Drowning the sorrows: Coping with losing a parent to alcohol addiction

[TW: Addiction - Alcohol dependency - Grief - Bereavement]

When someone you love dies from an alcohol dependency, you may find yourself asking whether you could have done anything to help them in their time of need and I’m writing this post to put some of those thoughts to bed – you did what you could. Now I can only speak on behalf of a community who have lost loved ones to alcohol addiction, but I want to share some thoughts about this type of loss that may resonate with those concerned about a loved one’s alcohol habits and help others grieving a death related to alcohol dependency. Some of the content in this post may come across as brash and it definitely isn’t sugar-coated, but it’s incredibly important that this topic is discussed as alcohol dependency affects over half a million people in England and it’s estimated that 82% of these people are not accessing any help (https://alcoholchange.org.uk/).

Having been raised in pubs throughout my life, I have witnessed a lot of drinking and drunk behaviour, violence and, sadly, death. Over the 18 years of pub-life I saw strangers become regulars, some of whom would be waiting outside the front door at opening time and spend their week at the bar drinking the days away. Sadly, over the years we lost a few regulars to the bottle; but when I was a little girl growing up in this environment, I never thought it would be my own father that I would be saying goodbye to as a result of alcohol addiction. The funny thing about alcohol is that it is incredibly common and used by many people, but it is still a (legal) drug - I drink, my friends drink, my dad drank. Therefore, this post is not going to be about shaming alcohol, but I hope this provides an insight into the impacts of alcohol addiction on a person’s life. A dependency on alcohol is like a disease, it’s difficult to shake and can have detrimental effects on a person’s health, finances, social life and personal relationships. Any feelings of guilt or the classic ‘what if’ questions you may ask yourself after losing someone to an alcohol dependency are your mind’s way of taking some control over a highly uncontrollable situation. The likely scenario is that you did talk to them about their addiction, you listened to them and gave advice, you supported them and loved them unconditionally. You did what you could for them, please stop torturing yourself with ‘what if’s’ that you won’t ever know the answer to.

Up at Nan & Ted's house, probably up to mischief

My dad was born to manage pubs, and nobody would ever deny that fact. To his customers, he was an entertainer, everybody’s friend, the awful joke teller and the generous pub landlord that would go above and beyond for his friends. The drinking grew steadily over the years, often being used as an excuse to socialise with his customers, although it was never of any real concern until the death of my paternal grandparents within nine months of each other. Rather than ask for help, he turned up the crank on his drinking habits to numb the pain. Having experienced a parental loss myself now, I can understand how this helped him get by. Something that will stick with me forever is how his friends and family, including myself, urged him to think about what my future would look like without him - no father to walk me down the aisle and no grandfather to my children. Sadly, this apparent lack of forward thinking and empathy can be a consequence of alcoholism, robbing people of their ability to think about the impacts of their problem on themselves and their closest family and friends. Something that I would like to mention here is that if your parent or loved one is addicted to alcohol, or has passed due to an alcohol dependency, you’ll likely be familiar with the rhetoric ‘I don’t have a problem’ from them. This may be convincing enough for you, it certainly seemed to be my dad’s opinion, but again this is another consequence of an alcohol dependency. The more they drink, the more it becomes their ‘normal’ so they become convinced this is their true self and that they must drink in order to return to this ‘normal’.

However, on the few occasions that my dad was sober for a day or two there were consequences; his body was so used to the intensive alcohol intake that he often had seizures and developed an enlarged heart condition, landing him in hospital a handful of times. I used to get the bus to and from school with the route passing by the local hospital. I would often see an ambulance turning into the hospital from the direction of the pub and wonder if this would be the day he ended up there. One time this scenario actually happened where he had a seizure after not drinking for nearly 24 hours. I answered a phone call from my mum’s friend asking me to get off at the hospital on my way home and entered A&E to find my dad completely incoherent from the seizure and he was unable to recognise me. Eventually, my mum and auntie signed him into a detox programme at the hospital, he left the grounds a couple of times at the start, confused why we had done this to him, but by the end of the detox he was convinced he was a changed man. The few Alcoholics Anonymous meetings he attended post-detox were difficult for him, he didn’t like to share his thoughts with strangers and he’d normally explain that he should be the one to help the others in the group. He would proudly announce that he had been ‘X’ number of days without a drink, but the sad reality was that he was now drinking secretly by hiding bottles around the house and drinking when nobody else was home.

