By ALICE NICHOLLS
I come from a long line of extremely successful alcoholics.
Not successful because they were drunk but they also held careers or drove fancy cars and lived in big houses. Successful because they never failed to get drunk. I can count 3 generations and over 6 people closely related to me in under 5 seconds that are either sober alcoholics or that are probably still hitting the bottle every day.
None of the 6 mattered to me growing up except one. My mum.
Mum and dad got divorced when I was a toddler. Mum was unfaithful and I think she felt overwhelmed by guilt and probably a few other things I’ll never know about. She used to drink a bottle of Southern Comfort a day or more. If she ever had the money she’d drink Jim Beam, but she never had the money. She’d hide it in sock drawers, behind towels in the laundry cupboard, in our back shed, under the verandah…you name it.
She hid so many bottles over a decade and then get so drunk she’d forget where they were hidden and have to go back to the bottle shop for more. Sometimes with me in the backseat. Mum lost her license twice for drink driving… Twice that I knew about. Both times I was in the car and spent a few hours in the police station. What must they have thought of me, the little blond haired, blue-eyed girl in pyjamas with the little yellow ducks on the feet?