“There’s a moment of clarity that life would be better without alcohol”: What we can learn from addiction memoirs | books

On the night of Boxing Day 2021, my father’s body was found near a hostel in Cardiff. His death at the age of 55 was as sudden as it was not. For years, alcoholism had been changing the shape of his heart.

He died less than a mile from his old office. Top law firm, equity partner. Four miles from our house, which was tucked away in a leafy neighborhood. He lost his family and his job in 2019. He grew up in Barrie, working class, and was proud of the beautiful life he had built for us. Others believe that he “has it all.” He was widely liked, but his drinking made him volatile. He was homeless and often behind bars in his final two years.

I last saw my parents in the spring of 2019, before I moved to Australia. I could no longer bear the distress and chaos caused by his addiction. Since then I’ve only seen it in pictures: an article about homeless people eating Christmas dinner; Police appeals regarding missing persons. where king My care, my clever father is gone?

I never talked about drinking it. It seemed treacherous, then depressing, then useless. He was one of my closest friends. It was only after losing him forever that I realized I wanted others to know him. This came through writing, which I began compulsively the morning after the news. This is what I do to keep my mind steady. I was five years old when my father sat me down to write about an event that shook me: my brother’s first seizure in 1999. It was a lesson in how finding words can help in the face of the unimaginable.

My memoir Long Going came out last summer. It’s the story of my life with and without the thunderbolt man who raised me. It turns out our story resonates. Readers say they found this surprising. I feel lighter since writing it.

At events, I’m often asked about my relationship with alcohol. My response is evolving. Like my father, I never suffered from a hangover. I can drink myself to oblivion with friends and wake up fine. These days I’m sober. Since becoming a mother, I count myself among the growing number of curious people. I know what’s at stake.

In June I was on a writing course at Tŷ Newydd with Amy Liptrot, who wrote her memoir The Outrun is a tonic account of recovering alcoholism in Orkney (a film adaptation, starring Saoirse Ronan, will be released in 2024). Amy suggested to us that memoirs can be windows into different worlds, or mirrors into our own. Or sometimes, I wonder, both? Even as I was writing my own book, my father’s pencil notes gave me a window into his world of prison cells and leaky tents.

Over the past year, I’ve gravitated toward other memoirs about addiction. I either didn’t realize these books existed or I avoided them. I’m not sure it’s true, but I wish I had read it sooner.

Always Take the Win for Top Boy star Ashley Walters. Walters grew up in Peckham, where his father alternated between prison and bulimia, and ended up in an institution for young offenders when he was twenty. He eventually managed to turn his life around, and forged an excellent acting career, most recently starring in the hit series Adolescent. His reading of the audiobook is revealing, especially about how he confronted his alcoholism and broke his cycles by going to rehab. I saw my father in Walters’ memories of his arrogance. I saw myself in his memories of loved ones treading on eggshells, unsure of what version of him to expect.

Alcoholism is known to be a family disease, whether that means it runs in the genes or the consequences are passed on to those around the addict. Strong evidence of this is the book In the Blood, co-written by Arabella Byrne and her mother, Julia Hamilton. With remarkable candor, they reflect on what led them to join Alcoholics Anonymous nine months apart. Arabella and I held an event at Blackwells in Oxford during my book tour. Her mother was in the front row. My little girl was in my arms. It felt like we were breaking cycles together.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of memoirs about recovery. We need them. Haunted by his father’s addiction, Jesse Thistle’s From the Ashes is a brave and riveting book about his long struggle with addiction and homelessness before he went to rehab, found love and became a researcher. Octavia Bright is such rough grace It beautifully illustrates her journey to sobriety, along with her father’s Alzheimer’s disease.

When I read these books, I inevitably look for explanations. Why didn’t my father recover? What could I do? I won’t pretend to know the unknowable, but something keeps happening. Each writer describes a moment of clarity that life would be better without alcohol. It’s this simple inner conviction – not external pressure – that takes them to an AA program or rehab. Here, ego patterns and destructive patterns are replaced by societal and healthy habits. Day after day, they continue to choose this better life, embraced by their loved ones once again.

I’ve been told that my father once said he would rather die than wake up. Some things cannot be explained. He had a lot to live for. He deserved to enjoy retirement and time with the grandchildren. Had he recovered, he would have been an amazing presence in my daughter’s life, just as he was in mine.

This month he marked his birthday with three events — from a bookstore in Chester, where he went to law school, to the homeless shelter that fed him on Christmas Day, to Bristol with Nacoa, the charity for children of alcoholics. I can’t change the way my father’s story ended, but I can pass on what he taught me about finding words. We aim to open more windows and reduce the number of unthinkables.

• Long Going by Sophie Calon is published by Honno Welsh Women’s Press. To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply