What it means to be an adult child of an alcoholic...

Last week was The Children of Alcoholics week (COA), It's aim, to increase awareness for children who are affected by parental alcohol problems and the support available.

1 in 5 children are currently living with a parent who has alcohol problems. It is a family disease and the long term affects are hidden and profound on the child. It is a silent problem and not something usually explored in society. The week was all about raising awareness and here's my piece about it.

As a an adult child of an alcoholic (ACOA) and a product of an alcoholic dysfunctional home, I wanted to write from first hand experience in the hope it gives both an insight and understanding as to the long term affects. If you are like me and a product of one, or even someone in recovery and suffered from alcoholism or addiction and have kids who witnessed it, this maybe helpful.

Firstly a disclaimer. Most of us have had some kind of trauma growing up. This piece is not designed to 'own' trauma more than others. Many people have suffered physical and sexual abuse as a child, or even lost their parents at an early age. Some have gone through divorce or been victims of neglect.

All of these of course are awful and have long term affects. However I know many people who have suffered such trauma and gone on to have fantastic lives.  Either through 'getting on with it', or working through issues. So this piece is not designed to be 'my life is worse than yours' or even 'children of alcoholics have it worse'. It's merely stating the facts of what it does to a young person and the long term affects in adulthood.

I don't speak for everyone of course, because every individual is different. I speak for myself. I know many people who are products of alcoholic homes who have not suffered in adult life. We are all different and I guess some of us are more sensitive to such long term effects than others. The best thing, in my opinion is not to deny it but to accept it as a 'thing', so we can do something about it.

I was 3rd son of 3. The baby of the tribe. My Mother was/is the best and most caring teak strong welsh maternal, caring matriarch you could wish for. Nurturing with the biggest heart. We were all 'darlings' and encouraged to express our feelings. She was always caring and a tremendous source of love and strength. There wasn't anything she wouldn't have done for her children. We were loved and lucky. A 5ft 2 (and a half) ball of Welsh energy and superhuman will. She, without knowing, was also an Alanon waiting to happen.

My father, was a 6ft 2 charismatic Welsh legend. Mike Evans. The big I Am. Funny, clever, generous, sociable, hugely charismatic, larger than life, funny and likeable. Like a welsh Jack Regan in my eyes. He was my hero growing up. Piercing eyes, huge gut, big beard and a Ford Granada Estate. God I loved that man. 'what a true man' I thought. He seemed about 12 ft tall and I wanted to be like him. (the feelings of not matching up to being a real man were already in place then)

He was also a raging alcoholic. An absolute stormer of one. Textbook rip roaring drunk.Nobody knew that of course, but over the years, the funny, charismatic and ultra-talented man turned into a monster controlled by Tenants Super and Whisky and was reduced to a terrifying violent and hopeless drunk who dominated the family for many years and finally left it to become a street drunk winding up dead at 65 years old, alone.

The early years were great. Fond memories of family outings & occasions, we were loved. It all seemed normal like most other families I knew. I was younger than my brothers, but my oldest brother, (again my hero) copped it the most from him. I was the sportsman so by all accounts his 'favourite'.

Then it began to change. My father would come home drunk a bit, then if I'm really honest most of the family occasions were instigated by my mother. Looking back, even when I thought everything was Ok he had begun his descent into the disease. He would argue with people who didn't exist, have conversations with imaginary people, always ending in the sentence 'you fucking wankers' and began to smell, look menacing (which I know now to be all his secret drinking) and he his mood would turn. I became edgy and scared of him. The house was then dominated by the mood of one man. The alcoholic. (See why it's a family disease now?)

I now know this to be the stages of alcoholism. The resentment, the self pity, the self centerdness. He became someone you had to walk on egg-shells around. The whole atmosphere began to change. There were fewer family outings and everything we did seemed to be with my Mother. He was there but wasn't there if that makes any sense. His mere presence menacing.

And then it really got messy. We moved house (as I learnt he drank the family house away and we had to move) and there followed 2 years of heavy alcoholism, madness and domestic abuse. Police were called, he attacked my Mum and brother several times, and any semblance of normality went out of the window.

He would drive me to football with 4 tins of Tenants Super on the floor and a can between his legs, sipping away saying 'don't tell your mother'. It was 9.30am. He was gone by that stage. To be fair though he still managed to criticise my performance even though he didn't actually see it. Thanks Dad!

