Click Play Button Above To View Video

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:21:13

Hello, I’m Elliott Ward, addiction specialist, and welcome to another
episode of Coming Clean with me. Joining me in the studio today is
Sarah Drage Sarah is the child of an alcoholic parent, and I thought
for a change would be very interesting to take completely different
perspective. Instead of talking to the person with the addiction, I
thought it’d be different to talk to the child of a person who had
an addiction to alcohol.

00:00:21:15 – 00:00:37:11

Welcome, Sarah. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you for having
me. Wow. Thank you. It’s a lot to get through. So, Sarah, tell us
about your dad. Who’s Steve and where he was born, what person he
was. What was your character like? What he did for a living. Tell me
about your dad. Oh, God. My dad’s age. You know what?

00:00:37:11 – 00:01:03:23

My. My dad. Steve. He was a Yorkshireman, and he was the. He had the
quirky sense of humor. Like, he really did. Like, whenever you if
anybody who would meet my dad would come across this little, tiny,
little Yorkshireman with just that cracking sense of humor.
Everything was he had the slapstick humor kind of personality to
him. And he was amazing.

00:01:03:24 – 00:01:24:20

He was very ahead of his time. And what I mean by that, the way he
thinks, the way he his belief systems, like even back in the 90s was
he taught me and my sisters was three of us. He taught all of us to
be independent and not reliant on a man or anyone. Instead of saying
things like man up, he would say stuff like a woman up.

00:01:24:22 – 00:01:51:03

It was just so ingrained independence in all of us. Very ahead of
his time. The way he used to think, he was a builder. He used to own
a chain of properties. He’s property developer, and he flipped
properties. And, yeah, he went through something incredibly
traumatic. Really, really traumatic. Something I don’t really talk
about publicly, but it was a matter of life and death.

00:01:51:03 – 00:02:20:24

And it saw us move from Yorkshire to France, from France to Kent and
he became addicted to alcohol because of it, because of this event
that happened. Yes. So prior to that, he wasn’t addicted to alcohol?
No. I would say family members would always say that he was a heavy
drinker. So they would always say, you know, you catch my dad at a
party and he had a cannon in his hand, or he had a little whiskey
glass and a bottle, and he used to drink, Bell’s whiskey.

00:02:21:02 – 00:02:44:07

Is it that there was whiskey? Yeah. And that was his drink of
choice. So he was always a it was always there, I believe. I can’t
actually ever remember my dad without a drink. Right. It was. It was
always. It was always there. I think you always used it as a crutch.
When it became really apparent was when we were a little bit older.

00:02:44:09 – 00:03:08:06

And we dissociate the drink with the personality change. And, I
believe your granddad. Your dad’s dad. Was he a drinker as well? No,
I believe my granddad was sober. Okay. Yeah. My granddad was sober.
Him and my dad were very close. Really? Really close. And it was
actually his death that triggered the death of my dad’s relapse.

00:03:08:12 – 00:03:33:08

So your dad’s dad, your grandfather passing away was one of the
triggers. The instigators of increasing his drinking from socially
to being a problem. Is that what happened? So he was sober. Thought
so. About 14 months before my dad died. He went to a detox facility
and he was detoxed from alcohol. Did really well. Super proud of
him.

00:03:33:10 – 00:03:54:04

Didn’t follow up any kind of psychological support. So he, it was
almost like he’s off. He’s he’s not an alcoholic anymore. That was
that was what we thought as a family. He stopped drinking. That’s
it. He’s not an alcoholic anymore. We won’t talk about it. We won’t
discuss it again. It was almost like a secret that we all just
brushed under the carpet, and we all just thought.

00:03:54:04 – 00:04:12:05

That’s it. It’s done. And I remember somebody once said to me, your
dad will always be an alcoholic. And I got really offended by it.
But I have a looking back. Looking back now, I understand that Gary
was he didn’t follow up any psychological support, didn’t treat any
of the trauma that he’d been through, the depression, the anxiety.

00:04:12:07 – 00:04:32:03

And what that meant was, when my granddad died in March 2017, my dad
relapsed. Quite significantly. It sounds like beneath the surface he
was trying to hold it all together. And then when his father passed
away, your granddad, it was just a catalyst that was just too much
for him to deal with. 100% agree with that.

00:04:32:03 – 00:04:49:24

And even looking back now in the way he was personality wise and the
things that he would say, he was absolutely trying to hold it

together. And how many years ago we came back when he was in the
height of that alcoholism? Oh, I think.
00:04:50:01 – 00:05:30:18

As a child, he was always a heavy drinker. As a child was when I was
seven. Eight. And how old are you now? I’m 34. Okay. So I took about
20 to 25 years ago, but it wasn’t really apparent. And he still had
his personality and it was a slow decrease in the way he presented
himself. So it might when when we were teenagers, that’s when it
really, really shone a light as to, okay, there’s a problem here
where worried about coming home and this is what’s really important
not and and it’s really lovely to be asked about him as a person
because he was a sensitive, kind, caring, loving, amazing man.

00:05:30:20 – 00:05:46:22

But when he was drunk, he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t violent. But
he had an aggressive tone to his voice. He had a lot of resentment.
He had a lot of anger, a lot of unresolved anger, and it was really
difficult to be around him. I was never frightened of him, but I was
always on edge around him.

00:05:46:23 – 00:06:04:08

I was always worried about what mood is he in. And when we were
teenagers, that’s that’s what it was like coming home. I remember
I’d ring my mum and I’d say, well, what magazine today? We’ll see.
Like, yeah, what has he been drinking? And if he’d been drinking,
then I’d go home and I’d sit in my room.

00:06:04:08 – 00:06:26:19

And this is a school. School? Yeah, it’s a school age. Yeah. The
reason I asked about how long ago this was, and when he was in the
height of his alcoholism, is because if you go back 20 years, it was
a very different time to today, 2024. Like, you know, it was it was
frowned upon. You know, we have sober parties now, if you’re that
age, you go out, we have alcohol free, you know, beer and wine and
spirits.

00:06:26:19 – 00:06:46:11

So we didn’t have any of that. And I think with alcohol being so
readily available, listen, you cross the road to it to an off
license and people not understanding that must be really difficult.
Living in the family with the dad who was an alcoholic, it was
tremendously difficult. We didn’t talk about it. We weren’t allowed
to talk about it.

00:06:46:12 – 00:07:05:15

We didn’t even really talk about it. To what? Not to each other. We
all knew it was happening. We didn’t admit to ourselves that it was
happening. We were all in denial. We just thought my dad was
strange. We didn’t know how. Because you didn’t want to. Yeah, a bit
of both. I think we were so afraid of the stigma.

