27th October 2011 | Family led interventions could cure addiction | Totally Living
Amy Winehouse’s death was a result of the singer drinking far too much alcohol, an inquiry revealed yesterday. The 27-year-old’s untimely death came after years of battling against both alcohol and drug addiction – her death was caused by a disease left untreated for too long.
Winehouse was just one of the thousands of people across the UK who battle with an addiction each day, be it drugs or alcohol, the damaging emotional and physical effects are similar. The difference is how you treat them.
Addiction specialists, Sober Services, have created an intervention programme which could help families and addicts come to terms with their problems in a calm and comforting surrounding, to prepare them for treatment ahead.
24th- 30th September 2011 | So what are those marks on your arms Peaches? | Heat
4th August | The signs of addiction by Rebecca Twomey | cosmopolitan.co.uk
The tragic death of Amy Winehouse has thrown the debilitating affliction of addiction into the spotlight. To get the lowdown on addiction we’ve enlisted two addiction experts to outline what you need to know…
27th July | Dying for fame | NHS Online
The jokes, the tears, the ‘I told you sos’; it seems everyone wants a piece of Amy Winehouse’s death. But just what can we learn from her untimely demise?
Another exceptional talent has died prematurely. Another set of parents have lost their daughter, a brother his sister. Fans worldwide have lost an inspiration, celebrities a friend.
Most shocking of all, it’s not surprising. Not one bit of it. Her father Mitch warned that this would happen a few years ago, and the tabloids prophecy that she would fall has finally been fulfilled.
The drugs, the drink, the psychological issues; sadly, her name is just one more of a rapidly growing list. We cried as Heath Ledger was found lifeless from a drug overdose, and gasped as Michael Jackson was pronounced dead from what is believed to be a similar cause. But as a young woman who has always secretly envied the seemingly idyllic lifestyle of a celebrity, I just can’t get my head around why so many throw it all away. Who, or what, should we blame for the countless tragedies befallen to our heroes?
Tuesday 12th April 2011 | Best Magazine
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Thursday 7th April 2011 | Mum was a coke addict | This Morning Show
Laura returned from uni to discover her mum had an expensive cocaine habitPosted on Apr 6, 2011 by Emily Morgan
When a young middle class girl leaves home for university, you’d expect her parents to be worried about her experimenting with drugs.
Little did Lauren Salmons, 30, know that it should have been her worrying about returning home to find her mum ravaged by cocaine.
After years of drinking, Sandra Salmons, 55, decided to try the Class A drug on a night out, which developed into a £1000-a-week habit.
After years of keeping her mum’s secret Lauren said enough was enough and staged an intervention, spending £28,000 to rescue her from the abyss. Sandra and Lauren join us now to talk about the addiction that almost cost the family everything.
31st March 2011 | Cocaine, a middle-class mother and the daughter who saved her from destruction | By JENNY STOCKS, taken from The Daily Mail
The bedroom door swung open to reveal a female figure huddled over a wooden chest of drawers. Try as she might to hide the evidence, the tell-tale trail of white powder and tightly rolled £20 note had already been spotted.
‘I’ve only done it a couple of times,’ she stammered. ‘It’s under control. Please don’t tell Dad.’
It’s the sort of excuse and pleading that many a shocked mother has heard from a rebellious child caught dabbling in drugs.
Role reversal: Lauren is helping her mother Sandra to rebuild her life after she confronted her drug addiction
But Sandra Salmons wasn’t a troubled teen, she was a 46-year-old middle-class mother of one who had — unbeknown to her family — been addicted to cocaine for four years. And that afternoon she had just been discovered taking the drug by her daughter, Lauren, 21.
What took place over the ensuing years is both a shocking tale of one affluent mother’s descent into addiction, and testimony to a daughter’s unstinting love in the face of repeated betrayals.
I’ve never felt such agony as my broken heart
‘Looking back, I will always be sorry for what I put Lauren through,’ says Sandra, now 55. ‘If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t be here today. Lauren saved my life.’
