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| Personal experiences of growing up with an alcoholic parent. If you wish to contribute your own experience, please contact
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There was no safety net then, not for her or us.
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If I think about what has left the biggest scar and it is that feeling of there never being any one that you could defer to if you had a problem.
[read more].
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| I am old
enough to understand this isn't my fault. It doesn't stop me
getting angry. |
| I just found your website. My mum is in Rotherham General Hospital for the 5th time this year, but this time she's not coming out. [read
more]. |
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| I feel mum
and myself tried to cope in our own way with problems that
life was throwing at us. Mine through starvation and mum
through drinking. |
| I am writing to you to share my own personal experience of being a daughter of my Mum who is an Alcoholic. [read more]. |
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| Never feel
guilty about your parent's drinking. |
| I'm 31 and grew up with an alcoholic mother. [read more]. |
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| I have cared
for my dad for half of my adult life and I'm not going to do
it any more. |
| Over the years I stepped in to help him recover from various benders, then 3 years ago he fell down the stairs drunk and broke his back and several ribs. [read more]. |
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| My dad won’t
stop! |
| My mum and dad split up because my dad was drinking. It started when mum started to find beer bottles and wine hidden all around the house. [read more]. |
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| My name is
Joe. I am the child of two alcoholics. |
| Or at least that’s what I would say if I was actually standing before you right now... probably fidgeting nervously, heartbeat quickened with anxiety ridden nostalgia. [read
more]. |
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| I still
remember sitting in the corridor outside my room, listening to
my parents yelling at each other. But even through threats,
abuse and shouting I never knew alcohol was the problem. |
| As a small child I didn't really notice anything was up. I mean, I knew my Dad was bad tempered. Me and my mum used to have jokes about it, imitating him and such. But I never knew it was related to alcohol and it never really affected me. [read
more]. |
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| …it just
scared me, living in a house full of boxes of delivered wine,
shouting parents, empty bottles. |
| I read some of the personal experiences here and I decided to try writing down my own, reading them helped me and if it might help someone else then I’d like to give it a go. [read
more]. |
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| I would try
and hide things from everyone. I became obsessed about being
‘normal’ and I craved things that seemed normal. |
| I was 17 when my mam died. She had been ill for many years and when it eventually happened I was devastated. It had been a long struggle - she was an alcoholic for over 25 years. [read
more]. |
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| I vowed,
even as early as eight or nine, that I would never ever
inflict this kind of torture -- of being a child of an
alcoholic parent -- on a child myself |
| My dad was in India when I was born; it was the end of World War II and I didn't meet him until I was about eighteen months. My memories of my childhood are intermittent. But certain memories are vivid. And they scarred me for ever. [read
more]. |
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| I feel like
every pothole of my ACOA journey was worth it when I see my
incredible girls grow. |
I forgave her and could not have done that without my support groups and my
sponsor. I was able to forgive the person who I wished was dead on a daily basis. [read
more]. |
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| My teenage
years were blighted by alcohol having a higher priority than
me. |
| I'm moved to write after listening to Woman's Hour today, and hearing both Tracey and Lauren's experiences of growing up with alcohol dependant parents. [read more]. |
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| I heard your
organisation on Radio 4 today. |
| I just wanted to write and say how pleased I am that there is someone to care. [read more]. |
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| It was all
hidden, my mum was the classic secret drinker |
| I don't think you ever recover from growing up with an alcoholic parent. What is interesting is how far you go to hide it. [read more]. |
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| I don't
remember anyone coming to look for us. |
| I left the Meeting House with tears streaming down my face; they continued all the way on the Tube to Waterloo and then the train home. Listening to her words brought it all back; after every few sentences I wanted to shout out "that was me". It's still hard to believe that someone else went through all that. I'm feeling a bit emotional even now as I write this. [read
more]. |
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| It is as if
he knows that the second he admits to himself he has a
drinking problem, then it becomes real. |
| My dad is an alcoholic. It seems that everyone can see that except for him. To myself, my mum, and my younger brother and sister, it’s the norm for my dad to drink at least two bottles of red wine every night of the week. [read more]. |
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| You are not
your parent’s mistakes; you are the successor of them |
My Mum is an alcoholic; I am a child of an alcoholic. But I am also a woman, who likes the X factor, the colour purple, has a penchant for kissing and shopping and has a crush on Alan Hansen.
[read more]. |
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| He never
abused me or my sister... |
| He never abused me or my sister, physically or verbally, all he did all day was sit, drink and watch television. He stopped eating, answering the phone and the only time he would leave the house was to buy more booze. [read more]. |
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| Some people
may judge my mother for her illness, and call her an unfit
parent. Don’t. |
| I would compare my life to a ghost train at your local fair. Lonely.