00:07:05:17 – 00:07:26:20

Like when everything happened to my family. What happened to them?
We ended up losing everything. So we’d all of a sudden being
catapulted into a life of poverty. So we had. We went from having
everything and not going move out. All of a sudden searching behind
the sofa, £0.50 to put in the electric machine. It was literally it
was like that.

00:07:26:20 – 00:07:54:01

So we ended up living on a council estate. It was such a stigma
attached to that, especially back in the early noughties. You know,
shameless was huge at that point. You, Frank Gallagher character and
the council estate and the alcoholic. So I really went above and
beyond to portray this sensible, respectable, overachieving
individual to almost convince anybody looking in that we weren’t
like that.

00:07:54:03 – 00:08:15:08

So I was so worried about being stigmatized and discriminated
against, probably doing that I because being, you know, stigmatized
the way people looked at it at that time. But also part of you as a
young child didn’t want to believe it. I think it was part of you
was trying to hide it. Part of you is going, this is my dad, you
know, because there’s two parts to your dad, right?

00:08:15:11 – 00:08:38:14

There’s the dad when he’s not drinking and there’s dad when he is
drinking. And there are two different people, completely different
animals. Like. Yeah, 100%. And this is the thing, this is what was
so difficult. And I always say to people now looking back and even
now with the work that I do, I always say it would have been easier
had my dad not been a nice person because I knew what my dad was
like.

00:08:38:14 – 00:08:58:16

I knew his character, I knew what he’d been through. It was almost
like I had that level of empathy and compassion for him. And I
desperately wanted to fix him. I wanted to I wanted to get in there.
I wanted to fix him. I wanted to try and change things. I knew that
he wasn’t that person, and I was so I just wanted to protect him.

00:08:58:16 – 00:09:24:22

I want to protect his reputation, protect him from the stigma
attached to it, protect the family. And make him better. Did your
dad acknowledge his alcoholism towards the end? He did. Yeah. Yeah,
we did. And that was tough. I he cried. I remember, getting a phone
call from him and he said, that he was sorry, that he didn’t want to
be like this.

00:09:24:22 – 00:09:49:06

And if he could change, he would. And he went on to apologize even
further and said that, you know, I know I’m making you anxious. And
at the time, I was really struggling with my mental health. I had
really, really, severe form of health anxiety, which as a
consequence, we later discovered was a manifestation of I couldn’t
control my dad’s health.

00:09:49:06 – 00:10:10:21

So I desperately have to control something. So I projected onto me,
and I know my dad blamed himself, that he told me. That’s a lot,
too. That’s a lot to carry, right? Lots of time. There’s something
that you said. You said, imagine watching someone you love drown.
And that’s what it was like watching my dad drink himself to death.

00:10:10:23 – 00:10:30:19

I mean, you spoke of you touched on, like, you know, it took an
emotional toll, your mental health. You got subjected to how else
did it affect your life and your sister’s life? In every possible
way. It affected our lives. You know, I moved out of the family home
at 19. Not because I wanted to, but because I wanted.

00:10:30:21 – 00:10:48:19

I felt like I had to. I needed to get away from him, loved him
dearly. I couldn’t watch that. I couldn’t be subjected to that. So
moving out that young affected everything. It had a ripple effect on
what what I did at university, for instance, what subject I chose,
did you choose? I chose crime and place him. Wow.

00:10:48:21 – 00:11:17:20

Yeah. Wow. But I unconsciously driving you towards that. Yeah, yeah.
Because I was a performer, used to performing arts. And I felt that
if I went to university, I’d make my dad proud because I would be
the only one in my family to attend university. And I thought that
might fix him. And because of what he’d been through, I wanted to
have that level of criminology and that criminology knowledge to try
and help and support.

00:11:17:21 – 00:11:37:20

So I felt like if I did that, I could help my dad here, I could fix
things. I remember thinking it, but it weren’t really what I wanted
to do. And, you know, I look back at that, then I thought I would
have had my time again. It would have been different. I would have gone down the performing arts route.

00:11:37:20 – 00:11:57:22

I’m really passionate about that. But I didn’t. So really, what
you’re saying is actually your whole life tilted in a different
direction to what you might have gone through if your dad hadn’t had
an alcohol addiction, because you might not gone to university to
choose that subject by going to performing arts, that that in itself
has completely changed your life.

00:11:58:00 – 00:12:04:11

Yeah, in every way. Definitely. You know.

00:12:04:13 – 00:12:32:09

Everything really, even down to my maturity levels. I, when I said
earlier on about portraying as respectable, sensible character, I
went above and beyond that, even at 19, 20, 21. So I wouldn’t be
coming out drinking, I wouldn’t be partying, I wouldn’t be going out
with lots of different guys. I was very, very, almost obsessed with
coming across respectable.

00:12:32:11 – 00:12:48:07

Did you drink? Not really. No. Maybe a little bit. But I never got
to the point where I was like some of my friends. And what about
when you were, like, 19, 20 and you went out with friends and not
drinking like your friends did? But how did you feel when friends of
yours were drinking excessively around you?

00:12:48:07 – 00:13:08:18

Because that must have happened. And then reflecting and thinking
about your dad, how did that affect you? Subconsciously? I think it
made me feel uncomfortable. It’s almost like I had this subconscious
resentment towards it, like I knew what it was causing at home and I
didn’t really want to. Like, I think I was scared of it. I was scared to be around it.

00:13:08:18 – 00:13:37:00

I was scared to become my dad. So I avoided it. I’d be the
designated driver or I would. I would be like, oh, I’m saving money,
or I’m doing this or I’d try and avoid it as much as possible. And
how did the fact that your dad had an alcoholic addiction affect
your choices with boyfriends? Growing up as a teenager, when people
go to the pub and they drink, how did that affect your choices of
the men that you would have dated?

00:13:37:02 – 00:14:03:05

I didn’t date a lot of people, okay, for that reason, possibly

looking back on it. Yeah, my is again, it goes back to that
respectable image must come across respectable. I remember speaking
to a friend of mine and I had broken up with my school boyfriend. I
was living for a few years and I was 19, and she said to me, the
next girl you made, you’ll marry?

00:14:03:07 – 00:14:27:00

And I said, what are you going on about? And she said, well, you’re
looking for that perfect person. You’re looking for that perfect
person. So the next person you meet, you marry. And I was very, very
overly sensible. I didn’t I, I didn’t commit or date anybody who I
wasn’t serious about. Then my husband came along and that was it.

00:14:27:00 – 00:14:50:04

Like with that, I’m still with him now. It’s been 15 years. You were
looking for a stable home environment because you didn’t have one.
Yeah, I was yeah, I was looking for stability. Absolutely. And when
I got that stability my anxiety developed. And when you first. Oh
that’s interesting. We’ll cover that in a minute. Oh, sorry. Just
kicked off.

