice, make sure I don't say anything out of line or give you some reason to insult me."
It was only when she was eight or nine years old that Liz realized that her friends did not have the same concerns and that their lives were very different.
"I thought, 'Wow, do they cook your dinner for you? I don't even eat dinner."
"That's when you realize that it is horrendous and you feel very lonely."
Is our taste for alcohol the result of evolution?
Once his mother spent all the money she received from the state on alcohol, and all she could buy was a sack of potatoes.
"Potato weekend!" Laughs Liz. "We only had potatoes for the whole weekend. So we had mashed potatoes, potato pie, potato chips on newsprint - she had a lot of resources."
Saco de papas
Caption,
"Potato weekend" when Liz's mother spent all the money on booze.
Food, or the lack of it, is a frequent topic.
Hilary, 55, grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Sunderland. His father was a respected surgeon. The family kept up appearances, but his mother drank.
"I remember being in school and a girl in my class opened her food and said, 'Oh, my sandwich has no butter to the edges. It was like another planet compared to my life," she says.
Nobody made Hilary sandwiches. In fact, she had to take care of her little brother, put him to bed, get him ready for school, make sure he had something to eat.
His mother began drinking a glass of wine "while cooking," but soon switched to drinking a bottle of vodka a day.
"He hid bottles, they were everywhere: in their shoe boxes, behind the curtains, and if you turned on the oven you had to check that there was no hidden bottle."
Seeing his mother, elegant and cultured, evaporate was very painful.
"You couldn't talk to her because she was drunk," Hilary says. "It was as if he was not there: he went from being very present to becoming a ghost."
Going to college
Liz's mother had been a model, but when she started drinking she never knew where to put her makeup.
Liz's own life began to get out of hand as a result of the abandonment.
At 15 years old, Liz was in an abusive relationship, and she was placed with a foster family. He survived thanks to his friends, he says.
"I've been good at choosing good friends who helped me, friends who didn't do drugs or drink."
Then when she saw that her friends were going to college, she decided she would do the same: the only girl in social services in Surrey, England, to get it: "I definitely deserve an award for it," she says.
Now 37 years old and with a family, he visits his mother several times a year but does not want to go further: this is one of the reasons why he has been putting off his wedding with his long-time partner.
"I don't want her to come to my wedding," he explains. "But I don't like to imagine her sitting alone at home."
Lynne's mother died 13 years ago from complications caused by alcoholism. Now she is stirring some of her mother's things that are inside a box and that she gathered after doing therapy to overcome mourning.
"The hardest thing is that everyone in the church got up and talked about how amazing he was," he says, recalling the complicated relationship he had with his mother.
"All my childhood memories are marked by my mother drinking."
"I can't remember a day when I didn't send my sister and me to the store with a note: 'Please sell my children two bottles of Olde English [malt liquor] and four cans of Special Brew [ beer] And I wasn't the only girl on the block of public housing who did that. "
His mother could get troublesome when she drank, even violent.
"It was very confusing and sad. Sometimes I would lock myself inside my room. Even now, when I tell it, I get that feeling in my stomach that I want to get out of the house."
Today, his apartment is cozy. The opposite, she says, of the house she grew up in. And this is important.
"I used to feel like I didn't deserve anything that was healthy and good," he explains. But it no longer happens.
After moving to London, he built the life he wanted. She feels loved by her husband and his friends. "I just enjoy it," he says.
He takes something else out of the box: a label from the hospital where he was born that says how much he weighed.
"I was surprised that he still kept it," she explains excitedly.
"Having consciously made the decision not to have children is the consequence of all that."
"I was so afraid of not being able to take care of someone else, repeating their mistakes. Is it in the genes, can this come out of me? It's something I've always thought about."
Need for order
Hilary does have a son, a teenager, and takes the opportunity to be the caring mother that she did not have.
She has also made sure that unlike her own mother, a former nurse who spent her life at home, she is always busy.
"I learned my lesson from my mother," he says.
"I do a lot of sports, and I work. I need a structure."
"I think my mother was lonely and sad. This affects me. I think I could have received help."
She remembers coming home from a Christmas party as a teenager to find her mother at the foot of the stairs with a knife, threatening to kill herself. She had drunk the Christmas port wine and replaced it with soda, which created a conflict with her husband.
Hilary took her mother to the hospital, where she was admitted to the alcohol dependency unit. The next day at Christmas lunch, no one in the family recognized what had happened.
"It was a big lie. We never talked about anything in the family."
Today, he still hates liars.