Dark. Haunted. Erratic. Full of nasty surprises. I am the child of an alcoholic. [read more]. |
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| A Poem for
Nacoa. |
| After all these years the one thing I have learnt is that the past doesn’t define who we are, we do in each new moment. [read
more]. |
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| After my dad
died. |
My dad left me five years ago now
He killed himself and I know how
It was all my fault. [read more]. |
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| If there's
one thing I've learned it's never blame yourself for your
parent's drinking. |
| My name is Susie and I'm 16 years old. For as long as I can remember my dad has been an alcoholic. I clearly remember one time when I was about seven. He came home drunk and falling over. I hid upstairs in my room and heard my parents argue. [read
more]. |
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| Please, if
you know someone who drinks |
| Please, if you know someone who drinks try one more time to persuade them to get help, even if you know they won't listen, because you never know how long it will be before it will be too late to get help. [read more]. |
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| Mum's 70th
birthday |
| I hope mum will take this letter in the manner in which it is meant and that I have not or never will portion blame to either of my parents for anything that has happened in the past. [read
more]. |
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| The
Fall |
| I hope mum will take this letter in the manner in which it is meant and that I have not or never will portion blame to either of my parents for anything that has happened in the past. [read
more]. |
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| The damage
letter. |
| I hope mum will take this letter in the manner in which it is meant and that I have not or never will portion blame to either of my parents for anything that has happened in the past. [read
more]. |
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| He
could not stop. |
| It gave him the courage to live but ultimately killed him. [read
more]. |
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| There is
always a light, if only a tiny flicker... |
| When my mum passed away last year after suffering from alcohol dependence for as long as I could remember - I turned 40 in the same week - it brought with it a complete mixture of blessings, grief, relief and many unexplored emotions. [read
more]. |
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| So it wasn't
the drink after all. |
| My earliest childhood memory is very vague, and I often wonder if it's my memory or just what people have told me. I was 13 months old, I was on a bed, being wheeled through the hospital by two porters. One of my legs was broken. Supposedly because I "wriggled" so much as my Mum changed my nappy. [read
more]. |
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| My Dad died
6 years ago on July 28th. My mum began to drink more and more
as a result of this. |
| Between the years of 2001 and 2004 my mum tried to kill herself 5 times. She was driving whilst under in influence, she was not looking after my dog, one time he was not fed for 3days, I hated her for it as it was not his choice, she was making the choice to drink and didn’t care for anyone but herself. [read
more]. |
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| I don't
remember a lot about my childhood... |
| As I have read from other experiences on the website, my counsellor linked a lot of my adult behaviour to having been brought up in a household with an alcoholic mother. [read more]. |
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| Families and
how to survive |
| Even in recovery family life is fraught with tension. [read
more]. |
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| CHRISTMAS in
our home |
| CHRISTMAS in our home, meant, like other Christian festivals, a time when there would be more drunkenness, more fights; more rows and a feeling of being even more different than the rest of our neighbours. [read more]. |
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| I just read
the letter |
| I just read the letter "Two Mothers" and couldn’t believe my eyes. The similarities hit a nerve. My mother has had a drink problem for at least 23 years. [read more]. |
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| Innocent or
Guilty? |
| When you are the child of an alcoholic, you don’t know if you are innocent or guilty. [read more]. |
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| I hope you
can create something good out of something bad, and thereby
transcend and transform it. |
| My mother has been an alcoholic for thirty years. Now, she is in and out of hospital, but still in denial. [read more]. |
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| Alcohol
caused me to lose the only things that have ever really
mattered to me - my three super girls. |
| I spent ten years as the lonely single parent of three lovely daughters. I spent the last seven of those ten years with a bottle of wine for company. [read more]. |
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| For all
those children out there that have to put up with alcoholics,
you love the person you just hate what they are doing and that
it is NEVER your fault. |
| My name is Rachel. I am 18 years old and the eldest out of 6. Up until today I have always known my mum had an alcohol problem, a big one at that which goes all the way back then I can remember. [read
more]. |
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| I was 18
before I could admit out loud to myself that my father was
actually an alcoholic. |
| I
suffered the confusion and unhappiness of not understanding why one minute my dad could be the most amazing man in the world, yet the next he was an ugly, frightening man. [read
more]. |
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| The
conspiracy of silence has made sure I never ask. |
| I’m fairly sure that when my Mum was the age I am now, 30, she was on the way to, if not actually, an alcoholic. [read
more]. |
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| Every time I
watched her buy alcohol my heart sank. |
| Each time I withdrew a bit more until I was able to disconnect myself from the world around me and withdraw into my private safe world. I still go there sometimes. [read more]. |
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| I had a
crazy upbringing due to alcohol. |
