I was in my teens when I started to notice my dad’s behaviour wasn’t entirely normal. He was a loving and affectionate father, but I knew he was drinking too much.
It wasn’t something we discussed in my family though. Instead we all carried on, pretending to the world that everything was fine.
When I left our home in Kent to go to university, I put on a facade in front of other people. I thought the more well-adjusted I seemed, the more others would think there was nothing really wrong with my dad.
But there was. He was addicted to alcohol and the drink was controlling him. I should have been sympathetic but I was so conscious of the stigma surrounding addiction, I was scared of others thinking “Oh, your dad’s a drunk and you’re going to end up like him”.
When he came to my graduation, he had to walk out as soon as I’d been awarded my degree because he had the shakes and needed a drink. I was mortified and never forgave him for putting me through that.
When I got married the following year, I begged him to at least remain sober until he’d walked me down the aisle. Amazingly, he did.
But around the time I fell pregnant with my first child at 22, I noticed he had got worse. He was hiding his drink around the house but I could always smell it on him. If he didn’t have a drink when he needed one, he would shake. His personality had changed and he wasn’t the father I’d known in early childhood.
But even then my mother, two sisters and I did not recognise the severity of his dependence. He was in denial himself, and therefore so were we. None of us wanted to admit he had a problem. I felt as if talking about it to anyone outside the family would be an act of disloyalty to him; one that would bring shame on all of us.
I didn’t understand how ill my dad really was, what he was going through or how hard it would be for him to stop drinking. Because of this, I’d say awful things to him, which I now deeply regret. I told him he was weak; that he was inflicting everything on himself. I told him to just snap out of it – there were others out there who were far worse off than him and he should get a grip. I accused him of choosing alcohol over us.
I remember looking at my baby daughter and thinking: “I love her so much, I’d never put her through this pain, so how can my dad be putting me through it?”
He needed a clinical detox and proper medical supervision but all we did was shame him and suffer from shame ourselves. Sometimes I would pour all his drink down the sink, thinking I was helping him.
It wasn’t until 2017, in the days before his death, that it dawned on me quite how serious the situation was. His final binge felt different somehow: even more extreme than anything that had gone before.
I was angry with him. I wanted to take him to hospital, knowing he had to be seen by a doctor, but he brushed me off and claimed I was being dramatic. He didn’t want to waste the doctors’ time as he felt so acutely aware of the stigma attached to alcohol dependency. He didn’t want to be judged and lacked the confidence to seek support.
Finally I managed to get him to A&E,where this stigma was perfectly clear. When people around us saw the state of him, instead of looking sympathetic they shook their heads and tutted. I even caught the paramedics rolling their eyes at him.
The end, when it came, was swift. Within 30 hours of his admission to hospital, we were switching off his life support machine. His body had given up. At the age of 59 he had drunk himself to death.
I was flooded with a spectrum of different emotions. I felt incredibly sad and hurt and in so much pain it was like being hit by a bus. But I also experienced an overwhelming sense of guilt rip through me. I felt I should have done more and better understood the severity of my dad’s illness instead of feeling embarrassed and brushing it under the carpet. I felt angry and bitter: why did he do this to us? And then I felt relief: that I didn’t have to look after him any more; that I could move on with my life; that he was no longer suffering. I was relieved each time the phone rang I’d no longer be dreading a call telling me my dad had died. I then felt guilty for feeling such relief.
At first I continued to feel ashamed of the illness that claimed his life. I told people he’d died of a heart attack, not wanting to reveal the truth. But since then I’ve come to see how damaging it is to collude in this level of shame. Alcoholism is a disease like any other. We need to talk about it openly and help any loved ones suffering from it, not make them feel even worse.
So now that’s what I do. I talk about it without embarrassment. I’m not ashamed of my dad. He was deeply unwell and needed support. I regret he wasn’t able to get it and that I didn’t do more. But I hope by being part of a more honest and empathetic conversation around problem drinking, we can create the conditions for those with this terrible illness to get the help they need.
Sarah Drage is founder of WarriorKind, a community dedicated to normalising conversations around mental health and wellbeing
As told to Rosa Silverman
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