Camilla Tominey
Growing up with an alcoholic mother
My name is Camilla and my mother was an alcoholic. She died 17 years ago, but those words still feel like a betrayal. Even though people must have known, my two older brothers and I never really admitted it to each other growing up, let alone anyone else.
I remember my father once catching me trying to draw a line on a bottle of Gordon’s so I could tell how much she was drinking. I told him it was for my homework, but we both knew what I was up to. He wasn’t the only one who had found empty bottles in the utility room cupboard.
When she had drunk too much, my mother had this habit of re-adjusting her glasses in an over-exaggerated way. We would mimic her and tell each other: “Mum’s in a mood…”
I spent years trying to figure out why she suddenly became a different person in the evening. Was she premenstrual? Perhaps she had an undiagnosed brain tumour?
Matters came to a head when we went on holiday and Mum didn’t emerge from the hotel room for days. My beloved Dad suggested we play a board game downstairs. I think I just blurted it out: “Mum’s drunk again.” I can’t have been more than 11 or 12.
We all finally confided in each other and, although it was a release, I still didn’t feel it was something I could discuss outside the family. If Mum couldn’t even admit it to herself, what gave me the right to tell anyone? My Dad was the local GP. The stigma could have cost him his career.
Mum had two stints in rehab, but emerged insisting she could “still drink spritzers”. We were never offered family counselling, and I only found out later my Dad had taken her to a psychiatrist every week for two years to no avail. She remained in complete denial and wouldn’t stop drinking, not even for us, which is still hard to come to terms with.
I was 14 when my parents’ marriage finally broke down – despite huge efforts on my Catholic father’s part – and I didn’t question moving in with Mum while the boys, aged 16 and 18, went with Dad. I loved her so much. When she was sober, she was one of the funniest, most engaging women you could ever meet, beautiful and immaculately turned out.
She ended up so unrecognisable that, when admitted to hospital for the final time, I had to point her out to visitors.
When I was managing her alcoholism without my father as a “buffer”, I threw myself into my studies as an escape from her mood swings. It was the only thing I could control. When I went to university, it was the first time in my teens I hadn’t had to look after someone else. I began to drink so heavily I’d suffer from blackouts. I was just trying to forget.
The last time I saw Mum sober in her final months, she was curled up in bed like a little girl. She seemed so vulnerable, I thought: “If I had lost everything – my husband, my children, my looks – I’d probably hit the bottle too.” It was a relief when she passed away in 2001. She was 54. I was 23.
Writing this is difficult because my Mum was much more than an alcoholic, but the drink ended up defining her as a woman, and that is hard for any daughter to accept.
Since having my own children I long to ask her, mother to mother: “What made you start drinking before noon?”
I became teetotal when I became a mother because it was the only way to break the cycle. I never wanted to be drunk in front of my kids. At best it’s embarrassing and, at worst, it’s more damaging than we will ever admit to ourselves. Heavy drinking is the elephant in the room of so many families, affecting an estimated 2.6million children in Britain.
In recent years I have become involved in a charity called the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (Nacoa), which provides a confidential helpline for people to discuss a parental drinking problem. Counsellors have had children as young as five ring up to be read bedtime stories because their parents are too drunk to tuck them up.
The Government has set aside £6million in funding, but Nacoa has missed out to bigger charities with bigger budgets. It is a travesty which Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, must urgently address to help children – and adults – like me.
Alcohol Awareness Week runs until Sunday; alcoholchange.org.uk
My dad was the local GP. The stigma could have cost him his career