00:14:50:06 – 00:15:11:03

I’ve lost my thought. Now, when when your when you first started
dating your husband, did your husband go out drinking socially? No.
He was never a drinker. Still isn’t a drinker. I wonder why. And do
you know what I can honestly say? I couldn’t be with a drinker. And
that’s what I meant by when you were growing up dating your filter
process.

00:15:11:05 – 00:15:31:20

You was like, I’m not dating that. I’m not. Someone drinks some,
goes to the pub, drinks excessively. No, you were there. The whole
of your life was journeying towards one event. One change. You
wanted a family. You wanted a loving environment. You wanted
probably a husband that you could depend upon. Support. Be loving,
be caring, be reliable. Yeah.

00:15:31:20 – 00:15:43:24

And you wanted a family and not to replicate what you’d been
through? Yeah, yeah, I would say that. And what was your
relationship like with your dad when you moved out in 19?

00:15:44:01 – 00:16:06:05

Up and down. So there was time, the brief patches where I’d catch
him, where I would say he was partially sober. So the drink hadn’t
consumed in. And what I mean by that is his tone of voice hadn’t
changed. He wasn’t on the sofa, passed out with the curtains drawn.
He wasn’t slurring his words or staring into space he had when he was drunk

00:16:06:05 – 00:16:23:17

He had like an intimidating look about him that would want to talk
about the past and would want to talk about what he’d been through.
And whatever you said to him, there was no reasoning with him. There
was no getting through to him smiling, which at that point, at that
age, I would argue, I would scream and shout and I would say
horrendous things to him.

00:16:23:17 – 00:16:44:04

I would tell him that, you know, this is all your fault. You’re
doing it to yourself, you’re weak. You they’re like such an awful
things to him. Told him I hate him times I wish he was dead. But
that’s just her. That moment in time. Yeah, but you know what? There
were times where I did wish him dead, and that sounds horrible, but
I’d be lying if I said there weren’t.

00:16:44:04 – 00:17:03:19

There were times where I thought, oh, this would be so much easier
if you weren’t here. This is so hard. Because I’m living. I felt
like I was living a double life. I felt like I was masking all of
these issues at home. I ADHD at the time, I’ve only been recently
diagnosed of it, so there was a lot of masking.

00:17:03:19 – 00:17:27:14

Anyway, with that and I never spoke about anything. I was always
portraying this perfect, sensible, respectable person. And then
internally, there was this anxiety at the back of my mind. Is he is
he okay? Is he alive still? How much is he drank? What’s he going to
do? What’s he going to say? I said it was constant.

00:17:27:14 – 00:17:55:02

He was constantly consumed by it. I could never escape it. And I
remember I developed an ability and I wouldn’t call it. Actually,
it’s not an ability because it come out as something else. But I
remember when my daughter was born as me, my oldest, she’s 12 now and it was absolutely amazing. And these are the amazing patches
with him where because I was a young mum again, another stigma
attached that I was desperately trying to escape.

00:17:55:02 – 00:18:19:02

Fell pregnant when I was 21. Had a when I was 22. Looking for the
perfect family. You never had exactly. Yeah, but he was amazing. And
I remember saying to my dad, dad, what have I done? I’ve ruined my
life. And he said to me, he said. You’ve e you went. You’ve not
ruined your life. Your life’s just about to begin.

00:18:19:04 – 00:18:37:23

And it’s changed everything. Like it changed absolutely everything.
And then I bonded with him a little bit more. But then when I held
my daughter, I remember looking at her, not let’s. I remember the
moment I was in hospital, and I remember thinking, because my dad
was there, he waited in the waiting room and he come in at 3:00 in
the morning.

00:18:37:23 – 00:18:59:24

And my mum had said to him, don’t you drink and don’t eat. Make sure
you’re sober. And he did bless me. He turned up and he was sober.
And I remember looking at my daughter and thinking, God, how could
my dad do this to me? I love her so much. She instant love that
instant connection you have your child, you are overwhelmed by it.

00:19:00:01 – 00:19:24:24

And then it dawned on me that how could my dad put me through this?
Does he love me enough? I didn’t understand it at the time, didn’t
understand addiction, didn’t understand what he was going through.
But all I had in my mind was, how can you do this to me? Then his
drinking escalated and started getting worse. At that point, and I
remember having to compartmentalize.

00:19:25:05 – 00:19:47:07

I had this baby to care for. I’m now living in a like a family home
with my husband. I’m a young mum. I’m dealing with all the hormones
and the the changes and the adaptations there that come with life
dealing with, you know, we’re both in our early 20s, no career path.
We didn’t have a clue what we were going to do.

00:19:47:09 – 00:20:02:11

So I had to compartmentalize when I would worry about him. So I made
a pact with myself, and I said, right, you’re only going to worry
about your dad when you’re with him. If you’re not with him, don’t
think about it. Focus on the family. You’ve got a child now you need
to focus on being a mum.

00:20:02:13 – 00:20:21:07

And that’s what I did. Just your priorities. Yeah. Yeah, I just did
everything. But I still had again. And this is where it becomes
complicated. And some people might think I’m contradicting myself
because there were moments within all of that where I would have my
dad, who was not so drunk, he would go up and down in phases.

00:20:21:07 – 00:20:40:06

It what? It weren’t like he was completely off his face all the
time. And this is what was really difficult for the outward person or the outward family member to understand. They didn’t see it all
the time. They didn’t see what happened behind closed doors. He he
would come round and he would see us and he’d spend time with us.

00:20:40:06 – 00:21:04:13

And I even let him look after my daughter. But there were other
times when he’d dip and go to a real low point that other people
wouldn’t see. And it was he was that good at it. And that deceiving
with it. I think he became a master at hiding it, that when he died,
I had somebody once said to me, I thought you were being dramatic.

00:21:04:13 – 00:21:25:05

I didn’t think he was that bad. And I remember thinking, I told you,
I said, I told you all this. He’s bad. But he was so good at hiding
it. Yeah, I think every addict wears camouflage. Yeah, every attic
hides. I think every attic hides their problems, hides it from the
cells, hides it from other people. And it’s a tough one.

00:21:25:05 – 00:21:48:03

But in 2015, you and your sister staged an intervention after your
dad turned up drunk at a family holiday. How did this intervention
play out? Oh, God, that was the start of all of it. I turned up to
meet my sister and her husband at the time, pulled me aside and
said, you dad’s drunk. It’s really bad.

00:21:48:05 – 00:22:09:07

Really bad. Probably the worst I’ve ever seen him. And I thought,
God, God, sight. But this point, my my youngest was born. She was
five months old. I had a three year old, five month old baby. And my
sister just found out she was pregnant. And it was a shock. So there
was a lot of emotion in the air.

