By Anonymous, for Commission on Alcohol Harm, 2020
Names in the story have been changed
At the start of 2019, I knew I was in a crisis but I was doing what a lot of people do, putting on a brave face and making all the right noises that everything was ‘fine’. However as the year started to unfold I wasn’t able to hide behind this mask for very long.
I will never be quite sure when it started but 2018 wasn’t a really a good year either, as the cracks were really beginning to show. My first memory of things not being quite right were after I had been away on a work trip.
They were only small and ever so subtle, a shard of broken glass in an unusual place, a slight smear of blood on the bathroom wall. Just enough to catch my attention but small enough to ignore.
I was forging ahead with my work plans so I didn’t really want to ‘see’ it. My husband had lost his mum to cancer 3/4 years previous – as I said the timeline of this is hazy because sometimes things were just so normal.
Michael, when I think back started to dwell on things that most of us are sad about, or upset about, or mad about for a shorter time. Deaths of people we knew, or of animals on the farm, hung with him for weeks. He was reclusive and looking back, like a slowed down version of himself at times.
2018 I started aiming higher than I had ever done before, taking more and more risks work-wise in what initially felt like an attempt to get both of us to a new space and time and then, as I began to watch with horror what was unfolding, I knew I would need a plan for me to make it on my own.
I became more frenzied in my approach as my days and nights became more confused – ‘had he been drinking?’ ‘Was he drunk’ I could never figure it out and began to doubt my instincts when he repeatedly made me feel that it was me that had it all wrong and that I was worrying without reason. We started to keep a distance from each other. We both worked long hours so that was neither unusual or a problem until it was.
On the very last days of 2018, we lost our dog, and I think when looking back this was grief on top of unresolved grief for Michael and anger on top of anger for me. By now, living together but in parallel universes of distrust, shame, fear and despair.
I again can’t remember the exact dates or even months but I realised that my instincts were more than correct and my husband was an alcoholic.
So I began to really hunt for the clues and confront him. Which shamed him more. He ended up in hospital having very narrowly avoided death and I took him to the doctor shortly after this.
We were both putting on the brave face for the public, although I realised I had pretty much been in hiding and excluded myself from everything and anything social for about a year or more already.
Promises and plans were made at hospital and appointments. But by this stage, it was so serious and out of control that it was a little too late. The service was at best poor. The doctors and nurses, everyone we spoke to and worked, with were great but the actual support and consistency of appointments were not there, along with Michael’s inability to cope with what was happening to him and the family around him.
He was very resistant to change as he had work and commitments to keep up. He was worked up about me financially (the impact on my business was very telling) and his dad’s health. Which, again, was part of the vicious cycle.
At one of the hospital appointments I took him to, to try to force some progress (I spent two years of trying to force things to be better, force things to come right – it was exhausting) I told the doctor that we desperately needed help and now, right now as Michael was consistently drink driving.
She looked at me and told me that under no circumstance was he to be allowed to do this. I have never felt more alone in my whole life.
I had taken this car keys away on numerous occasions. I had kept his wallet so he had no access to money for an entire month. Nothing worked.
It was like child-minding an adult size toddler with no understanding of the seriousness of his actions. My brain was frazzled and the burden kept being passed back by the professionals who I had turned to help for.
In short, what followed was –
- Hospital
- Doctors’ appointments
- Promises
- Lies
- I left to stay at home with my parents – in a bid to get him to ‘see’ and to ‘help himself’
- Further drink driving
- I told him it was over and that I wanted a divorce – in a last-ditch attempt to get him to ‘see’ and help himself’
- Further hospital admittance
- Caught drink driving and taken into custody
- Banned from driving, car seized. His lawyer got him a lighter sentence by assuring the court that his client had the problem under control and it was due to grief and personal circumstance – not alcohol addiction.
Every day for the first 9 months of the year I would get up and think of ways I could fix it, ways that I could help even when I didn’t live with Michael. I switched between this and waiting for a call to say that Michael had died or that he had accidentally killed someone else. This constant worrying ate away at me.
I would endlessly go through the reasons of why this happened. Could I have stopped it sooner? Endlessly berating myself for the things I had done wrong. Being sure I was a bad wife. And sure that the local community were also blaming me.
It was at this point I realised I had to start helping myself. I was pretty much broken by October – all my plans to fix Michael and to fix my ailing business were not working because I was mentally and physically exhausted. This point was proven when I collapsed while helping out at a local fireworks night and then, two days after, I spun my van and very narrowly avoided an accident. I realised I needed to start seeking help for myself. I was, at best, exhausted and I can only talk about this now, but I was very close to suicidal.
I went to the doctor and explained my circumstances. She was so kind but her words smarted —‘we see this all the time with families affected by addiction’.