"And I hate people who present themselves as something they are not, because that's how I grew up."
"The fact that I couldn't talk about what I was like probably contributed to my horrible depression," says Hilary.
Shame and secrets are words that often come out to speak with these women.
They all wish they had someone to talk to about their parents' alcoholism when they were growing up.
Liz and Karen, who take comfort in sharing their stories, had no one to turn to as children, and they didn't know where to find a way out.
"When you're eight or nine, you can't go anywhere," says Liz, who was bullied by her mother's alcoholism. "It's not your fault if your father is an alcoholic."
Karen nods. "How many children are going through this? Keeping this pressure, stress and anxiety within themselves because they have no one to talk to at school. It is sad and horrible and there are children who are going through this now," he says.
Lynne feels that the authorities have disappointed her.
"It seems incredible to me that my mother was admitted and no one wondered what happened to that young teenager?
"In fact, this is what annoys me the most. The whole support system in society, the school, the doctor, the social services, where were they?"
"No other adult had helped me, no one intervened."
She describes how he would put her and her siblings in a car and drive them around until they relaxed and told her stories about how her mother got drunk.
He convinced Hilary's mother to stop drinking for three months so that she could focus on her high school exams.
"He made us feel safe. Suddenly the sun shone on my life."
Her mother only stayed sober for those three months, but Hilary was able to pass her exams and then escape the stresses of home to go to college.
He has never forgotten the kindness of his uncle and visits him every week.
Karen's father stopped drinking 13 years ago, but she still has a recurring nightmare. "I still have that panic of: here we go again."
Do you talk to your parents about what happened? "Never".
"Now that I am a mother, thinking about behaving like this with my son is incredible to me," she adds.
"The stress that causes us only what to feed them."
Liz agrees. "Yes, five times a day."
"And you survived on a sack of potatoes for a whole weekend!" Karen jokes.
And they both laugh again.
Four women - Karen, Liz, Hilary, and Lynne - spoke to the BBC about what it's like to grow up with an alcoholic father.
"Some talk about the books they have read, or the movies they have seen, but we talk about how drunk our parents were," says Karen.
Karen and her friend Liz met at work in their twenties and quickly became close when they realized they had a common history.
"It is not the same talking to someone who does not know what it is about," says Liz.
"I drank so much alcohol that my 12-year-old daughter had to prepare food"
Black humor helps to deal with horrible memories. Like when Liz's mother sold her toys to have money to buy alcohol.
Or when Karen's alcoholic father went to the pub instead of picking her up from after-school activities.
They both remember how they dreaded the time to go home from school.
"It's so heartbreaking," says Karen. "You think, 'Well, I've had a good break in school, but now start over. I'm going to be very polite and very nice, make sure I don't say anything out of line or give you some reason to insult me."
It was only when she was eight or nine years old that Liz realized that her friends did not have the same concerns and that their lives were very different.
"I thought, 'Wow, do they cook your dinner for you? I don't even eat dinner."
"That's when you realize that it is horrendous and you feel very lonely."
Is our taste for alcohol the result of evolution?
Once his mother spent all the money she received from the state on alcohol, and all she could buy was a sack of potatoes.
"Potato weekend!" Laughs Liz. "We only had potatoes for the whole weekend. So we had mashed potatoes, potato pie, potato chips on newsprint - she had a lot of resources."
Saco de papas
Caption,
"Potato weekend" when Liz's mother spent all the money on booze.
Food, or the lack of it, is a frequent topic.
Hilary, 55, grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Sunderland. His father was a respected surgeon. The family kept up appearances, but his mother drank.
"I remember being in school and a girl in my class opened her food and said, 'Oh, my sandwich has no butter to the edges. It was like another planet compared to my life," she says.
Nobody made Hilary sandwiches. In fact, she had to take care of her little brother, put him to bed, get him ready for school, make sure he had something to eat.
His mother began drinking a glass of wine "while cooking," but soon switched to drinking a bottle of vodka a day.
"He hid bottles, they were everywhere: in their shoe boxes, behind the curtains, and if you turned on the oven you had to check that there was no hidden bottle."
Seeing his mother, elegant and cultured, evaporate was very painful.
"You couldn't talk to her because she was drunk," Hilary says. "It was as if he was not there: he went from being very present to becoming a ghost."
Going to college
Liz's mother had been a model, but when she started drinking she never knew where to put her makeup.
Liz's own life began to get out of hand as a result of the abandonment.
At 15 years old, Liz was in an abusive relationship, and she was placed with a foster family. He survived thanks to his friends, he says.
