lifestyle

"I come from a long line of extremely successful alcoholics".

Alice Nicholls

 

 

 

 

 

 

By ALICE NICHOLLS

I come from a long line of extremely successful alcoholics.

Not successful because they were drunk but they also held careers or drove fancy cars and lived in big houses.  Successful because they never failed to get drunk.  I can count 3 generations and over 6 people closely related to me in under 5 seconds that are either sober alcoholics or that are probably still hitting the bottle every day.

None of the 6 mattered to me growing up except one.  My mum.

Mum and dad got divorced when I was a toddler.  Mum was unfaithful and I think she felt overwhelmed by guilt and probably a few other things I’ll never know about.  She used to drink a bottle of Southern Comfort a day or more.  If she ever had the money she’d drink Jim Beam, but she never had the money.  She’d hide it in sock drawers, behind towels in the laundry cupboard, in our  back shed, under the verandah…you name it.

She hid so many bottles over a decade and then get so drunk she’d forget where they were hidden and have to go back to the bottle shop for more.  Sometimes with me in the backseat.  Mum lost her license twice for drink driving… Twice that I knew about.  Both times I was in the car and spent a few hours in the police station. What must they have thought of me, the little blond haired, blue-eyed girl in pyjamas with the little yellow ducks on the feet?

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Mum would wake up in the morning after a drinking session and pretend everything was okay because she looked like a regular mother. But then she fell off her pushbike riding drunk on our gravel road to a friends house one day and grazed the entire side of her face off. I still remember seeing the shame she wore.  It was etched into her skin along with the gravel scars she had to live with for months until they healed. At least on the outside.

Despite all of this, she was not a horrible mother.

She fed me 3 course breakfasts every morning and packed the most nutritious lunch boxes for me of any kid in school.  She had an amazing vegetable garden and a passion for the earth, and nature and animals.  We had chickens and ducks, lambs, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs – you name it.

When she got dressed up she was beautiful.  Just like dad told us she was when they got married.  And we were proud.  She gave great cuddles, she smelt nice and she made delicious food.  I really adored her…when she was sober.  She was my mum and there were quite a few things she did that no other mother could hold a candle to.

“I started drinking when I was 14.”

I started drinking when I was 14.  While my friends were pinching ½ a cup here and there from the liquor cabinets at home, I was already acting exactly like my mum.

I used to drink to get drunk.  I would drink until I couldn’t speak, or have any idea where I was.   I drank so much sometimes I would throw up for 24 hours afterwards.

I had so much anger inside me from what I had coped with as a child that instead of dealing with it; I used the only thing I had been taught would take away the pain and I did this well into my twenties.

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I partied harder than anyone else I knew, and I never remembered a minute of it.   I still battle a legacy of memories my friends have in their minds about me.  Memories they laugh about that make me want to cry, because I was always so drunk.

Were friends and boyfriends worried about me? Yes.  Were they talking about me behind my back? Yes.  I was embarrassing myself and my friends on multiple occasions and the stories are too hurtful to tell.

I started two university degrees that I didn’t finish.  I was smart but I was so lost.  I become very successful in a corporate career in my twenties, all the while nursing hundreds of hangovers. 

I am now well.

Healthier, happier and more inspired than I have ever been. It has taken a lot of time and self-discovery.   Mum has been sober for 20 years now and is the light of my daughters’ lives.  I know she carries her burden every day and I wish she didn’t.

She’s in pain with a debilitating disease and she has taught my toddler daughter amazing compassion and genuine care for others.  She has a second chance now and she’s taking it.  Without her I wouldn’t be able to work as I do to create a new legacy for my daughters.

The buck stops right here, with me.

 If you or anyone you know has a problem with alcohol contact Alcoholics Anonymous Australia

Alice Nicholls is a Health & Wellness Coach who supports women to live healthier, happier and more mindful lives.  She’s an advocate of nutritional medicine for healing, supporter of free-range farming and quite possibly the worst dancer on Earth.  When Alice isn’t coaching, she’s writing for her blog The Whole Daily, breastfeeding her newborn baby and moonlighting for the largest professional social media company in the world. You can find her Twitter here, her Facebook here and her Instagram here.