This is no exaggeration. At the height of her addiction, Sandra spent a staggering £1,000 a week on cocaine. Ultimately, it would cost her almost everything she held dear — a loving husband, a lavish five-bedroom home in Essex and every last penny she’d earned.
When she hit rock bottom, there was only one person left willing to assist her — Lauren, who footed the £28,000 bill for a rehab programme that would eventually rid her mother of her addiction.
‘I knew that a few of my friends had tried cocaine, so I thought: “Why not?”‘
Yet astonishing though her story is, it is far from a one-off. According to statistics from the National Treatment Agency For Substance Misuse, between 2005 to 2009 the number of women treated for cocaine addiction rose by a massive 55 per cent — with a 47 per cent rise among women over 40.
Harry Shapiro, director of communications at DrugScope, the UK’s leading centre of drugs expertise, says the falling price of cocaine has moved its use beyond celebrities and the super-rich, attracting stressed or disaffected middle-class women like Sandra.
‘With average prices falling by £45 to £50 a gram over the past 20 years, cocaine has shed its exclusivity but retained some of its glamorous image,’ he explains.
So how did a woman like Sandra become addicted in the first place?
Brought up in a comfortable home in Stratford, East London, by her engineer father and housewife mother, she showed huge promise in early adulthood.
By the age of 25, she had a loving husband who had built up a successful chain of retail businesses and a beautiful little girl, Lauren, who attended private school and enjoyed ballet and drama lessons. Yet perhaps because her life seemed so settled so early on, Sandra says she felt unfulfilled: ‘I always felt that something was missing. It was like there was a hole I needed to fill.’
At first, she tried to fill the gap with nights out with her friends.
‘When Lauren was two, I started going out again on Friday nights with the girls,’ she recalls. ‘I always drank to get drunk, and could manage to put away at least 12 glasses of wine, champagne and spirits during an evening. My hangovers were horrendous — I would stay in bed all day sleeping off the night before.’
Sandra’s husband simply put her behaviour down to her being the life and soul of the party. Even when their daughter was old enough to witness the effects of her mother’s drunken binges, Sandra couldn’t bear to stop. ‘I didn’t like it when Mum was sick from her hangovers, but she was always very glamorous and my friends loved her,’ recalls Lauren, now a 30-year-old accountant from Woodford Green, North-East London.
‘Yes, she would get drunk and sing Hey, Big Spender, ruffling men’s hair, but then every child is embarrassed by their mum.’
Before her troubles began: Sandra with Lauren just before she moved out for university. Sandra said missing her daughter was partly what drove her to drugs
It was in 1997 that Sandra’s life began to unravel. In quick succession, her husband had a debilitating heart attack and her father died, then Lauren left home to attend Exeter University. Lonely and depressed, Sandra took refuge in alcohol more frequently.
Then came the turning point. Out on a night with the girls in a London club, she was offered cocaine. She was 42. ‘I knew that a few of my friends had tried it, and thought: “Why not?” ’ she says.
‘Unfortunately for me, I absolutely loved it straight away. I couldn’t believe how confident and attractive it made me feel. I could drink more, I didn’t get hangovers and I could talk to anyone. I started using it every weekend.’
Within two months, Sandra was using the drug on weekdays, too, and got a dealer of her own. Like many addicts, she kidded herself that her habit wasn’t a problem. And in one sense, she was right. With her husband’s business — where she now worked in administration — thriving, finding the money to pay for the cocaine wasn’t an issue, even when she soon found she needed more and more of the drug to experience the same sensation.
‘I had wild mood swings but when my husband left me, all I felt was relief that I wouldn’t have to hide my habit any more’
‘If I was at the gym, I had to get off the treadmill to get high in the middle of a workout,’ she admits. ‘Even on smart dinners out with other couples, I would disappear to the toilet.
‘One night, I had left my husband and our group at the table in a restaurant. But as I was taking a glass vial of cocaine out of my bag, I dropped it and it smashed to pieces. Glass and cocaine were all over the floor. In a panic, I scraped it all up before snorting it, glass and all.’
