Tag: Parent

Why I won’t drink at Christmas

“Christmas time, mistletoe and WINE”

Not this year. I managed to avoid drinking last Christmas during my first festive period in recovery and I intend to do it again. It hasn’t been an easy 2022 and along with the current family problems with my poorly daughter (who has spent a lot of time in hospital) I’ve also relapsed in 2022 albeit it was only two days of drinking back in May and I managed to pull myself back out of it.

Sitting in the relative darkness of our living room (the Christmas tree lights provide what we need) I talk to my seven year old daughter on our 10 year old couch for the first time in what feels like forever about how she is and what she foresees her short term future as.

This in itself will raise concerns with many of you reading this. Why is there such a deep conversation unfolding with a child so young? What will be gained from this?

She’s been through so much in the last few months and it has been so scary and confusing for her. It still is. All she really understands is that her brain is poorly and that means she is struggling to do things she used to do like eating, drinking, managing her emotions and not obsessing over basic day to day tasks that we don’t give a second thought to.

I suppose last Christmas was easier. I was still on an upward curve after navigating myself out of issues which nearly wrecked my life. By the time Christmas came around I was loving this new feeling of long term sobriety (albeit white knuckling it) and I finally felt like my marriage and relationship with my little girls was in an honest and happy place. Significantly my oldest daughter didn’t have the health issues either.

I used to love a drink over the Christmas Bank holiday. Wine and Baileys on Xmas Eve with the wife as we wrapped presents. Prosecco on the morning of the big day followed by lager, ale, wine and cava throughout the day. Boxing Day was a ‘lad day’ at the football or pub so you can imagine how messy that got.

Getting sober is easily the best thing I’ve done for myself in my 36 years on this planet. I used alcohol for 17 years and in the main it had a negative impact on me both physically and mentally so I will always shout loudly about how great it is being sober. Christmas as an adult was always about boozing so to return to a kind of pure innocence around this time of year is so enjoyable and fulfilling.

It would be far too easy to use the current family landscape as an excuse to drink and I doubt many people would blame me but I own my sobriety and I need to protect it at all costs. I know first hand the cycle alcohol creates. It’s an enabler for mental health deterioration and irrational decision making and thinking. I can’t and won’t allow myself to return to that king of behaviour especially when my family need me so much.

Desire to Drink

There have been some pretty tough days of late where I’ve come so close to succumbing to my Addictive Voice and feeding it alcohol.

For context (not that I’m using it as an excuse or for approval to drink) my oldest daughter who is 7 years old has been in hospital for around one month now. It’s been a very traumatic experience for her and whilst me and my wife have been strong for her, it is naturally taking it’s toll on us too. We have another daughter in nursery school so the juggling act has been tricky.

During this time our family unit has been split in two. Me and my wife only see each other when we are at the hospital swapping ‘shifts’ between daughters so that in itself is an odd dynamic. Our oldest daughter has her own struggles and long road ahead but we need to be acutely aware of keeping routine for her little sister too. It may feel like an afterthought but the mental health of both me and my wife is so important because if we break we become a burden, not a help to the family.

That’s where I wanted to go with this post – my first in a while. It’s not appropriate or important to share the finer details of my daughter’s condition at the moment and blogging about our day to day in the four walls of a very busy and overwhelmed NHS hospital won’t do any of us any good so I’ll give you an update on me instead.

As you may know if you are a regular reader of Happy Daddy, I’m a man with diagnosed and long standing mental health issues who for 17 years was a binge drinker turned alcohol dependant boozer. Throw in life events like my daughter’s illness and I won’t deny it tests my metal despite the progress I’m making in recovery.

It’s very much about pragmatically using the tools I’ve come to rely on or have successfully utilised in the past to ensure I can keep myself in the strongest mental and physical place whilst also appreciating we are not super human and there is a likelihood that despite all of our best intentions and efforts there will be kinks in our armour during periods of high stress and disruption.

Tiredness, fatigue, exhaustion, agitation, irritation, anger, self pity and despair are just some of the buzz words that pop into my head when describing the last 5 weeks or so since my daughter’s health took a pretty sudden nosedive.

I even reacted immaturely in Tesco tonight. I’d just popped in on my way home from Hospital and was walking down an aisle browsing the shelves. I could see a bloke walking towards me and assumed he’d walk around the outside of me as I was pretty close to the shelf but he didn’t move. We had an awkward few seconds staring at each other before I nudged past him and said “you weren’t going to move were you?” – He replied “nah” so as I walked away I called him an obscenity which he most definitely heard.

Why do that? I didn’t have right of way as much as he didn’t. I could have easily walked around him and carried on with my day but I’m finding that I’m spoiling for a fight more of late. It’s like the old me in the height of my depression (not always drink related) where I would get angry so easily and use any excuse to get into an altercation. I used to have really bad road rage for example, and that has increased again of late despite a good few years of being a zen driver. When I got back to my car after paying for my bread and chocolate I told myself off and accepted I was pathetic. That’s the difference. In the past I would have justified my behaviour and let it wind me up for hours later.

I suppose it’s all a way of saying I’m under a lot of stress at the moment and in the past I would have used alcohol as my go to relief yet all it would do is fuel even more intense anger and irritation further down the line. I know deep down that I’m not a bad person but I also know I have unresolved deep rooted issues which need to be addressed by a Therapist or Psychologist.

In the past when I had counselling or a psychologist I wasn’t being fully truthful with them because I was hiding the severity of my drinking. I think I’m in a unique place in my life now where I can address my issues clearly and without alcohol blurring and undoing any work I achieve through therapy.

I’ve made the first steps to accessing said help.

I’m off now but I just wanted to thank everybody for their kind words and thoughts. I’m still active on Twitter (albeit maybe not as much as normal) and the majority of interactions I have in the Recovery Community are positive. Focus is of course on my little girls and wife but it is so imperative that I recognise my own struggles before they become something more uncontrollable. I think I’ve done that successfully just by writing today but the next important step is applying solutions to the problem.