The impacts of growing up with a parent who drinks

A personal story

Living with an alcoholic father

I heard a loud thud coming from the driveway. I jumped, it gave me a huge fright. What was that?  Someone trying to steal something in the driveway? An accident outside? Adrenaline racing and heart pounding I ran to the front door. My heart sank, my face tightened and my stomach dropped. What I saw was heartbreaking and made me very angry.

My Dad was lying prone on the brick driveway, having fallen over. I called my Mum and we went outside together to help him, inspect the damage and get him inside. I was shocked at what I saw. He was conscious with a head injury that was bleeding profusely.

We shepherded him into the kitchen and what followed was ridiculous if you don’t understand the role of shame in a family with addiction. He had been out playing snooker with friends and had been dropped home by one of them, falling after he got inside our electric gates. I was 24 and in my childhood home. It was the night before I left to move to London (permanently as it has turned out). 

Keeping up appearances

Like many families with addiction, there is almost always a core of shame and a (sometimes huge) discrepancy between the appearance and the reality. In my family this was the case – constant covering up to make things look ‘respectable’ or better than they were and attempts to keep what went on secret.

What followed was a debate about how we could get my Dad the medical help he clearly needed. ‘We need to take you to hospital, to the Accident and Emergency…., your head needs attention’ from me.

‘NO, I don’t want to be taken to hospital’ from my Dad, sober enough to still want to create a glossy family exterior. He was a Doctor and a part owner of, and on the board of, a Catholic hospital in the city I grew up in.

Even in his drunken state he was still keen on keeping up appearances and my Mum (with her own shame core) followed his wishes. He believed that if we turned up with him, drunk and with a head injury, at any hospital in the city it would be the gossip of the medical fraternity, damaging his reputation.

In retrospect, I suspect his drinking was widely known about but since he was still a high-functioning doctor it was tacitly condoned, seen as ‘not an issue’. Except it was a huge issue in our family. Even ‘doing a geographical’ did not get me away from it.

Walking through a minefield

Growing up in a family with an alcoholic parent can feel like walking through a forever minefield. At any moment something could happen that may detonate a mine. And it could be catastrophic (like an incident of drunken driving which hurts other people or violence) or feel catastrophic (like feeling terror in your own home at what you are witnessing).