Even potentially lethal incidents like this failed to bring Sandra to her senses. She hid behind the façade of respectability — she was slim and still took care of her appearance, ensuring her nails and hair were perfect and her clothes were smart.
But beneath the surface her personal life was falling apart. Her husband became increasingly intolerant of her wild mood swings, though he did not suspect the true cause.
Even when Sandra moved out of the marital bed so she could get up and take cocaine unnoticed during the night, she told him it was because he was snoring too much. ‘He seemed shocked and hurt, but he let me go. Some nights I would watch him quietly go up to his room and it made me feel so sad. I could see how lonely he was. But I couldn’t give up, so I pulled away from him completely.
‘He thought I had lost my marbles. I’d recently had a hysterectomy, and I think he thought that might be to blame. He was always quite private about how he was feeling. He buried his head in the sand, hoping it was just a phase I was going through.’
Counting the cost: Sandra had a £1,000-a-week habit that nearly cost her everything (posed by model)
But he did take one drastic step — telling Sandra she couldn’t work with him any more at the family firm because she was taking too much money out of the business. So, desperate for money to keep feeding her habit, she found work as an administrative assistant for a plastic surgeon.
It was only when her daughter Lauren returned home to live with them after university that she was finally caught taking the drug red-handed.
Lauren was shocked, but after much pleading, agreed not to tell her father. ‘From then on, Lauren watched me like a hawk,’ recalls Sandra. ‘I found it so frustrating. She followed me everywhere, even into the toilets, and used to search me for drugs when we went out. But I just hid the cocaine in my bra.’
Eventually the constant deception and disparity in lifestyle took its toll on Sandra’s marriage. In 2004, the couple went their separate ways — with her husband still none the wiser about her drug use.
‘Although I still loved my husband, I was completely dead emotionally,’ she says of the separation. ‘It might sound heartless, but all I felt was relief that I wouldn’t have to hide my habit any more.’
Sandra moved into her own flat and at first her hefty divorce settlement (which included proceeds of the house sale) funded her £1,000-a-week habit. By then, she was snorting a staggering five grams of cocaine a day — that’s a line every ten minutes — at a cost of £40 to £50.
Furious and distraught in equal measure, Lauren was terrified for her mother’s life. ‘Without Dad around, I feared Mum would kill herself with her addiction,’ she says. ‘She kept telling me I didn’t understand and I was so weary of nagging her.’
WHO KNEW?
Last year, more than 3,000 women and girls sought help for drug addiction – the equivalent of eight every day
Over the next few years, Sandra descended into the abyss — selling her car, jewellery and furniture to fuel her habit. Facing repossession of her flat, she emotionally blackmailed Lauren into giving her £10,000.
‘I had given her that money to save for a wedding,’ says Sandra. ‘But I was desperate, lying that I needed it for my mortgage. She knew why I really wanted it and shouted: “Take it and put it up your nose!” ’
By then, Lauren was working full time as an accountant, living in Islington, North London, with her long-term boyfriend James.
‘Mum acted so selfishly, she had become a complete nightmare,’ recalls Lauren today. ‘It was such a burden — I had to factor in checking on my mum to everything I did. It was hard bearing it alone, without siblings — I’m not sure how I would have got through without support from James.’
By now, Sandra’s hair was falling out in clumps and her skin was yellowy-grey — both common symptoms of cocaine use due to malnutrition, as heavy users tend to eat very little.
Eventually Lauren realised she had to act or her mother would die, and got in touch with a company called Sober Services, which can arrange ‘interventions’, in which drug users are visited at home by reformed ex-addicts and urged to confront the reality and consequences of their habit.
‘I was so desperate that I’d taken out a £20,000 loan to pay for a place in a UK rehabilitation centre,’ says Lauren. ‘Thankfully, when I showed up at her home with a former addict in tow, something seemed to click with Mum.’
Sandra agreed to check into rehab. But over the next 28 days, surrounded by other middle-class addicts, she became abusive and unpleasant to the staff.