| Growing up in a severely dysfunctional environment has made it so hard to fit in with other people as my reactions are so different to others and I feel very self-conscious about it. [read
more]. |
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| When I was
younger I always knew there was something not quite
right. |
| Dad would drink wine every single night but I didn’t think anything of it. [read
more]. |
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| How can you
love the person that made you cry? |
| From as long as I could remember my mum was a drunk. She had been for years. [read more]. |
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| I was raised
by a loving and caring single mother. |
| It took me years to admit to myself that I had a mother suffering from alcoholism. I hid it from myself, as I did not want to come to terms with the guilt, shame and the reality of it. [read
more]. |
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| I am 60
years of age and was born with an alcoholic mother. |
| I wasn't allowed any friends in the house nor did I have any birthday parties or go to any parties. [read more]. |
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| I tried to
act normal. |
| I went to school and tried to act normal but when I got home usually I would cook tea and look after my mum. [read more]. |
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| I read the
letter to children, it made me cry as I recalled various
memories and feelings long put away. |
| One of my first memories is going to a shop with my Mum while she bought a square green bottle wrapped up with tissue paper. The shop had a strange smell, not like a toyshop or a bakers shop. Even today, walking into an off license reminds me of childhood. The green bottle was gin. [read more]. |
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| The person I
was, was frightened by rejection, holds back feeling and keeps
quiet. |
| I have read all the self help books and I have to say if I hadn't read them to this day I don’t think I would have ever understood why I’m like I am. [read more]. |
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| Don't be
afraid to ask for help. |
| I had a feeling then that something was different and that she was not meant to be acting in this way. I lived with being a carer for her from when I was 5 to when I was nearly 15. [read
more]. |
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| Hi, my name
is Bill and I’m an alcoholic |
| I
realized I had spent most of my life in fear, fear of rejection, of not being loved. Alcohol allowed me to feel like I fitted in but every drink I took demanded I took another and another. [read more]. |
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| I couldn't
sleep, you know how it is - things on your mind… |
| You are constantly saddened, and unable to ignore great grief and suffering of anyone in the world, and absorb everyone's trauma like a sponge. [read more]. |
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| Coming home
from school was terrifying. |
| I knew every floorboard that creaked, every door that squeaked and became expert at moving silently. I practised when he was out. Sometimes he’d collapsed on the sofa and I wouldn't wake him; this equalled a good day, but sometimes he would be waiting for me. [read more]. |
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| “Don’t
trust, don’t talk, don’t feel,” these are the rules of a
dysfunctional family. |
| The alcoholism and the madness left little room for me to grow up safely and to discover my own needs, capabilities and limitations. Instead I adapted to the violence around me. [read
more]. |
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| I was aware
that my dad was different... |
| If I try to remember childhood memories of my dad I can only think of negative ones, about his drink problem. [read more]. |
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| All the love
in the world would not have made a difference |
| I know it is not that far to hit rock bottom nor for that matter to go the other way and achieve great things. [read more]. |
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| Sharing
pain, giving hope |
| As a perfect child of an alcoholic, I had told no one my story. Facing my past was hard but I felt like I was coming home. [read
more] |
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| Crying
inside, nowhere to go |
| Being a child of an alcoholic family, I was sexually abused, beaten, humiliated out of my mind and sometimes I felt that was a good day. The bad days were when I was waiting for something to happen. [read more] |
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| The two
mothers |
| I have no memories of my first seven years. Memories of later times cause me to dread the realities of the forgotten experience. I used to come home from school dreading what I might find. [read more] |
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| Safe as
houses |
| The drinking goes on and you are always afraid at night when you are on your own and him downstairs drinking. No one hits you, yells at you. But there is a great secret, betrayed only by the knowing looks of others - you are ashamed. [read
more] |
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| Inside I
felt completely empty |
| From the outside it was a life that many people would envy but my strongest childhood memory is one of fear. [read more]. |
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| You are not
alone |
| Being brought up in an alcoholic family I was used to living in chaos and fear and learnt many coping strategies to help me survive. [read more]. |
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| Mind the
gap |
| It was quite shocking to realise that she was jealous of the drink. It had been like another woman who had taken her father away from her and left her and her mother penniless. [read
more]. |
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| I have no
visible scars |
| I felt like I was made up of pieces from other people – my mum, my step-dad, my brother, my grandparents, other people’s expectations. There was no me underneath it all, just an empty space. [read more] |
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| Working it
out |
| Why do I say ‘yes’ when I mean to say ‘no’? How can I express my feelings – say what I mean and mean what I say? [read
more]. |
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| If you wish to contribute your own experience, please contact
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