Mum helped save my addiction by locking me up at home, says MELISSA RICE

My last taste of alcohol was a shot of vodka fed to me by my mother at 7am. She had been at my bedside dispensing measured doses every three hours throughout the night to prevent me from having a seizure.

My addiction was so great and my body so poisoned that my life was in danger without alcohol running through my veins.

How she was able to pour that poison, I will never know. But that last sip of vodka marked the end of six years of uncontrolled alcoholism and the start of my long road to sobriety.

Addiction is often referred to as a ‘family disease’ because it has such a devastating impact on the entire family. This was certainly true in my case.

The lengths my family went to in order to keep me safe were extreme, but these were lengths born from love and despair.

I don’t know if I was born an alcoholic, caught it or bought it. I just know that, at some point in my life, a line was crossed and I needed a drink more than I wanted one.

Mine was a normal childhood. I grew up on the outskirts of Liverpool with my older sister Becca and my mum Ange. Our dad wasn’t around much when I was growing up.

I had anxiety issues and would pull out my hair and scratch my arms when I was bored or stressed. But in my teens I discovered that alcohol could quieten my mind and give me happiness, and by the time I reached the sixth form (in 2006) I was a proper party girl.

I lived for the weekend, and through my 20s I had more jobs than hot dinners, several hair colours and styles, unstable friendships and a succession of boyfriends. But I was bright. Grades were never an issue and I was thrilled when I started a proper career as a primary school teacher.

That job ‘saved me’ for a while, although I did put an unhealthy amount of pressure on myself to be a cross between Mary Poppins and Miss Honey from Roald Dahl’s Matilda.

Even in my mid 20s I was very attached to the apron-strings and hugely dependent on my mum for decision-making and crisis management. 

We didn’t drink at home (ours is more of a ‘tea and cake’ family), so for me to come home from work and say: ‘I’m going to pour myself a drink, it’s been a tough day,’ was out of the question.   

But I drank to cope — by now outside the boundaries of nights out — and the more I drank, the more I felt compelled to keep it a secret.

At first I’d pick up a quarter bottle of vodka on the way home, plus chewing gum and cheese and onion crisps (to disguise the smell of alcohol on my breath). As soon as the seal cracked on that cap, I’d feel my shoulders drop.

Then I’d gulp the lot in my bedroom. My worries would dissolve and for an hour I’d be warm, fuzzy and snuggled into the evening ahead.

Soon I was reaching for the bottle more often and, as the empties began to mount, my behaviour became bonkers.

During my ‘summer of hell’ in 2016 I would rotate off-licences and buy gift-bottle bags and thank-you cards to try to convince the cashiers the bottle was for someone else.

My mental health became so bad that I was signed off work with anxiety and depression, but the secret drinking continued.

I thought I was brilliant at hiding my growing addiction, cleverly decanting vodka into a rinsed-out Flash bottle kept under the sink, or into several water bottles hidden under different bushes around the local park, identified by bits of string tied to the branches.

The lies that came out of my mouth were frighteningly effortless and increasingly manipulative. I would even resort to gaslighting: ‘I can’t believe you think I’ve been drinking — you always think the worst of me’ or ‘you’re paranoid!’

I was good. There were even times when my mother and sister apologised for accusing me.

I knew I needed to stop drinking but the problem was, I didn’t want to. A life without booze didn’t seem like a life worth having. I refused help and instead gave myself drinking rules, then broke them.

I tried yoga, German lessons, meditation apps, knitting, the gym… but then found myself using these outside-the-home hobbies to get drink into my system, even hiding small bottles of rosé in the sanitary bin at the gym before circuit training.

I’d be OK for one, maybe two weeks, then I’d have a chaotic binge, each more dangerous than the last.

My lovely mum saw it as her responsibility to clear up the mess and get me back on a sane path. It was wholly unfair to her and draining.

Eventually she took me to the GP and spoke for me, painting a harrowing picture of continually having to pick me up off the floor, put me in the shower, check I was still breathing. 

Her revelations did get me referred to a local drug and alcohol service. I was appalled.

This wasn’t where I belonged. I couldn’t possibly be an alcoholic because I was educated and had a loving family, a career and a home. I didn’t drink cider in the park. I didn’t even drink every day.