The whole atmosphere was menacing, fear based and chaotic. This became normality. All the while life went on as normal. I went to school, had cricket trials, played football, hung out with friends (they would never come round though) - but you could never tell anyone what was going on at home. The knock on effect (and this is where the alanon comes in) was what it had to my ego. I hated normal kids at chool. I thought I was above them, because of the madness at home, when they had a simple normal balanced life. I felt superior to them with a secret hatred but chronic self pity and low self esteem at my position and who I was. The dice was cast. My own alcoholic huge ego and low self esteem combined with being a child of the alcoholic home had warped my brain and thinking from an early age. It's still something I struggle with now.

Then after yet another violent episode the police were called, (back then domestic violence wasn't even on the radar) The Police asked my Mum if he could sleep in the Garage, even though he had just tried to kill her! He left and I remember looking out of my window, I was 12 and crying that my poor Dad had left. My hero had gone. I can't remember ever feeling that sad and crying uncontrollably.

By then he had taken to living in his car, or doss houses - on one occasion me and my two brothers went to the Salvation Army to ask him to stop drinking and plead for him to get well. He didn't or more to the point couldn't. He was sick.

Over the next year I saw him infrequently. We had to move and hide our address from him. He would turn up drunk at my school, or where I worked and menacingly demand to see me. It was embarrassing and frightening. But I took it all in my stride. It was normal living after all. Standard for a child of an alcoholic.

Finally he left for good. We didn't know where he had gone and had no contact. I was suddenly fatherless, even though he had long since stopped becoming a regular father. It happened in stages, just like the stages of alcoholism and it just became my Mother and I. I was 15.

At 15 you want to start drinking, going out, getting girls. I had two older brothers, one of which was sensible and couldn't wait to get away and find a stable girlfriend and family unit which he used to replace the one he didn't have with us, then I had the oldest brother, who was essentially Dad Mark 2, an alcoholic, manic depressive artist, charismatic, funny and my hero. He fucked off when I was young too and made sporadic appearances. Both my male role models. Both alcoholics. Both of whom I was desperate for approval from both left me and thus created a huge feeling of need and insecurity inside. Welcome to adolescence Nicholas!! They were my heroes and I felt like a little boy not matching up to them.

It also creates a huge imbalance in the family unit. You lose the male side of the family and my mother tried to carry on as normal, being the father and mother when really you cannot. She had her own things going on and incredibly managed to drag us up, provide and through exceptional will and energy carry on, but you cannot hide the damage it caused.

Essentially I was left with me at 15, trying to be the big I AM in school and amongst my friends, a loving sensitive youngest son at my poor Mum who had done everything to keep a roof over my head and feed me, and a 15 year old trying to grow up and be a 'man'.

If I look back, I was all over the place and had no idea who to be, what to do or where to go. I just pieced things together the best I could.

"Don't turn out like your father", would be the mantra I got from my Mum when I started to drink. No chance I thought, he was a proper alcoholic. Little did I know that I had that gene raging inside me and was soon to turn to black out drinking and drugs from the age of 18.

Growing up in an alcoholic home was both confusing and thrilling. Chaos and drama became the norm and quite frankly I was bored when there wasn't any. Same to this day.

I also felt above my friends as they seemed to have normal dull lives, but underneath I felt terrible less than and jealous towards them. It makes you feel isolated and alone.

Then this fuelled the real dangerous poison in me. Self-pity. God I felt so sorry for myself that I had endured such hardship and lost my father. This combined with a spikey 'fuck you' arrogance became my standard feeling I took around with me for years and still have to this day.

Being a child of an alcoholic fucks you up. There's no two ways about it. It creates confusion and disharmony and affects your  adult life. How? Does anyone recognise these traits at all?