00:22:09:09 – 00:22:39:04

And I saw my dad and he was bad, like he was the worst there. He was
quite volatile. He was very, said some awful things to me, like
horrendous things to me. And I said, I remember again, I took that
role of, the eldest. I’m going to fix this. Don’t worry, I’m going
to take charge. So my husband took the girls and I said to my dad,
you’re not coming on this holiday.

00:22:39:06 – 00:22:54:20

We really wanted you here. I was really looking forward to being
here. But we can’t bring you on this holiday. It’s not fair on the
kids. It’s not fair on my sister. It’s not fair on all of us. You’re
going to come along and you’re going to spend it asleep, and you’re
going to ruin the atmosphere. You’re going to put us on edge.

00:22:54:22 – 00:23:28:09

We can’t have this. And I drove him home and he was crying, and and,
he was telling me at this point, like, he was coughing up blood and.
There was no awareness or understanding around what that meant. And
because we’d been in this situation so many times where we just
thought, okay, you almost ignore them, but you don’t take it
seriously, you think you’ll sleep it off and we’ll go back to normal
this time I was so angry.

00:23:28:11 – 00:23:53:06

I was so cross this time and I thought, we cannot continue to
support this anymore. We have to move ourselves away. So I rang my
sisters and we had our holiday, and I said to the girls, under no
circumstances or any of us to go anywhere near him until he admits
he needs help. I knew we were my dad’s weakness.

00:23:53:08 – 00:24:12:17

I knew the love that it had for all three of us, that unconditional
love that bond he had with. I knew us girls were his world. But by
that point my mum and dad had separated, my mum had moved out the
family home and we were all my dad had left and I knew that and I
used that and weaponized it against him.

00:24:12:19 – 00:24:33:18

And I said to him, we’re not going to, I’ll check in with you every
day by phone. You’re not seeing your grandchildren, you’re not
seeing me, and you won’t be seeing my sisters. And we did that. And
we kept out for three months until one day I had a phone call from
him, and he was crying. And then he said.

00:24:33:20 – 00:24:57:17

He said to me. I’ll do anything you want me to do. Because
everything I’ve been through is insignificant in comparison to
losing my girls. And I thought, wow, we’ve gone through to him.
We’ve done it. And I was so proud of him. And I remember saying,
right, that’s it. We’re going to make it happen. We’re going to get
you detoxed.

00:24:57:22 – 00:25:20:08

You need to go and see a doctor. We need to go to a detox facility.
We need to get some help. And he was such a proud Yorkshireman. And
the stigma didn’t just affect us, it affected him. He was worried
about what people thought of him. He was ashamed of himself. And he
said that to me. And when we walked into this charity detox
facility, it wasn’t very nice.

00:25:20:10 – 00:25:38:21

And we sat there and he sat there and I could see the embarrassment in his face. I could see it. His face was just he was humiliated.
And I looked at him and I said, I’m so proud of you. I know this is
really hard. I’m really proud of you. And I’m. We went in and the
doctor didn’t even speak to my dad.

00:25:38:21 – 00:26:05:24

He spoke to me. My dad turned up drunk. And that’s when it kind of
hit me about how serious it was and the symptoms my dad was showing,
and the dependency and how bad it was. The doctor said all of my
dad’s symptoms. Nate looked directly at me and he said, under no
circumstances are you to take alcohol away from your dad until we’ve
come in and we’ve detoxed him.

00:26:06:01 – 00:26:26:13

If you do, he will die. Absolutely correct. And I remember sitting
there and I was just taken aback by it. I thought, wow, because he’s
dependent. He was physically alcohol, physically dependent. You
can’t just stop somebody who’s physically dependent. You can’t just
go out there, just turn the tap off. Today. You can’t do that. You
have to titrate the alcohol all the way down.

00:26:26:13 – 00:26:43:18

You have to detox them. Yeah, you cannot do that. But we didn’t know
that. Yeah, there wasn’t much there wasn’t much information out
there. All those years ago. Was that. No, not at all. I remember
pouring it down the sink. I remember thinking I’d be helping him if
I watered down his vodka. Of course, over to wind down the sink or I
would force him.

00:26:43:18 – 00:27:05:14

You don’t turn up drunk. Don’t turn up to my wedding drink, don’t
have a drink all day at my wedding. And then he’d start shaking. I
didn’t realize what that meant. Or didn’t drink. Junior waiting? No
he didn’t. So I remember how strong his alcohol addiction was. You
were so important to him that on that day, the most important day
for you.

00:27:05:16 – 00:27:22:20

He stepped up. Oh, he very shook, though, looking back on it now.
But that wasn’t his fault that he was shaking. It was him. He did
what he could to control the situation, to be there for you and your
day sober. Yeah, okay, I begged him. I remember saying to him, if
you turn up drunk, I need you to walk me down the aisle.

00:27:22:22 – 00:27:45:00

If you turn up drunk, I will never speak to you again. All of that,
all of that spilled out. I said to him, I think by the end of the
day, my mum pulled me aside and said he needs to have one. He has to have one. Stop the shakes again. He didn’t understand it and I just
said okay, nodded, but he got through the entire day, delivered a
speech which I could see made him uncomfortable.

00:27:45:02 – 00:28:02:15

I would have done it so differently now had I known what I know now.
But back ten years ago, I didn’t really understand it. But yeah, it
got through the entire day. Sound like you’re blaming yourself? I
would’ve done something completely different. There are times I do
blame myself. Absolutely, I think, but I don’t feel it anymore.

00:28:02:17 – 00:28:22:05

It was probably one of your proudest moments to be at your wedding
and to maintain his sobriety during that day. That was a massive
thing for him to achieve. And he showed you in that moment in time
what you meant to him. Yes, absolutely. How much was your dad
drinking? Like, what quantities were we talking about towards the
end?

00:28:22:05 – 00:28:45:01

What we never gave was a liter of vodka a day. Now, when he. So we
had the detox. But prior to the detox, my dad used to drink cider,
lager. Just week he had. Yes, he had the occasional whiskey, but by
this point. But earning a lot of money, so we didn’t really have a
choice. So it would be low level alcohol.

00:28:45:03 – 00:28:57:22

You’d laugh at this, but ironically, my dad used to get called a
lightweight by family members. I don’t laugh at that because I hear
this a lot, because people seem to be under this impression that.

00:28:57:24 – 00:29:23:21

Sorry. I paused, because my best friend passed away about eight
years ago, and the girl that he had dated years previously had
remained very close friends with him, and they were Chenin. And, a
month before he passed away, she passed away. And I remember many a
Wednesday evening going round to my friend’s house to eat dinner
together, and she was there and, loved the skill of a great girl.