I reluctantly attended the sessions and became a miserable ‘dry drunk’ — an alcoholic who no longer drinks but otherwise maintains the same behaviour patterns as an alcoholic.

That year of trying to gain back control taught me that you can’t do this on your own. I had no control.

In 2017 I was forced to face the fact that I couldn’t go back to teaching, and the realisation tipped me into deep depression. I was 29 and I couldn’t stop drinking. I was damaged goods — too broken to offer this world anything other than misery. I felt I had nothing left.

By then I was buying 75 cl bottles of vodka for my drinking sprees but the drink couldn’t stop the pain.

I started to harm myself and made some fleeting, half-baked attempts on my life. Each drunken rant to my mum would include the words ‘I’d be better off dead’.

In her desperate search for help, Mum was told there was no funding for treatment for someone like me. She was even advised I had more chance of getting support if she kicked me out on the streets.

Instead, she decided to lock me in. Windows and doors were locked. Knives, medicines, tablets and anything that had the potential to cause harm were hidden in the garage. It drove me insane.

I would scream for hours until I exhausted myself, pacing and running around the house, looking for a way out or a way to make everything go away. 

Walls were punched, glasses, photo frames and mirrors smashed. I even found the strength to tip over two full-size wardrobes.

DURING that annus horribilis there were many moments when I could and should have died: I picked the window locks and ran off to a hotel with litres of vodka, waking up in pools of vomit. 

Once I was found by the police passed out in the city centre. Another time I found myself at a railway station in Preston covered in mystery blood.

I would wake from a drunken stupor unable to piece together what had happened, only to find out I was locked in again: phone, card, keys all confiscated. It made me furious.

It breaks my heart that I couldn’t stop for my mum, for anyone in my family who I loved so much.

Finally, I was signed up for a 12-week abstinence programme, which meant living at home and attending a centre in town every day. I didn’t drink for the entirety of the programme and for some weeks after, and I really thought I was cured.

Then one day I went into an off-licence for cigarettes, with no intention of buying a bottle, and the order just rolled out of my mouth — then the vodka rolled down my throat.

It was clear that residential rehab was a logical next step, but I wasn’t eligible for public funding and we couldn’t afford the £15,000 cost. 

I refused to allow mum to take out a loan or remortgage her house, so I applied for a bursary bed through the charity Action On Addiction.

While waiting to hear, I had my last relapse. It was a big one, even by my standards. When I woke up in hospital I was so drunk I couldn’t see and had to feel my mother’s face to be sure she was there.

And that’s how Mum ended up spoon-feeding me vodka to keep me alive and slowly reduce my dependency, so I could take my place on the programme.

I remember hugging my mum and sobbing. I couldn’t let go and she didn’t let me go. She told me it was going to be all right and I believed her. I started rehab in Wiltshire six weeks later in October 2017.

This time it worked. The process really helped me think about everything I’d put my mum through. She had assumed the caretaker role and her life’s purpose had been reduced to making sure I was OK. 

I was able to see that her dogged, unwavering belief that she could fix me caused great harm to her and I can never take that back.

I had relied so heavily on her and, as grubby as this makes me feel, I know I abused the privilege of having my mum to help me, house me and love me.

It turns out I was as dependent on this relationship as I was on vodka, and in order to stay sober I could never go back to living at home.

I moved to London and the Amy Winehouse Foundation put me up in a flat where I could live with other women fresh out of treatment who need a safe place to live to rebuild their lives.

I’ve been sober now for more than three years. It’s not easy, but even my worst day sober is a thousand times better than any day drinking.

And I have been able to give my family their peace of mind back. Now my mum goes to sleep each night knowing her youngest daughter is sober, my sister has a sister and my nine-year-old nephew, Noah, has an auntie.

At AA every month, I would be invited to pick up my ‘milestone’ medallion. Each time I couldn’t believe I’d got another month of sobriety under my belt.

When it gets to 12 months, the medallions become yearly and one of the highlights of my recovery was when Mum came to see me get my one-year chip.

She keeps all those medallions. Though her home decor has no room for trinkets, there is a cupboard full of photos, cards, drawings — and now, my AA chips.

Adapted by Louise Atkinson from Sobering, by Melissa Rice, published by September Publishing on Thursday at £12.99. © Melissa Rice 2021. 

To order a copy for £11.43 (offer valid to 29/2/21; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3308 9193.