For as long as Lesley can remember, alcohol was part of her family life. Se recalls camping trips during her childhood where her parents would spend time in the pubs allowing Lesley a glass of shandy. By the time she was 18, Lesley would frequently go to pubs with her friends. She remembers making sure that she had one drink more than everybody else, especially at closing time.
Lesley’s first long-term personal relationship lasted three years and she was devastated by the break up. She began to drink heavily, two or three bottles of wine a day – ‘drinking to oblivion’. She continued to drink this way for a year until she went back to work.
When Lesley was 29, she began dating Steve. They were drinking every night, in the pub straight after work until nine or ten o’clock. When Lesley’s father fell ill, she gave up work to help her mother look after him. Her mother was an alcoholic. She kept her mother company dirking, sometimes from lunchtime. ‘She deserved it, having to look after my father and I was keeping her company – my excuse.’
When her father died, Lesley and her mother hit the drink hard. Within 18 months her mother also passed away. Again, Lesley’s drinking escalated. ‘I was completely off my rocker all the time.’ She cannot remember exactly how much she was drinking at this time – cans of cider and lager, made up with half a bottle of whiskey a day.
Lesley continued drinking chaotically until she was 37 years old when she gave birth to James. This prompted her to look at her drinking. She slowed down, having a couple of cans in the evenings. Her partner continued to drink heavily.
When James started nursery, Lesley would meet her friends in the afternoon in the pub. She was drinking with people who drank like she did. She continued to drink in the evenings as well. Her drinking further escalated. Social Services became involved and James, aged seven, was taken into care.
Lesley tried detoxing three times in a local psychiatric hospital. She also tried numerous home detoxes. However, she had no intention of staying off the alcohol. ‘I’d just give my body a break and go back out there… I’d no intention to stay off it… let my liver recover and be nice to Social Services and they’ll give me James back.’
She was sober for six months when Social Services gave James back to her. However, although she had cleaned up she had not changed her way of thinking. She attended a harm-reduction agency, where she was encouraged to control her drinking. ‘It was giving me license to drink, wasn’t it? You know, as long as I show up on time… it was good.’
James was home six months when Steve had a stroke. He was diagnosed with brain cancer and given five weeks to live. Lesley looks back at this as a wonderful license to drink. She visited Steve in hospital every day while under the influence of alcohol. Tow cans in the morning for breakfast for courage and tow cans to drink during the visit – hidden in the toilets. Steve was in hospital for four months before Lesley was allowed to take him home. At this point, she was drinking cider, as lager was no longer giving her a quick enough kick. She then had to take Steve to chemotherapy every day.
Social Services took James off Lesley again. Her friends volunteered to foster him and Lesley was allowed supervised contact once a week. Inevitably, Steve had to go into a nursing home. When he died, Lesley weighed just six stone. With Steve gone and James in care, she felt as if her life had collapsed and began to question, ‘What have I got to live for?’
Steve’s funeral was on a Friday and Lesley went into the local psychiatric hospital on the following Monday to detox. Her detox lasted ten days. Once again she turned to alcohol. She didn’t feel guilty, she didn’t feel anything. To her, ‘a detox was just a detox.’
She started to try and control her drinking. She also tried changing her drinks. She tried to rationalize that she couldn’t be an alcoholic because she drank whiskey and martini, not only cheap lagers and ciders. She drank from long glasses, decided to have only one drink before tea – but tea kept getting earlier – and was grateful for the invention of Coca-Cola (you could hide so much in it!) She started to take valium in the morning if she did not have alcohol, in order to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
Lesley was now spending most of her time on her own. She described herself as ‘a poor helpless little waif with nothing going for her’ at the peak of her drinking.
‘I didn’t care, I couldn’t be bothered. I was dirty. I didn’t bother washing. Didn’t bother eating. I was the person no one wanted to talk to. Even my drinking friends, the majority of them had deserted me. I was an embarrassment. I was very, very lonely. Very lonely.’
|