00:29:23:23 – 00:29:41:06

And, I would say. So let me help you. Let me help you get over your,
your alcohol addiction. Let me help you. You know, I’ll do it for
you. You know, you’re a friend. And she wouldn’t. And it wasn’t the
quantity she was drinking. She’d get up in the morning, drink one
kind of beer. But that one kind of beer was putting her back on that
level.

00:29:41:06 – 00:29:53:21

That was a dependency. I don’t remember saying so. And she had a
child. She still has a child. She’s no longer with us. But the child
must have been about five years old at the time. And I remember
saying to her, do you not think that’s something enough to live for?
Why don’t you want to stop drinking, my friend?

00:29:53:21 – 00:30:15:22

You a carrier to the toilet? At that point, she couldn’t even walk
to the toilet. So I’ve seen that, you know, firsthand how
debilitating that must have been for you, the family. How did your
mum deal with all this? So, you know, my mum was great. Actually. I
think I used to blame my mum, thinking that she was enabling him
because she would buy it for him.

00:30:15:24 – 00:30:36:07

And I used to remember getting really upset and angry, but my mum
was caught between a rock and a hard place because she could do. She
couldn’t do right for wrong if she would have kicked my dad out when
we were 15, 16, when it was really horrendous to come home, then he
would probably have died. He wouldn’t have had anywhere else to go.

00:30:36:08 – 00:30:56:18

There was no family around. It was just I was living in Kent. So she
put up with a lot. And she always used to say to me, you know, your
dad was never like this. This isn’t the man. I’m married. He’s not
like this. And so enough was enough. And I never blame my mum like
she did what she had to do and she had to get away.

00:30:56:18 – 00:31:18:21

And I don’t blame her one bit. She waited for all three of her girls
to be moved out and older before she did it. But even like the day
he died, she was there holding his hand like give him a kiss. She
never lost the love for him. Just couldn’t deal with living with
him. Yeah, yeah. And what physical symptoms started appearing that
were signs his body could no longer cope with the alcohol.

00:31:18:22 – 00:31:40:15

So when he relapsed, and actually, even when he was sober, he would
tell me little things, but I didn’t. Again, I didn’t know. I didn’t
know what we were looking for. I didn’t understand it. But I
remember when he was sober and he wasn’t drinking and he definitely
wasn’t drinking because I could always tell. I could always tell by
the tone of his voice, the look in his face, the glaze in his eyes.

00:31:40:17 – 00:32:02:01

I was so, like, so expertly placed to decide whether he’d been
drinking. He. I could pick up the phone from my dad, he could say
hello, and I, I’d say, you’ve been drinking, I would know. Yeah, of
course. So I knew he was sober at this point and we we were on our
way to go swimming. He was coming swimming with me and my daughters,
and I needed another adult.

00:32:02:01 – 00:32:23:23

And he come with me, and he said to me, he said, oh. And it weren’t
like my dad to discuss his medical issues with us ever was never
like my dad, but he was scared. He was strong Yorkshireman. He was a
strong Yorkshireman. Absolutely. But he was scared. There was a bit
fear in his voice and he said, oh, I’ll keep my ways really orange.

00:32:24:00 – 00:32:42:03

And I went, oh, it’s properties. So like dad, like it’s probably
like, you know, you’re not drinking any more. Your body’s adjusted.
Have you went? Yeah, yeah. You probably right. I think a doctor’s
appointment was going. He went, yeah, yeah, we’ll do that when we go
swimming. And I saw them. He was really quite conscious. Was holding
round his belly and everything.

00:32:42:08 – 00:33:05:05

And he had, he had it was very slim everywhere else, like his arms,
his legs very slender. But his stomach was so hard ended. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. And there were little veins that you could see, like
little spider veins all over his belly. And he had mum boobs, like,
quite prominent. And I could see he was quite conscious of covering
it all up.

00:33:05:07 – 00:33:25:05

Didn’t think about it. How old was it? He was 59. So he probably
found that his testosterone level was dropping. His estrogen levels
was increasing with the alcohol and the effects on his liver and
everything like that. He was admitted to hospital, right? Yeah. So,
and this is where it gets really this was very traumatic.

00:33:25:05 – 00:33:50:11

So he relapsed. My granddad died March 2017. He relapsed again. And
you think, oh, God, here we are again. Like, we’ll go through the
detox program again. He’s got to admit that he needs help. But by
this point, I felt a level of exhaustion and helplessness that I’d
never felt before. Now it’s been 1518 words. But how long had it
been?

00:33:50:13 – 00:34:10:03

Oh, this point. Yeah. Good. A good 18 years of putting up with this
behavior. And I was exhausted. And I remember thinking, I don’t know
what to do. I genuinely do not know what to do now. Like I feel
helpless and I felt like this was where it felt like watching someone you love drown and you can’t get in and pull them out.

00:34:10:05 – 00:34:28:12

Now remember crying on my like on the phone to him on my way into
work? And he was crying and I said, dad, like, please, why are you
doing this again? Why? I called him, I am, I told him I can, I swear
I fucking do what I said. I said, I’m really ashamed of what I said
to him.

00:34:28:14 – 00:34:46:22

I said, I fucking hate you. You’re a horrible cunt, I hate you
really unlike me to say those words, I said, no, I hate you. And I
put the phone down. I was so angry. I thought, you’ve been sober.
You’ve done so well. We’ve bonded, we’ve connected, I adore you, I
absolutely love you. Why are you doing this again?

00:34:46:22 – 00:35:03:02

I don’t understand it. And I just was so frustrated. I’ve never felt
frustration like it in my entire life. I think in that moment, you
were losing him. Yeah. I knew it. Yeah. There was a part of me that
knew what was happening, and I thought, why are you doing it? Like,
stop it, just stop. I didn’t get it.

00:35:03:04 – 00:35:18:17

And I’ve put the phone down on him, and he rang me back and he was
crying. And there was something different in his mannerisms and his
tone. And he said, did you mean that? I said, no, I don’t. I love
you, I love you so much, I just can’t watch you do this to yourself
is painful. It’s hurting.

00:35:18:20 – 00:35:39:03

I don’t know what to do to help you, dad. Like, what do I do? And he
promised, you know. Okay. Monday was always Monday. Monday? I’ll
stop. Monday, I’ll go to the doctors and tell us. Hey. Yeah. I’ll
go. I’ll go to the doctor on Monday. And I always believed him every
time. I always believed him. Monday.

