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Experience, strength and hope

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MY name is Daniel and I am an alcoholic. My alcoholism started from the age of fifteen years old when my mother sadly passed away. I struggled with the loss and it affected my behaviour. I was disruptive in class and refused to do any schoolwork. I became the class clown, thought it was cool to be disruptive and abusive to the teachers, and ended up going to a behavioural school which I travelled to by taxi. If you became disruptive or abusive, the teachers were allowed to be hands on, restrain you and remove you from class. I quickly started bunking off school and running away from the taxi when it stopped at traffic lights in order to hang around with older people in my area. They were seventeen/eighteen years old, drinking alcohol and smoking weed, and hanging around outside shops in large groups.  My father didn’t really give a toss about me. He was always out at the local pub, drinking every day, so I thought he didn’t love or care about me - all he cared about was getting pissed every day. I quickly turned my house into a local hangout as, a few months after my mam passed away, my dad got with someone he met at the local pub and only came back to the house to pick up his dole check. I felt abandoned by him.  

One day near my sixteenth birthday, he told me he was moving in ‘permanently’ with this new woman and said the house is yours and gave me the keys.  I had two younger sisters who I had to take care of as well, so I would go out stealing and robbing just to put food on the table. I had all this anger inside and when I drank alcohol it seemed like all my worries were taken away. If anyone upset me, I felt like I could fight the world. All through my teens I used alcohol daily and it quickly got me into trouble with the police. During all the partying at my house, with loud music and loads of drunk people, fights would break out and the police would be called. The neighbours were sick of all the disturbances and Social Services eventually took me and my two sisters into care. However, I rebelled and ran away - I never did see my dad again.

I continued to use alcohol to excess, getting into fights and getting locked up. Eventually I ended up in prison on several occasions through alcohol-fuelled violence and I’m now serving an indeterminate sentence - which means I have no release date and only when a panel of the Parole Board decide if I’m safe to be released as I was classed as a danger to the community and public, through my alcohol-fuelled violence.  

I now realise I held on to a lot of anger from my childhood which I did not deal with - my mother’s death, my father abandoning me, having to take care of my two sisters, not learning peer social skills or emotional management, using drink and not asking for help when I need it the most. If you are hurting with grief or bottling things up and are angry then ask for help and talk to someone about the things you are struggling with, because I know if I had reached out when I was fifteen years old, I wouldn’t be sat here in this situation in prison. Believe me when I say that a problem shared is a problem halved so reach out and talk to someone about the things that you are struggling with. I was a fool and went down the wrong road of drinking alcohol, thinking the bottle would take all my worries away. If I could turn the clock back, I would speak to someone about how I was feeling and what was going at home.

I now attend AA every week and it has helped me a lot. I’d like to give a big thank you to Mark S for his advice and guidance which has been much appreciated. Thank you for listening to my shares and sharing your experience with alcohol with me. It has shown me how powerful addiction to alcohol can be and that everyone needs someone to talk to and help them along, at some point in their life.

DANIEL, HMP