It saddens me to say that the good memories of my dad are often suffocated by bad memories of my dad’s drunken behaviour and my mum having to pick up the pieces. There were deep-rooted family confessions and my dad ended up losing his job due to his problem. We had an awkward ‘family’ holiday where my parents officially separated, and dad ended up selling my grandparent’s home to buy a campervan so that he could live anywhere he wanted. At this point, around September 2015, I was about to start university in Leeds and would only see my dad two or three more times before his death in January of 2017. He isolated himself from family and friends, leaving my mum and I constantly wondering if he was drink driving, if he had hurt himself or someone else on the road. From talking with others who have been affected by a relative with an alcohol dependency, self-isolation is apparently a fairly common behaviour. My dad was also a very proud man, he would always have clean, ironed clothes available and he took care of himself, however in his final year or so these behaviours were reversed, and he barely saw or kept in touch with friends and family.

The only picture without him pulling a silly face

On the 3rd of January 2017 we had a visit from a police officer to tell us the worst had happened. I came into the room to see my mum in floods of tears and through broken squeaks she confirmed, “it’s dad”. This is a memory that plays through my mind a lot as I often think about my dad dying alone, he hadn’t responded to my messages at Christmas and he was probably in a very dark place mentally; so some days it’s harder to supress the guilt that comes with these thoughts than others. His cause of death was ruled as ‘alcoholic cardiomyopathy’, which is a type of heart disease/failure as a result of extreme alcohol abuse, and he had advanced liver cirrhosis. But why should I feel guilty for his death when these are self-inflicted illnesses due to his alcohol dependency? Well, that’s because it was exactly that - a dependency. He was mentally unwell and the only way he thought to cope with his grief was to lose control and in turn, cause pain for others. I would love to be able to write an in-depth blog post on coping mechanisms for processing a parent’s alcohol addiction, but there is no silver bullet for this kind of thing. These are a few things that I have come to terms with and discovered whilst coping with a parent who has an alcohol addiction, as well as losing a parent to that addiction, that may be useful to someone else:

1. It wasn’t your fault. An alcohol addiction can take time to develop, it can develop for a multitude of reasons and may be better or worse on different days of the week. However difficult it is to accept; you must know it was not your fault and in time I hope you can believe that - it took me about a year to realise and accept this fact.

2. Alcohol changes people. Drinking alcohol can affect our mood and the way we react to things, and sometimes it can prevent us from remembering anything at all. Alcohol addiction magnifies these aspects to the point where the everyday version of them is a fraction of how you remembered them before the drinking. Occasionally things are said that shouldn’t have been whilst drunk; this is the alcohol talking, not them.

3. There is help available. My dad eventually went into a detox programme after going into hospital for a seizure and attended a few Alcoholics Anonymous meetings when discharged. These resources may be enough to slow or even stop the addiction, but if not, there are NHS and private therapies/counselling out there. Sadly, these resources are under-funded and often have long waiting lists, but it is always worth checking out your options and suggesting them to loved ones you may be concerned about.

4. Sometimes you need to listen. Alcohol is often a vector for deep conversations and truths. You might find that by listening to the parent/person in your life with a dependency, you uncover the root of their problems and what they want to do about it. My dad often admitted how bereft he felt and that he didn’t spend enough time with his parents throughout his life. We would get to a point where he’d also admit he had a drinking problem and we’d agree that he would cut it down gradually, although this was harder to monitor when he moved away.

5. There is life after death. At Grieve and Groove, we advocate for leading a fulfilling life after the death of a parent or parental figure, finding our ‘groove’ whilst learning to cope with the grief. Things will not go back to ‘normal’ as it was, but that’s fine because your life will grow around the grief and you can make personal progress towards your goals and ambitions that would make your parent or loved one proud. I cope best with alone time, music and getting some fresh air, I roll with the sad days and embrace the productive ones.

This is going to sound hurtful, but I often consider my dad to have died long before the man who died on the 3rd January 2017. My dad, as I try to remember him, would be proud of all the achievements I’ve made since his death. No, I won’t have him there on my wedding day to walk me down the aisle and no, he isn’t here to celebrate the future achievements I make. However, I keep his memory alive by talking about him, his life and death, and how I grieve for him because avoiding it would be like avoiding half of myself. Alcohol dependency is not embarrassing, it is not always easy to address with a loved one, but it is a problem that can be rectified.

If you suspect that you or somebody in your life is suffering with an alcohol dependency, please contact your GP or visit https://alcoholchange.org.uk/ for advice on how to reduce alcohol intake or stop altogether.

If you have lost someone you loved to an alcohol addiction and are seeking support in your grief, please feel free to contact me (Meg) at the Grieve & Groove email (grieveandgroove@hotmail.com). I am not a therapist or counsellor, but I have been through the motions myself and can offer support and guidance.

Lots of love,

Meg x