Hi, My name is Sue and my first AA meeting was just about 10 years ago and I was there for the wrong reasons.

I didn’t go because I wanted to go. I went because that morning as my husband took the children to school yet again as I had a terrible hangover, he said that we needed to talk about my drinking.

So I rang AA and I was taken to my first meeting hoping to get everyone off my back. I didn’t think that I was an alcoholic. To me an alcoholic is someone who drinks every day and has lost everything and I didn’t drink daily (although I would of if I could have got away with it). I had a lovely home with two cars in the garage. How could I possibly be an alcoholic? For the last year of my drinking I had been on a mission to control my intake of alcohol, looking back I would say for a good 10 years I had been trying the self control method, i.e. only having 3 drinks, or only drinking wine, or drinking one water, one drink, or only spirits (vodka), or no spirits and only beer. You name it I tried it, but still ended up pissed. I never enjoyed meals out. I was only interested in the booze. It made me feel complete. Without it I felt restless, irritable and discontent, however the moment a drink went into my mouth I felt that wonderful feeling of ease and contentment.

I have a daughter and a son and they were definitely affected by my drinking as alcoholic parents are very unpredictable. They never knew when the came home from school what was waiting for them, either a happy fizzy mum or a shouting screaming witch and every shade in between. I regularly broke promises to them and consistently let them down because when I took that first drink the most important thing for me was the party feeling I was getting and I didn’t want anything coming in the way of that. I habitually arrived late to collect the kids from school and sometimes forgot them altogether although I professed to love my children more than life itself, the drink always came first. They slept many evenings in bars on two seats pushed together with a coat under their heads when they should have been tucked up in bed at home, but I always justified my behaviour by saying I take my kids everywhere with me as I am such a good mum. I gave them money at the beach to go away and leave me alone to do what I wanted to do, when really all they wanted was my time and my attention, but I could never give that.

My daughter looks back on those days and says that I was there in body but not in soul. There were many drunken rows and arguments inside and outside the home and the children would get very upset when I had a drink as they used to say “you start off being happy and then you get angry and start shouting at us”. There are too many painful memories to go into here about my drinking past so now I will tell you about the positive that came out of all that mayhem. I found AA thinking it was the worst day of my life and it turned out to e the best. I term my life now as before AA and after AA: it’s like I’ve been given a new start. A chance to make up for all those years. I don’t blame myself anymore as I’ve been educated about alcoholism in AA. They explained that I’m not a bad person getting good, but a sick person getting well. I thought AA would be full of boring old people but it turned out to be the most interesting thing I have ever done in my life. My meetings are the highlight of my week. I have real friends now that are there for me, not bar stool cronies. I’m doing thinks in my life that I never dreamed possible without having to take a drink. This I can still cry about with gladness because at the end of my drinking I needed a drink even to pick up the phone and speak to someone.

My life continues to get bigger and better without alcohol. I have the love and respect of my children. They have confidence and trust in me and the reassurance that they have a responsible and reliable mum, not a drunken middle aged woman flirting with men in bars. My daughter has found Al-Anon, which has helped her tremendously to come to terms with her own childhood nightmares. They have the same wonderful 12 step program that we follow in AA. I refer to it as my map for life as I wasn’t given one and I just fumbled through the best I could most of the time in the dark. The AA program of recovery is my light.

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