00:35:39:03 – 00:36:01:10

Come round, I get phone call from him and he’s frightened. Said I’m
coughing up blood and he was contradicting himself. I went, right,
I’m on my way. No, no, don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’ll be all right.
And then he would almost gaslight me. It’s call me dramatic. Oh,
it’s no big deal. You’ve just been dramatic. You’ve just told me
you’re coughing up blood.

00:36:01:12 – 00:36:25:01

Smoke turned up to his house, and it was a mess. The whole place was a mess. It was just disgusting. You know, it’s just council house.
It’s alcoholic in their own. It’s own absolute state of the place.
He’s on the bed shaking. There’s a tinge of yellow to him. And he’s
got jaundice now. Yeah. There’s ever so slightly tinge to him.

00:36:25:03 – 00:36:45:22

I said, dad, I’m calling you an ambulance. I think you have liver
failure. I’ve been googling the symptoms and I’m very worried. He in
that moment, I’ve been so used to being the protector and the
eldest. And I’m going to fix you and I’m going to take control. And
I was so like, like, fiercely independent. I’ve got this.

00:36:45:22 – 00:37:08:15

In that moment, he regained that control and he shouted at me, and
even he said to me, he swore me, I am not fucking getting in an
ambulance. Don’t you dare call the ambulance. You’re being dramatic.
There is nothing wrong with me. I am fine and I walked away.

00:37:08:17 – 00:37:29:09

I left, and I went shopping. I went shopping and I thought, you know
what? I can’t watch you do this to yourself. When I’m done. I took a
lot of therapy for me to get over that because I thought if I would
have called an ambulance sooner, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten as
bad as he did.

00:37:29:11 – 00:37:51:17

That was a Friday. At this point. And two days later, my sister
calls me and she arrived home because she’s not Monday appointment
my dad was talking about. I’ll do it Monday. He did. So he did have
a doctor’s appointment booked for the Monday. He did stick to his
word and he did. So I’ll go to the doctor’s Monday.

00:37:51:19 – 00:38:22:07

So we made that appointment. My sister came to collect him to take
him. And he was partially conscious, passed out on the floor in his
living room. My sister had to climb through a window. She had a baby
in the back of the car, and she. I don’t know how she found the
strength, but she dragged him, dragged him to the door, and managed
to get him in the car and drove him up to A&E because my dad only
lived five minutes away from A&E, so it was quicker to do that, and
she called me and said, he’s in a bad way.

00:38:22:07 – 00:38:57:05

You need to get to the hospital and I always remember this moment
because I was never a spiritual person when my dad was alive. You
know what Ben’s university had done a science based degree, very
science minded, didn’t believe in premonitions or anything like
that. I kid you not. I got that before I got that phone call. I was driving to work and I had this flash, this vision so clear that he
wasn’t going to be around, that my future was not going to.

00:38:57:06 – 00:39:20:16

I wouldn’t have my dad in it. And then the next flash was me reading
his eulogy at the crematorium. Then I get that phone call, and I
just went into a state of shock because I knew what was coming, but
I wasn’t admitting it to myself. It was almost like the conscious,
the logic part of my brain. All that that part of me didn’t believe
it and shut it off.

00:39:20:16 – 00:39:45:03

So the subconscious knew. Subconscious knew what was come in. But
that logical part of me that was hanging on to hope and wouldn’t
believe it, was ignoring it. That’s how my car ran because my feet
were shaking. Too bad to drive. My husband come to the hospital with
me and when we got to the hospital, I saw him and he was set up in a
wheelchair and he looked white and he wasn’t with it.

00:39:45:05 – 00:40:03:14

And I remember looking at him going, oh, thank God, he’s fine. He’s
already sat up and I hugged him and he looked at me like he didn’t
know me. And he looked at my sisters, all confused, and he tried
getting up and he said, where are my car keys on these cars with my
girls? Okay, I like that we’re here.

00:40:03:16 – 00:40:22:24

Like, look, it’s me, Sarah. I’m here. And he went and he just looked
like he didn’t know me. He was so confused. And the doctor said, is
he drunk? I said, no, this is different. This isn’t drunk. There’s
no glaze in his eyes. That is why he looks a bit yellow. He’s not
drunk right now. This is different.

00:40:23:01 – 00:40:54:02

He’s almost confused. He didn’t know who we were. He didn’t know
where he was. He didn’t know what was happening. It was just like
the shell. A shell of a man. And it was really quite rapid that it
went downhill as soon as it got into a knee. So he got moved into
majors, and then we had some bloods done, and the Bloods come back
and we had a load of doctors around us and we were all laughing and
joking, thinking, oh, you know, next week you’re gonna be really
embarrassed and you’re gonna get help next week.

00:40:54:04 – 00:41:17:04

And the doctor said, your dad’s a very ill man right now. Again, it
went over my head, didn’t listen. Now he’s all right. It’s fine.
We’ve been here like he’ll be alright. Then he got moved to raise us
and we had two consultants in the room. Now, you know when you got two consultants in the room, things are getting serious and
things are ramping up and they start talking about blood
transfusions.

00:41:17:06 – 00:41:41:10

They start talking about internal bleeding because he’s got a bruise
that’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger. On his, torso. And then
they’re showing me chest X-rays that they’ve taken and where his
liver wasn’t functioning or filtering the blood. His lungs were
filling up with fluid. So there was a rattle to him. Yeah. And they
showed me these chest X-rays, and they said, you know, your dad,
your dad’s lungs are three quarters of the way full with fluid.

00:41:41:10 – 00:42:06:04

Look at the shadows here. Walked out of that room again, didn’t take
it seriously. Went back, and I when I at that point, I thought, I’m
coming now I’ve got to go back to the kids have been here all day.
They were moving him toward they were going to do an endoscopy
because but they were worried to do that because they were worried
about the veins in the, in the esophagus.

00:42:06:06 – 00:42:28:24

And I kissed him on his head and I looked and I said, I love you.
And he took his mask off and he looked me directly in the eye, and
he knew who I was at this point. And he went, I love you. That was
the last thing you’ve said to me. The last thing, and I walked away
and I had that feeling again of like, it was this all encompassing
feeling that he’s not going to be here.

00:42:29:01 – 00:42:53:09

But I didn’t believe it. If it was so strange, was so weird. So I
went back home again. People didn’t realize how bad it was. They
thought it was minor. The next day, he was moved to intensive care.
He was moved to intensive care for the night, and he was placed on
dialysis. And we walked into intensive care to see him.

00:42:53:11 – 00:43:15:06

And as soon as we walked through the doors, mum had a phone call.
Like the hospital bringing my mum and the curtains drawn around. My
dad and me and my younger sister just looked at each other and we
knew. And then this surgeon came out and he looked. He looked
defeated, if I’m honest. He just looked tired and defeated and he
came in and he sat down.