"I've been good at choosing good friends who helped me, friends who didn't do drugs or drink."
Then when she saw that her friends were going to college, she decided she would do the same: the only girl in social services in Surrey, England, to get it: "I definitely deserve an award for it," she says.
Now 37 years old and with a family, he visits his mother several times a year but does not want to go further: this is one of the reasons why he has been putting off his wedding with his long-time partner.
"I don't want her to come to my wedding," he explains. "But I don't like to imagine her sitting alone at home."
Lynne's mother died 13 years ago from complications caused by alcoholism. Now she is stirring some of her mother's things that are inside a box and that she gathered after doing therapy to overcome mourning.
"The hardest thing is that everyone in the church got up and talked about how amazing he was," he says, recalling the complicated relationship he had with his mother.
"All my childhood memories are marked by my mother drinking."
"I can't remember a day when I didn't send my sister and me to the store with a note: 'Please sell my children two bottles of Olde English [malt liquor] and four cans of Special Brew [ beer] And I wasn't the only girl on the block of public housing who did that. "
His mother could get troublesome when she drank, even violent.
"It was very confusing and sad. Sometimes I would lock myself inside my room. Even now, when I tell it, I get that feeling in my stomach that I want to get out of the house."
Today, his apartment is cozy. The opposite, she says, of the house she grew up in. And this is important.
"I used to feel like I didn't deserve anything that was healthy and good," he explains. But it no longer happens.
After moving to London, he built the life he wanted. She feels loved by her husband and his friends. "I just enjoy it," he says.
He takes something else out of the box: a label from the hospital where he was born that says how much he weighed.
"I was surprised that he still kept it," she explains excitedly.
"Having consciously made the decision not to have children is the consequence of all that."
"I was so afraid of not being able to take care of someone else, repeating their mistakes. Is it in the genes, can this come out of me? It's something I've always thought about."
Need for order
Hilary does have a son, a teenager, and takes the opportunity to be the caring mother that she did not have.
She has also made sure that unlike her own mother, a former nurse who spent her life at home, she is always busy.
"I learned my lesson from my mother," he says.
"I do a lot of sports, and I work. I need a structure."
"I think my mother was lonely and sad. This affects me. I think I could have received help."
She remembers coming home from a Christmas party as a teenager to find her mother at the foot of the stairs with a knife, threatening to kill herself. She had drunk the Christmas port wine and replaced it with soda, which created a conflict with her husband.
Hilary took her mother to the hospital, where she was admitted to the alcohol dependency unit. The next day at Christmas lunch, no one in the family recognized what had happened.
"It was a big lie. We never talked about anything in the family."
Today, he still hates liars.
"And I hate people who present themselves as something they are not, because that's how I grew up."
"The fact that I couldn't talk about what I was like probably contributed to my horrible depression," says Hilary.
Shame and secrets are words that often come out to speak with these women.
They all wish they had someone to talk to about their parents' alcoholism when they were growing up.
Liz and Karen, who take comfort in sharing their stories, had no one to turn to as children, and they didn't know where to find a way out.
"When you're eight or nine, you can't go anywhere," says Liz, who was bullied by her mother's alcoholism. "It's not your fault if your father is an alcoholic."
Karen nods. "How many children are going through this? Keeping this pressure, stress and anxiety within themselves because they have no one to talk to at school. It is sad and horrible and there are children who are going through this now," he says.
Lynne feels that the authorities have disappointed her.
"It seems incredible to me that my mother was admitted and no one wondered what happened to that young teenager?
"In fact, this is what annoys me the most. The whole support system in society, the school, the doctor, the social services, where were they?"
"No other adult had helped me, no one intervened."
She describes how he would put her and her siblings in a car and drive them around until they relaxed and told her stories about how her mother got drunk.
He convinced Hilary's mother to stop drinking for three months so that she could focus on her high school exams.
"He made us feel safe. Suddenly the sun shone on my life."
Her mother only stayed sober for those three months, but Hilary was able to pass her exams and then escape the stresses of home to go to college.
He has never forgotten the kindness of his uncle and visits him every week.
Karen's father stopped drinking 13 years ago, but she still has a recurring nightmare. "I still have that panic of: here we go again."
Do you talk to your parents about what happened? "Never".
"Now that I am a mother, thinking about behaving like this with my son is incredible to me," she adds.
"The stress that causes us only what to feed them."
Liz agrees. "Yes, five times a day."
"And you survived on a sack of potatoes for a whole weekend!" Karen jokes.
And they both laugh again.