Before she left, she was advised to seek further treatment — which required a further £8,000 from Lauren (scraped together from savings, her boyfriend’s bonus and selling jewellery) for a more intensive three-month programme in South Africa (one of the cheapest options available).
It was only there — as the drugs and alcohol eventually left her system — that Sandra finally began to face her demons.
‘The guilt, remorse and shame was overwhelming,’ she says. ‘I remember sitting on a beautiful beach, watching the sea, and wondering whether I should walk in and drown myself.’
But she kept on with the therapy, eating three meals a day, even cooking again. In the group sessions, she confronted the fact she had been manipulating her loved ones for years.
Her real test came when she returned to the UK. Thankfully, Sandra didn’t waver, but it was a while before Lauren would trust her mother again. Knowing alcohol had been the gateway drug to her mother’s cocaine use, she continued to monitor her closely.
‘I would check her breath if I thought I could smell alcohol,’ says Lauren. ‘And I’d even measure any bottles of spirits in my house when she was around.’
In the meantime, Sandra cut off all ties to her old life. She has now been clean of drugs and alcohol for two years, seven months and 22 days. Even now, every day is a struggle.
‘It’s still a constant battle to stay away,’ she admits. ‘Just the smell of champagne brings back my craving for cocaine. But I have to stay strong, for Lauren as well as myself.
‘She sacrificed so much for me, including thousands of pounds that she spent on my treatment. She never gave up on me. That’s something I will never forget.’
As for the reversal of the mother/ child relationship, she says simply: ‘I have had to put my guilt behind me. If I dwell on it, I will never be able to recover.’
For her part, Lauren says her devotion to her mother is unwavering.
‘I’ll never regret the money I spent on helping my mum,’ she says. ‘If your mother was dying of cancer, would you think twice about spending anything you could on her treatment? Most of us would do anything to save a person we love.’
soberservices.co.uk, 0844 330 1213.
21 March 2011 | I sent my Mum to Rehab | Grazia
21st March’s edition of Grazia feature an article based upon an Intervention that Sober Services did.
You can read it here :- I sent my Mum to Rehab
16 March 2011 | SEX ADDICTION REAL? | By Sadie Nicholas | Daily Express
Is Sex Addiction real?
Or despite its new status as a medical condition perhaps it’s just a convenient excuse used by people to explain infidelity….
Surrounded by colleagues at a conference, all high-flying engineer Andrew Brookes could think about was having sex with the beautiful brunette he’d just spied across the room. In fact, if he got lucky she would be his fourth conquest that week and one of dozens of notches on his proverbial bedpost. Though it may sound like the unpleasant behaviour of a self-styled lothario, Andrew (not his real name) had an obsession with sex, the result of a clinical addiction, though he didn’t realise it at the time.
“I lost my virginity at 15 and by the time I was 20 I had slept with 50 women,” says Andrew, a Londoner who’s now 35 and has, astonishingly, been married for a year and monogamous for two. “By the time I had treatment for my addiction in 2008 I’d slept with more than 100 women, many of them countless times on a casual basis. The saving grace is that I practised safe sex.
“I’d spend my days at work consumed by thoughts of sex with beautiful women, ugly women, colleagues, even the sisters of my friends. One of the lowest points was sleeping with a friend’s mum. “But in the throes of passion it didn’t matter to me. I had an all-consuming need for sex because it made me feel good about myself for the short time it took to charm my conquests and get them into bed. Afterwards I’d feel ashamed and irritated with myself for treating women like objects but before long that powerful need for another conquest to boost my self-esteem would re-emerge as strong as ever.”
Incredible though it may sound, experts agree that such an addiction is a medical condition which can cause as much physical and emotional affliction as being hooked on drugs or alcohol, with many British rehab centres offering treatment for it. This week it was even reported that the NHS may soon reconsider sex addiction as a genuine disorder after the American Psychiatric Association added it to its main diagnostic manual – considered the definitive guide as to what constitutes a genuine psychological disorder as opposed to something long derided as a convenient excuse for philandering men, women and celebrities.