00:43:15:06 – 00:43:33:23

He said, we need to have that talk. And I thought, well, where’s
this coming from? I was shocked, almost like I wasn’t expecting it
and I should have been because all the signs were there. But I wasn’t admitting it. I was in denial. There’s an irony to that as well. But
then he sat down and he said he play.

00:43:33:23 – 00:43:54:15

He listed off every single symptom. My dad was having his fingers
going, boy. And you know, his, his body, the fluids. The dialysis
machine can’t keep up with the amount of fluid that he’s producing.
And the kidneys are starting to shut down. This is starting. And he
started listing apps like everything in stages. And I just stopped
him.

00:43:54:15 – 00:44:13:24

And I said, is he going to survive? And he looked out and he said,
your dad’s got a 15% chance of surviving this. That’s if he doesn’t
have a heart attack. When I placed him onto a ventilator. And at
that point I got up and I walked out and I went and begged him, I
mean, by my dad’s side.

00:44:14:01 – 00:44:42:01

And I begged him, and he was breathing funny. And I remember at that
point and I remember thinking content, really selfish, asking him to
stick around with like this because he’s done, he’s done, he’s had
enough. And he didn’t want he didn’t want help. He was so stubborn.
He was so set in his way. He was so sucked in by that stigma at that
point, didn’t want to admit to having poor mental health.

00:44:42:01 – 00:45:00:10

I didn’t want to talk about depression or PTSD or being an
alcoholic. He was tired like days before when we had a heart to
heart on the phone. He said, I don’t recognize this world anymore.
And I remember thinking, I’m being very selfish by asking you to
stick around. But I went into a state of shock at that point.

00:45:00:10 – 00:45:22:17

Everything around me blacked out, and I remember just, I can’t
really remember much after it, but I know I left and my husband came
to the hospital to be with him. And my husband did all the talking
on behalf of all of us. And it was my husband that come and told me
that it’s up to you, but there’s nothing else they can do.

00:45:22:17 – 00:45:41:20

They’re going to switch off the machine. Would you like to come and
say goodbye? I can’t do it. I can’t, and he said he pulled me aside
and he said, I think you should try. I think you’ll regret it if you
don’t. And I’m so glad I did, because I did, and I went back and I,
I said everything I needed to.

00:45:41:20 – 00:46:02:22

I told him, you know, I don’t blame you. The nurse said to me his
hearing, he’ll still be able to hear you. That’ll be the last thing
that will go. So tell him, talk to him. So I did. I told him
everything was holding my love to him. I don’t blame him and said I
was sorry. And it was in that moment where I thought, there’s two
ways I can go here.

00:46:02:24 – 00:46:25:16

There are two ways, either following my dad’s footsteps, I carry on
pretending that everything’s fine and I’ll carry on showing up this
idyllic, sensible, respectable image. Or I get help for my mental
health. And I do something with this because I don’t want to have my
girls turning off my life support in 20 years time. And thankfully,
I took that route.

00:46:25:22 – 00:46:38:11

And I believe to this day that my dad saved me. Oh said, I really
do. Wow.

00:46:38:13 – 00:47:02:23

And having all that dealing with your mental health issues and
coming out the other side and listening to everything you went
through as a child and the teenager and growing up into a woman.
What would you say to somebody listening to this podcast who has an
addiction, whether it be to alcohol, whether it be to cocaine,
whether it be to something else, who has an addiction, who has
children, who hasn’t woken up yet.

00:47:02:24 – 00:47:23:21

Maybe they’re thinking about it. They want to get help. They haven’t
seek help from a child’s perspective of having a parent who has an
addiction. What would you say to the person listening now who has an
addiction to think about their child? What would you tell them?
That’s a really good question, actually. Haven’t been asked that
before, and it’s really difficult one to answer because I’m not a
clinician and I always say that to people.

00:47:23:21 – 00:47:33:21

I’m not a clinician, I’m not qualified to give advice. But from a
lived experience perspective.

00:47:33:23 – 00:48:01:15

And I know you can only get help if you want it. You have to really
want it. And although my dad tried for us, that wasn’t enough. He
needed it. He needed to want it for him. But from the child’s
perspective, in watching that and the damage that causes, I would
urge them to just try, talk to somebody, try it, just try and have an open, honest conversation with your children.

00:48:01:17 – 00:48:25:05

Talk to them about it. Don’t brush it under the carpet because I
find with alcohol addiction it’s a taboo subject. Any addiction, it
is a typical addiction. Cocaine, alcohol, methamphetamine doesn’t
matter what it is, it’s it’s a taboo subject. So it’s brushed under
the carpet and it becomes this dirty family secret. And then the
children, I believe, have often gaslighted because they’re told it’s
fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine.

00:48:25:05 – 00:48:50:07

But their surroundings and their reality, what they’re experiencing
isn’t fine. So it’s confusion. It creates a level of confusion. So I
would say open, honest dialog, letting them know you might think
that they’re too young, or you might think it’s embarrassing. But
no, it’s not. Because the one thing, the biggest thing I would say
that’s done me the most damage is the reality being denied.

00:48:50:09 – 00:49:11:18

All of that, what I was seeing and what I was being told were
contradicted. So I’m told everything’s fine. I’m not an alcoholic.
You’re imagining things, you’re being dramatic. And then he died of
alcohol addiction. It’s a massive loss. It’s a head. Fuck it. It’s
like your whole entire reality is doubted. I would say, don’t get
sucked up by the stigma.

00:49:11:22 – 00:49:34:14

Talk to somebody, talk to your family. Have those open, honest
conversations. Yes, you can only do it for yourself. As in get
sober, but talk to them, let them know. Let them in. And it. And
what I’m about to say is quite harsh, but it’s a reality. Because
the fact is, if you don’t, you could end up like your dad did and
then leaving the children behind.

00:49:34:16 – 00:49:56:01

Yeah. And I think what makes this quite a powerful podcast different
to all the other podcast is I’m not speaking to somebody has an
addiction this time. I’m speaking to somebody who’s gone through
growing up with a person who has an addiction. I think it’s a very
different thing. It’s very interesting. What motivated you to begin
your advocacy work, campaigning against the stigma of addiction on
behalf adult children of alcoholics?

00:49:56:01 – 00:50:18:08

And you’re involved in the charity. Tell us about that. So that goes
back to that time in intensive care, switching off that machine. And
you know that crossroads. What route do I take. And it was really it really hit me in the face how bad the stigma is attached to all
addictions. But I was specifically targeting alcohol addiction.

00:50:18:10 – 00:50:44:02

The doctor who tried saving my dad was absolutely amazing. And and
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that he didn’t have some kind of
influence in me. He’s very kind enough to give some time up to
discuss my dad’s files and discuss what happened with us. Well, we
were more aware, and he sat there and he said, you know, I’m seeing
more and more deaths from alcohol and more, more patients in
intensive care.

