Stephen had been sober for 16 months when his daughter came home to find him curled up, shaking and yellow on the sitting room sofa.
She was so cross with him for drinking again after having abstained for so long, that she turned around, left and went clothes shopping. Stephen died three days later.
“When my dad was sober, he was at his very best—loving, kind, supportive, and full of wisdom,” consultant Sarah Drage, from Kent, said.
But when he had been drinking he could be angry in a sinister way. He would often sit in a dark room with a drink in his hand, his tone of voice dark, and his eyes speaking a thousand words.
“I grew up loving him just as much as I hated and resented him. When I was younger, I wished him dead on various occasions because I couldn’t see any other way out of such a volatile and unpredictable environment. The feelings I had were contradictory and confusing: I hated him and loved him; I respected him and resented him; I wished him dead, and yet I longed for my ‘normal’ dad. I felt angry, sad, scared, isolated, and anxious’, Sarah, 35, explains.
Stephen was a property developer who had drunk to excess Sarah’s whole life. “From as young as 10, I knew my dad had ‘quirky’ ways—his mannerisms, his moods, the tone of his voice, the emptiness in his eyes.
“I couldn’t articulate what I was experiencing until my late teens, as I had become so accustomed to the dynamics. Even as a young adult, saying the word ‘alcoholic’ out loud didn’t feel real. I suppose I was also in denial and was constantly led to question my reality, as my dad was so deep in denial that he wouldn’t admit anything was remotely wrong. ‘I could stop tomorrow if I wanted to’ became his daily mantra whenever he was challenged’, she explains.
