Life Story

Alcoholism: A lonely place to be

He told me that nothing would stop him from drinking

Many regular readers know of my very personal journey. Adopted as a baby, I decided after giving birth to my first child, I would have to find my roots.

I am not going to cover old ground, this tale is all about Angus, the middle brother.

Content Notice — Alcoholism and Suicide mentioned.

Meeting Angus

Having researched my birth family tree, I then needed at least one current address, so I could finally attempt contact. It was harder getting hold of such details in the late 90s, however, I found and hired a whiz-bang chap online who said he could find anyone. Well, the only address he came up with was the one for Angus.

Angus was the first adult blood relative I ever spoke to. We talked at length on the phone — very special moments for me — and that was when he told me — he was an alcoholic.

Alcoholism is lonely. Even when you are surrounded by people, you don’t feel the connection. The business insider.

When I met him for the first time about a month later, we went out for a drink. He took me to his local pub. Everyone knew him. Everyone liked him. Many people bought us a drink. And it was sitting in that pub he told me why he was an alcoholic.

Odd One Out

Angus said he was the odd-one-out in the family. All the others, including me, have brown eyes, a darker complexion, and are very tall too. We’re actually descended from the original Romany Gypsies.

Angus had the clearest blue eyes you’d ever seen, pale skin, and was smaller than the rest of us. He said from a young age he felt everything far too much. They were a very close family and all the kids looked out for each other, but he knew he wasn’t as strong — mentally or physically — as the others.

Bullied at school and struggling to fit in, Angus decided at sixteen he’d experienced enough of life and tried to kill himself. Giving it his best shot, so it was never seen as simply a cry for attention. The doctors and family recognized Angus wasn’t stable. He received psychological treatment and all the family and his friends rallied around.

Alcohol

Knowing he was loved, Angus realized that if he had died many hearts would have broken. I understood that he was easy to love. He had the sweetest, most compassionate nature. By the time I met him, he was a carer for the elderly and perfectly suited to that career.

After recovering from the suicide attempt, he began to drink. As a way of coping with life. Within a very short time, he was an alcoholic. The kind that can carry on with their jobs. The kind that you can sit in the bar chatting with. Having two, three, four drinks and they don’t seem to get any drunker. Meanwhile, you are practically falling over.

Angus never married or had children.

He told me that nothing would stop him from drinking.

He would drink until he died.

And that was precisely what he did.

Only a year after I met him, he was admitted to the hospital as his organs began to fail, even though he was still a young man. His sister, (my half-sister), took him back to her home and cared for him until his death a few months later.

Timing is Everything

I often contemplate if I had waited one more year until I reached out to my birth family I would not have been fortunate enough to have met him, a beautiful, kind soul. Indeed, I can’t be sure I would have met any of my family, as Angus’s address was the only one available online.

Finding out he was dead felt very strange. I was obviously sad that he was gone, and so I had no more time to get to know him. But also glad he had told me this was his decision. What he wanted.

I am going to leave it there, as I don’t know too much about what being dependent on alcohol is like. Don’t get me wrong, I drink far too much. I enjoy a drink. But I can stop.

Alcoholism is more common than we know. In a strange coincidence, the month Angus died, a close friend’s sister also died of the same illness.

There is much debate as to whether alcoholism is an actual illness, or a condition that is self- inflicted by the individual. Those who are in the profession of helping individuals with alcohol addiction will tell you that they are suffering from an illness that is beyond their mental control. UK Rehab

As mentioned above, one reason Angus felt like an oddball was because he looked different from his family. Genetics are strange. When I had my second daughter, I recognized immediately that she has his eyes, clear and blue.

So Angus is never far from my thoughts.

Another true tale about alcoholism and families by David Mokotoff

If you need help, call The Samaritans, they will listen and guide you without judgment.

More From May…