00:50:44:02 – 00:51:01:14

He was opposite your dad that was a 21 year old on a ventilator
because of binge drinking, he said. I’m seeing more and more of this
and it makes me really angry because cigarets are covered behind a
screen. And as the graphic warning labels on them, you went. All you
get on a bottle of alcohol is drink responsibly and it’s in your
face wherever you go.

00:51:01:14 – 00:51:27:15

It’s glamorized. It’s it’s marketed heavily. You’re told to drink,
you’re encouraged to drink. Nobody knows. It causes physical
dependance. There’s no warning label on that. Like there is a pack
of cigarets that fueled something. And inside me I got really cross
because then the comments came. When I talk about my dad’s death,
people, well, intent on life. I believe they were well-intended
intended comments.

00:51:27:15 – 00:51:47:08

They were trying to make me feel better, but it didn’t. It made me
angry. They said, your dad did this to himself. He only had himself
to blame and it was self-inflicted. It’s not your fault, I remember
thinking, but that other relative died from smoking too much. And
you didn’t blame him, not his death on smoking. You had empathy and
compassion.

00:51:47:08 – 00:52:04:09

You don’t want to talk to me about my dad. You don’t want to talk
about the good memories you’ve had with him. You’re so focused and
fixated on how this was his fault, and he did this to himself and
and it really made me really angry. And then more people would come
forward and they’d say, oh, alcoholics should have their NHS rights
taken away.

00:52:04:11 – 00:52:28:22

That made me cross. And I started doing more research, and I
discovered that 80% of disease is caused by lifestyle choices. What we eat, what we drink, what we smoke, lack of exercise. And then I’d
hear stories of nurses saying that they get really angry with
alcoholics and they’d rather treat stroke victims and heart attack
patients. And in my head, I’m thinking about their heart attack and
their stroke has probably been caused by a lifestyle choice.

00:52:28:22 – 00:52:54:06

And I mean that with the utmost of respect. What I’m saying is you
can’t single out alcohol addiction as being self-inflicted and
pummel somebody is and and belittle somebody and discriminate
somebody and tell somebody that they’re not worthy of NHS treatment.
And it’s a disease. It’s just like cancer. Yeah, I agree 100%. And
that made me so angry and it fueled this thing in me.

00:52:54:09 – 00:53:17:07

But I was still embarrassed. I still wasn’t really telling people
publicly how my dad died. And so one day I really wasn’t scared
anymore. I didn’t care about stigma. And I realized if I want to
make change and I want to destigmatize, I have to be comfortable
enough with my story. I’ll have to own my story. I have to talk
about it honestly and openly and I do.

00:53:17:07 – 00:53:35:20

I talk about it really brutally honest. I’ll put myself on a firing
line sometimes and admit to stuff that I’ve said and done, because
that’s my truth. I went on, I went, I spoke to a journalist about
feeling relief when my dad died. That’s not nice thing to talk
about. And I did get some backlash, but it’s my truth.

00:53:35:22 – 00:53:57:19

I did feel relief when he died. Relief that you had some backlash
from that? Yeah, I did, I think unless somebody walks in your own
shoes, how on earth can somebody judge, you know, exact. Exactly.
And this is it. And people don’t understand it. They don’t
understand so many complexities to it, so many nuances to it.
Everybody’s experience is being that child of an alcoholic or that
loved one of an addict is different.

00:53:57:21 – 00:54:12:14

They’re all different. I’ve got a question for you. Sitting opposite
me, looking into your blue eyes. What color eyes did your dad have?
Blue. Same as me. And you know, there’s an interesting thing about
blue eyes. Do you know this? You know, there’s a genetic
predisposition with your chromosomes that you’re more likely to
become an alcoholic if you have blue eyes.

00:54:12:16 – 00:54:30:15

I did find that. Did latest research fact. So do you know what I mean? Just because you got blue eyes, it was going to be coming out
of the Holocaust addicted to drugs. What it does mean is a
propensity for the due to the chromosomes. You won’t likely to see
my dad to may have the same eyes if I take my makeup off and look in
the mirror, and it sounds really cheesy.

00:54:30:15 – 00:54:46:10

I’m really cliche. I’m like how it looks. I look like my dad. I can
see it. Let’s see it. So you did it. It did have the same color as
me. Sarah, last question for you. What would you say to addiction if
it was a person? Now, this I don’t have an answer to and this is a
controversial one.

00:54:46:10 – 00:55:12:01

And people look at me like I like a bit of controversial stuff. I
would say thank you because I’ll explain why my dad found a way to
cope. And although he wasn’t always drunk, can I? It might sound
contradicting. Again, there was moments of moments of bonding that I
had with him. Things, beautiful things he said to me, beautiful
things we spoke about.

00:55:12:03 – 00:55:32:22

And he always used to say to me, if I didn’t drink, I would be dead.
Never got it. At the time, I was too young to understand what he
meant by that. He found a coping mechanism and that was his. He
found a way to cope and it wasn’t a healthy way to cope. And I wish
he would have found another way, but that was that.

00:55:32:22 – 00:55:52:17

Those were the calls we were dealt as a family, you know, and
alcohol was his addiction. It was his way to cope. There were
moments that I can cherish, look back on and think, yeah, there were
some beautiful memories, there were less beautiful memories and they
were nice and horrible ones, but there were still beautiful memories
within that.

00:55:52:20 – 00:56:15:10

And I do believe with the way my dad was, his character is makeup,
that without alcohol he would have been dead. I believe that he
probably would have taken his own life. And you also said your
father didn’t abuse alcohol but was abused by alcohol. Yeah. I mean,
I genuinely believe that. I think a very powerful statement. I
think, yes, you had a choice at the beginning to pick it up.

00:56:15:12 – 00:56:38:18

Like with anything, any addiction, we all have that choice at the
beginning. But it’s a toxic, highly addictive substance that isn’t
designed to be moderated. It’s designed to be addictive. And at that point, it started abusing him. And when he became physically
dependent on it. And this is what frustrates me when people say,
well, it’s their choice and they should just stop.

00:56:38:20 – 00:56:56:05

He didn’t have a choice when he was dependent on it. He didn’t have
a choice. And the sad thing is, he would have rather stayed silent
and put up with his addiction than ask for help because of the
embarrassment, he was ashamed. You said, that’s me, said I’ve done
it to myself and I’ll get out of it myself.

00:56:56:07 – 00:57:09:04

He was so ashamed of it. So it’s. Yeah, Sarah, I really appreciate
coming clean with me. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for
sharing your story about your dad, Steve and everything else. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.