Last year Tiger Woods sought treatment for sex addiction when tales of his sordid extra-marital liaisons appeared in the world’s media. Famously Hollywood actor Michael Douglas, X-Files star David Duchovny and comedian Russell Brand were also treated for sex addiction and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson confessed she, too, was hooked unhealthily on sex.
But isn’t this all really a convenient label for shallow, bad behaviour? Tracey White is a senior therapist at Sober Services (www.soberservices.co.uk), an organisation offering treatment for various addictions including sex and says it’s important to draw a distinction between those who play the field spectacularly and those who are driven compulsively to sex.
As TRACEY says: “A sex addict is someone who is spurred by sexual compulsivity and whose recurrent behaviour and impulses lead them to a pattern of thinking constantly about or trying to obtain sex, followed by a cycle of unsuccessful efforts to stop, reduce or control these urges. “It’s about compulsion and obsession, resulting in dangerous and reckless actions which lead to feelings of emptiness and despair. It is both a mental and an emotional problem, the mental being the obsession and the emotional, the inability to deal with feelings.
“While men often crave the power of the physical act of sex, often female sex addicts have a desire for intimacy and to feel a closeness created through seduction. That wanting and needing of attention and adoration is more often about love addiction.” Like cocaine and other drugs, sex increases levels of dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter in the brain, so those with addictive personalities get hooked on the high. Often those with one addiction are prone to another.
Although Andrew says giving sex addiction the NHS stamp of recognition could help some people hide behind their own behaviour he’s in no doubt about his own addiction. Incredibly he lived with three separate women in his 20s and early 30s for periods of up to three years. Inevitably each relationship ended because, as he puts it, “I couldn’t keep it in my trousers. I measured my worth and my enjoyment of life in terms of sexual conquests”. Most people will consider this is simply the behaviour of a philanderer and doesn’t need to be labelled as a medical condition.
Andrew disagrees, pointing out that although he and his friends set off on a mission to have as much sex as possible when they were teenagers, he was the only one still chasing conquests a decade later. “My friends were typical men and of course they wanted sex but they weren’t obsessed about it the way I was. They weren’t so focused on it that they felt the need to cheat on their partners. We all like to experiment with sex and different partners in our late teens and 20s but I was using sex to make myself feel momentarily manly and commanding
and I began to see that wasn’t healthy.
By my early 30s my friends were disgusted by my behaviour because we couldn’t do anything or go anywhere without me obsessing about who I could have sex with. They started to mistrust me because I treated women like objects for my own selfish needs.” Finally it was a platonic female friend’s disapproval which finally led to Andrew seeking help for his addiction. “We were at a party and she shot me a look that spoke volumes about what she thought of my relentless obsession. In that moment I realised that her friendship meant more to me than any conquest and that I didn’t want to lose it. We had a frank conversation in which we both got a bit emotional and she told me I needed help to sort myself out.”
FOR the next four months Andrew had weekly one-toone counselling sessions at Sober Services. Typically, treatment for sex addiction is less about the 12-step programmes often associated with drug or alcohol rehabilitation and more about encouraging a person to open up. “My therapist encouraged me to talk and it opened a whole Pandora’s box,” says Andrew. “Slowly I understood that I’d been obsessing about sex because of a subconscious desire to be loved and wanted. I was brought up by very caring parents but I was one of four Children and I suppose I’d often felt a bit lonely, vying for attention with my sister and two brothers.
Perhaps that’s where my neediness stemmed from. Tracey taught me about self-esteem and instilled in me values about monogamy. “I was disrespectful and hurt a lot of people and I was never, ever happy no matter how much I chased the next sexual experience. Now I feel normal and free of that addiction and I can’t articulate how liberating that is.”
Read more: Daily Express Wednesday March 16th 2011
23 February 2011 | Launch of new drug treatment in Bedford
A REVOLUTIONARY new service which aims to help addicts before they hit rock bottom will use Bedfordshire as its UK centre.
The Sober Services programme has been running for two years but will use Bedford as a hub to coordinate its new team of interventionists as part of a new service, which is the first of its kind in this country.