• Inability to form lasting relationships for the fear of being abandoned? I could write a whole chapter on this as the litany of former girlfriends who have all fallen in love with me only to be rejected due to my chronic deep rooted fear of commitment will no doubt testify.
• Addicted to Compulsive/Disfunctional relationships/people - Settle down with a lovely, stable, loving, nurturing girl or go out with alcoholic, coke addict who is chronically co-dependant needy and sexually attractive? Do I really need to ask - let's go mental!!
• Comfortable more in chaos than calm - Being brought up in chaos makes you think it's normal. Calm and normal therefore become boring and dull. Give me a bit of chaos otherwise I may have to sit with uncomfortable feelings. Fuck that!
• Low Self Esteem and High Ego - Being abandoned by an alcoholic parent tends to make you feel you're a piece of shit deep down. Yes your mother may say she loves you but if your father and hero leaves you then it makes you feel worthless and like something is wrong with you deep down. But NEVER ever admit that unless it's to girls to show your vulnerability and help them fall in love with you more so you feel safe and wanted only of course to let them down because you are chronically afraid of commitment. See above for details. Standard fayre for child of an alcoholic.
• Dishonesty - leading a double life in formative years. Chaos at home, fine to the outside world. Or covering up your true feelings to one parent who is still around doing their best to bring you up even though you want to rebel. Effectively means living a double life and 'compartmentalising' emotions is normal and lying, deceit, covering up but with a good heart becomes normal patterns of behaviour. Tricky to have long term relationships with this shit going on.
• Self Criticism  and cynical - If you feel like a piece of shit, it's pretty normal to criticise yourself if you don't particularly love yourself. And why would you love yourself if the one hero in your life has left you? Standard for child of alcoholic. Plus you are cynical for the rest of the world because everything will fuck up somewhere down the line, right?
• Self sabotage - Closely aligned with above. If you hate yourself then you will stop at nothing to sabotage good stuff. Job, relationship, health, happiness. Whatever it takes to fuck up feeling good is a popular long term affect and one of my specialities.
• Victim Mode - another belter this one. Not only do you feed it but you seek other's to perpetuate it too. People who have been in your life for too long and won;t feed that bullshit story anymore have to go and be replaced by new people who show you nothing but pity and buy into the victim story. This has to go because it is hugely destructive and boring to the rest of the world. Nobody likes a victim.
• Other addictions - Er, yes of course. Where do I sign up? Another staple diet. Like father like son. Or even some less glamourous addictions like food, sugar, sex, love - anything to fix those pesky feelings huh kids?
• Finally seeking approval and attention - God this is engrained. I will go anywhere to anyone to get approval and attention. Like a puppy needing to be patted. I hide it but I am a shameless attention seeker and this all stems from being the child of an alcoholic. Hero abandoned you? seeking love? God yes please and I will stop at nothing to get it.

Not all people have these of course and there are many more. But that gives you a flavour of the long term affects. I am comfortable with them today and they are getting better. Time takes time to work through things. It's better to accept them and admit they are there than deny it and pretend it doesn't exist.

My style is to make friends with them, poke fun at them, accept them. If sometimes I act in them and indulge then so be it. It doesn't make me a bad person but it's better to have awareness around them then at least you can do something about them.

yes sometimes I still feel this chronic sadness and self pity hampers me. I watched Warrior the other day and the scene when Nick Nolte (Pop), the father of Tommy (Tom Hardy) gets drunk after 3 years sober and Tommy holds him and puts him to bed made me howl. Tears of years of sadness and self pity crashing down. It's not gone or even fixed but it's getting better.

Point is, it doesn't have to disable your life. It doesn't have to be awful and you don't have to pretend they don't exist. But you DO have to do something about them not to use then as an excuse, absolve yourself from responsibility and sit in the problem forever. There is a way out.

It doesn't make them any worse than other people's shit. We all have issues. But it does mean that hopefully you will identify if you are like me. If you have a family member with alcohol problems there are ways you can help them. We didn't have any information back then, it is different now.

So that's my monster piece. Thank you for reading. Feel free to share or comment. If you want some help or information there are a couple of websites below which will give you information and I love you very much.

To be honest I'll love you anyway because as an adult child of an alcoholic I am desperate to please, so I'm probably a love and sex addict. Here's a tip for you girls. Get an adult child of an alcoholic as a lover as we absolute insist on being the best lover and giving you tons of orgasms to mask our chronic low self esteem. Funny how we can self esteem in the weirdest places. Even if it's only temporary.

So how can it be treated? Well firstly i cannot recommend 12 step fellowships highly enough. Alanon for families of alcoholics, AA for alcoholics and Adult children of Alcoholics and Alateen for children of alcoholics. Al will help to discover the true nature of the disease, how it manifests, our reactions to it and how we all have a part to play. They also offer ongoing support how to live with it and recover one day at a time. The amount of understanding and self awareness they give about addiction as a disease, a family illness far outweighs any other treatment in my experience.

It has given me far more self awareness, knowledge and understanding of this and something the world of therapy seems to miss. Humour. And the ability to laugh at yourself whilst swallowing large amounts of difficult behavioural patterns. We all have our journey. But try it if you haven't. It may change your life.

PS - I don't blame my Dad or parents and wouldn't change anything for the world. We are all a products of our experience and it's what makes us all fabulously unique and magnificent bastards.

http://www.coaweek.org/about/

Love you very much now I just have to try and love myself. Something children of alcoholics struggle with very much.

Feel free to share this piece and help educate the world - it is a thing, a disease and it can be lived with and de-stigmatised!

Nicholas Evans

TNE