Alcoholics Anonymous Reviews

There will have been few who didn't partake in a toast involving some kind of alcohol over the last month, but there's no doubt that drinking, or rather heavy drinking, has become the health issue of the new century.

From the early death of George Best due to alcoholism to the rising numbers of young people binge-drinking at weekends, or new figures showing deaths from drink-induced liver disease in Scotland have more than doubled in a decade and alcohol abuse costs the Scots taxpayer £1.125 billion a year, it seems everyone these days is troubled by a drink problem.

And now of course, former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has finally owned up to the fact that he too has a problem with alcohol.

But while he battles with his addiction - one which affects more than one million people in the UK - so does his wife Sarah... just like countless families throughout the country who live daily with the problem of having an alcoholic in the family.

Here, two Edinburgh women who are members of a city-based Al-Anon group, tell what that's like, and why they believe it's an illness which needs to be treated.

FRANCES, 66, from Leith, is a great-grandmother and still married to her alcoholic husband.

She is deeply in love with her husband of 49 years. You can tell by the affectionate way in which she speaks about him. They've raised three children together, and she smiles as she talks about how they dance in their kitchen together, sing together, laugh together.

It's strange then to hear her talk about her husband's chronic alcoholism. "I have been living with an alcoholic for years," she says.

"But I suppose I've lived with it all my life. My father was an alcoholic and he ended up on the streets which is what everyone thinks an alcoholic is - a tramp on the streets drinking out a bottle."

Frances left home when she was only 15 and married her husband knowing even then he had a problem with alcohol.

"In our younger days he'd have his binges, followed by our arguments where I'd tell him to stop. Then the hope would set in as he'd promise never to do it again. He wouldn't drink for weeks or months and once even for a whole year, but slowly and surely he would and it got worse.

"If there was a bottle of vodka in the house, he wouldn't rest until he'd drunk the lot - and even crawling to bed on his hands and knees, all the time swearing he was sober. And if things got very bad, he'd blame the brand of booze or the combination of spirits for his behaviour.

"His personality changed, and he became manipulative and devious. He even pretended to go to AA, getting dressed up and leaving the house for his first meeting.

"For him it was a progressive illness and it got worse. But it wasn't until seven years ago, when I'd been married to the man for 42 years that I realised he was an alcoholic rather than just having a drink problem.

"As he progressed in his sickness, I progressed in mine. I couldn't walk in the street in case I saw people as I was so ashamed and thought everyone knew. I was becoming claustrophobic, I had panic attacks. Twice I thought about suicide as things were so bad. Nobody could help me."

Overcome with emotion Frances stops, adding quietly: "I feel like crying, talking about this."

It was her doctor who finally confronted Frances with the possibility her husband was an alcoholic. "I thought how dare you? He is not. I was furious the secret was out. I felt his alcoholism was all my fault - I wasn't giving my man what he needed, otherwise he wouldn't be drinking so much."

When asked if there was one defining moment, Frances pauses before answering: "It was the violence, and the time when my kids were toddlers he held a knife..." she trails off, unable to talk about the episode.

"It was when I realised what kind of person I was turning into. I had also become a horrible person - I couldn't see good in anyone or say anything nice about anyone. I hated myself, my life. I felt I had failed as I couldn't protect my kids and myself - I was a defeated woman. And I was angry."

Frances was also blamed by her three children for the family problems, thinking it was her shouting that was the problem. It was her doctor who finally suggested she get in touch with Al-Anon, a support group for individuals and families whose lives have been affected by alcohol abuse.

The change in Frances, by her own admission, has been immense. "If he had cancer I would support him and look after him, so why shouldn't I look after him for having alcoholism?

"In the years since I joined Al-Anon I can honestly say miracles have happened. My husband and I are back together emotionally. We love each other and we're friends. He still drinks but nothing compared to before. I was taught how to cope and live with it. When I accepted it, life got much better. I don't criticise or run him down. I treat him with respect, as a human being, as a sick man."

Life is much better for Frances, although she stresses she takes it each day as it comes as her husband is still yet to admit he is an alcoholic. So, with hindsight, why did she stay with him? "Underneath, I always thought I could change him. Plus, I had three kids. I suppose I always thought he would stop drinking because he loved me, and he loved the kids. And my dream was - and still is - to walk hand in hand to church on a Sunday with my husband."

LOUISE, 51, lives in the city centre and is now divorced from her alcoholic husband.

Louise didn't realise her ex-husband had a severe "drink problem" until her current partner of four years, a recovering alcoholic himself, posed the question.

"I just thought 'no way', he just couldn't have been," she says. "I just didn't realise he had a problem, and I had left him because our relationship had broken down. But it's a family illness and his drinking had affected me and my children. It affected my oldest daughter badly and she had a lot of emotional problems in her late teens. She felt he never really cared for her."

Louise and her husband were married for 18 years, and have been separated for four years and, throughout that time, he drank. "I knew he drank - a lot - often six nights a week in the house. He would drink until he had his tea and that could be midnight. Sometimes he wouldn't remember what he'd had to eat he'd got so drunk. But then it didn't take that much to get him drunk - and he drank until he was drunk."

But unlike Frances, Louise rarely argued with her man, she simply thought "this was life".

She says: "I kept waiting for the family to start happening. And all he wanted to do was work, do his gardening and start his drinking at 4pm. He was a controlled drinker - he ran his own business and functioned normally, and he wouldn't drink all day but start at a specific time, and drink until he ate his tea.

"Drink: that was what he looked forward to every day, not me and the kids. I never tried to control it and change it. It was just part of life. And it's very sad to look back on and realise that's what was wrong."

Louise could have gone on with married life if it wasn't for the one defining moment which changed her for good.

"It was the eve of my youngest daughter's ninth birthday, and he was really drunk and we'd had an argument so he walked out. He had nowhere to go, but he walked out in the pouring rain. What really upset me, was the prospect of him staying out all night and leaving me to explain to my youngest why her daddy wasn't there on her birthday. That was when I realised I couldn't live like that anymore. And the worst bit was nobody else knew. I socialised a lot and no-one else knew because he wasn't out there in pubs falling about drunk. He just did it in the house. And if we went out, he often drove so didn't drink then.

"But there were times when he did and his behaviour got very inappropriate - especially to his children. We were in a restaurant once and he was flicking paper into their cleavages."

So Louise left, but it wasn't until her new partner suggested she join Al-Anon that she realised just what the problem had been.

"I thought I was fine, there's nothing wrong with me. In time though I realised that I had been scarred by living like that, and I felt sadness, and I couldn't believe I lived with that. It was a way of life for me.

"It's much more common than people assume, and that's why it was so nice to have something like Al-Anon where you realise that you're not alone. And it's not your fault."

The names of the women have been changed to protect their identities. For more information on Al-Anon please visit www.al-anonuk.org.uk or call 0207 403 0888. There are confidential help groups throughout the Capital.

The Scotsman