Established by fully recovered alcoholics and addicts, the service is led by Bedfordshire man Ian Young, and John McCann, one of the senior authorities on drug and alcohol interventions.
The Sober Services team, which recently provided the NHS with tips and strategies, claim that they can help an addict in their own home. They also claim that they can treat someone before they hit rock bottom or end up in prison.
They also work with the families of addicts to help them come to terms with the challenging situation they are in.
Mr Young, who trained with practitioners of the therapy in the US, said: “Sober Services is a US model and must be the most proactive of its kind in Europe. We are also the first people to prove a one-on-one service as an alternative to someone going away for treatment.”
“We are the first company to do this kind of thing in UK. I see this as an option for people who resist going for a residential stay because we can come to them.”
“Now people can be treated surrounded by their family at home or at their work place as part of society.”
Coordinated from Bedford, the team plan to work with addicts all over the country, using trained interventionists based in the region of the service user they are working with.
Mr Young added: “We have a strong team who are all ready to work hard to help people get better.”
18th Feb 2011 | You booze, you lose; can the child of an alcoholic ever full recover? | NHS ONLINE
Joanna Lowy comments:
As Children of Alcoholic’s Week draws to a close, we ask whether it’s ever possible to heal completely.
“I grew up with a mother who was and still is an alcoholic and a father who was away at sea for 9 months out of every 12. We were perceived as a nice middle class family by the church, our schools and the numerous organisations that my mother frequented. But behind closed doors, my sister and I lived in a constant state of fear and apprehension.
“We were hungry, and for days on end we would have ice-cream for breakfast as that was all there was in the house. We were constantly tired because going to sleep meant dropping one’s awareness levels and that was when she would come into our bedrooms to shout and scream at us for perceived betrayals, misdemeanours or naughtiness, or to stand and stare at us before hissing such ‘loving’ comments as ‘your daddy doesn’t love you.’
“There were a number of times when she would come into our bedrooms and try to suffocate us with our pillows, sometimes raging about this or that, other times crying that this was the best option for us as we were failures.
“Having friends over for tea or to play didn’t feature in our lives, let alone the idiotic notion of a sleep over, and consequently we didn’t get many invites to others’ houses. We spent our days tiptoeing around ‘the dragon’ as my mother is still known to us. We didn’t wake her if she had passed out, but took the opportunity to doctor the whisky bottle with cold tea or watering down its contents.
“We learnt that sometimes it was easier to be divided in order to survive and sadly ‘the dragon’ used our own fear to turn us against one another, and then pick us off. Over one Christmas period my mother flounced into the room and told my sister that I had been telling lies about her and my mother and this is what happened to liars. She then pulled out the carving knife from behind her back and went to stab me, my sister frozen with fear as I fought her off.”
For many, including Katie Watson, growing up with an alcohol-stained childhood is the norm, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy. From physical and mental abuse, to unhappy family role-reversals, the effects of adult drinking on children are vast. But with the theme of this year’s Children of Alcoholic’s Week being ‘Hope and Healing’, NHS Online asks: can a child ever fully recover?
Alcohol and childhood
“Children can suffer profoundly when their parents have drink problems”, says Family Lives Chief Executive, Jeremy Todd. “Parents may mean well and wish to do their best but drinking can lead to violence, neglect and often results in children feeling shame and anxiety, or having to take on a caring role for their parents, other siblings or themselves when in fact they are the ones who need looking after.”
“There are a number of characteristics that children of alcoholics may have”, explains clinical psychologist Dr Cheryl Rezek. “The environment in which these children are raised isn’t normal. It is filled with disruption, dysfunction and fear. Everything is revolved around the alcoholic’s mood, behaviour and demands.
“In essence, the children of alcoholics aren’t allowed to trust their environment as it isn’t a safe place. They need to always be on the alert for signs of danger so they become hyper-vigilant. They often do whatever it takes to keep the peace and safety as well as protecting themselves and others, so they become over-responsible, self-critical, struggle with closeness, and feel shame about themselves and their family.”
Abuse, whether physical, sexual, or emotional, is also paramount to the alcoholic’s behaviour towards the child, and so forming relationships will also be incredibly difficult. “They don’t know what is appropriate or acceptable in terms of interactions, behaviours, communication skills or relationships”, Dr Rezek continues. “They know that their environments are strange so they often don’t make friends or bring them home. Their role modelling has been skewed so they don’t know how to manage life, difficulties, feelings or relationships. They will be over-protective, feel the need to put things right, stay caring and loyal, even when it isn’t appropriate, and frequently seek out approval. However, they also fear being in situations where they feel they don’t have any control because it is then unpredictable. Most tend to be over responsible but some do go the other route and are impulsive and have difficulty being appropriate and responsible.”
One of the main concerns of living with an alcoholic parent is that the propensity to drink will be passed on to the child. “The child of the alcoholic often lives in a state of denial usually referred to as ‘the lie’ with a fear of being found out”, explains addiction interventionist at Sober Services, Julian Xuereb. “This child is attached to the illness and lives in constant shame and guilt, which affects their personal relationships and the growing up process with a strong possibility to drink themselves in order to ‘fit in’ with the negative crowd. There is often a mushroom effect seen with this illness which can often be passed onto the children.”
However, it can also work in favour of a sober adulthood. “In some cases the child can see the destruction caused by alcoholism and can drink responsibly or leave it alone”, he continues. “They may not necessarily have the ‘genetic bullet’ which means they have lost the power of choice and have no bodily control.”
“All too often I hear stories from clients who say they had an alcoholic parent and so they were determined that they wouldn’t go down the same route- and yet here they are”, adds Sober Services founder Ian Young, “and then I’ll speak to a sibling with exactly the same history and determination not to drink, who goes on to live a perfectly normal life. There is a lack of specific research to prove conclusively that the children of an alcoholic have any long term effects, because there are so many alcoholics who cannot trace it back to their parents, but there is certainly a clear case for genetic dispositions in addiction.”
But whether or not the child also becomes an addict, one thing’s for sure; growing up with an alcoholic parent can result in a plethora of other, less tangible consequences. “They may take on far more responsibility at work or in relationships than is required”, explains Dr Rezek. “They may struggle to know how to act and engage, particularly in close or intimate relationships, or to express themselves, especially in an open an appropriate manner. They may also feel anxious and unsafe, being unable to believe that others can be trusted, predictable, nurturing and kind.
“Full recovery is perhaps unrealistic”, she continues. “Adults are products of their childhoods, and because the foundations have been skewed, distorted and disrupted, naturally it will affect the individual as an adult.”
However, although it may not be possible to rewrite your childhood, it is possible to move on from it. “People can shift their lives and don’t need to carry all the pain, fear and shame with them forever”, says Dr Rezek. “It takes commitment and work to make things different or to feel differently about oneself but it is possible.”
Founding Director of Children of Addicted Parents (COAP) and Trustee for National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), Emma Spiegler, agrees, and believes that sharing your experience with others is tantamount to recovery. “Attending support groups is where the journey of recovery begins”, she says. “People need to understand that they’re not alone, and that it’s not their fault. However, every situation is completely individual, so whether it will affect them in adulthood depends on what type of experience they had and what type of person they are.”
For Katie, past Trustee and current Child Protection Adviser of NACOA, creating something positive out of her troubled past has been key to moving on. However, she’s the first to admit that she will never fully recover:
“The knock-on implications continue into our adult lives as issues of trust and openness rear their heads”, she says. “I joined the army at the earliest opportunity and fled from home, but still the alcohol perceptions leaked into my life and it wasn’t until I was 33 with my own family that I was able to break all contact with ‘the dragon’. What doesn’t kill you can make you stronger, but it is a hard road to walk.
“We children of alcoholics may be invisible to the naked eye, but we exist. Support NACOA to support us.”
If you are the child of an alcoholic parent, visit either www.coap.co.uk or www.nacoa.org.uk for help, advice, or support.
