Me aged 3 ! I had been being sexually abused since being a baby !

My Life Alcohol & Drugs !

(If I use the name Mike I mean my biological father, if I say dad I mean my step-dad who has been the most loving, inspirational, patient father that means the world to me)


My Life Alcohol & Drugs

Ever been battered in such a way that you feel like you’ve been hit round the head with a baseball bat? Yeah me to thing was I was only 6yrs old and it was a door frame my head had just connected with. The reason Id burnt the sausages we where having for our dinner, I was then picked up by hair and carried the 12foot to the living room where I was thrown onto the couch headfirst with a KICK in the back for good measure.

As usual Mike reeked of alcohol, my mom didn’t live with us, as Mike had treated her the same way although had never laid a finger on me and my brother in a violent way while mom was there. Put it this way I learnt how not to burn food when I was made to cook, I will also point out that aged just 6 I couldn’t even see over the top of the cooker.

One time Mike had spent all his money on alcohol and drugs so sent me and my brother to steal food from the local supermarket, I got caught, know though that I had done this many times before without getting caught as Mike often blew his money on what he wanted.  The policeman took me and Nathan home where in front of the policeman Mike gave us a cuff round the head and told us off for stealing. 
Once the policeman had gone Mike took me and Nathan by the hair and banged our heads together so hard my mouth began to bleed from the impact, I then watched as Nathan was punched senseless, he did this not because we where stealing but because we had been caught.  This meant he couldn’t send us to this supermarket anymore as we would be watched by the staff and there where no other supermarkets near enough for him to send us to.  Many times after this we went hungry or ate stale food unless we where at mom’s house.

(Mom didn’t have a clue what was going on at home for reasons that will be explained further on)

In the 70’s & 80’s smacking children with a wooden spoon was a common punishment in most families and  was seen as an acceptable form of punishment Mike though took it to a new level he would smack us so hard the spoons would break and whoever the spoon broke on got to go buy the new spoon.  I became hard and refused to cry when I was spooned no matter how hard, no matter how many broke on my arse I never cried  I became totally desensitised to most beatings that where dished out.

In the days when Mike was smashed I had chairs thrown at me full on so hard I have flown backwards into walls, I have suffered concussion, I have lost a tooth, had hair ripped from my head, been covered in bruises.  Mike was clever though he knew that beatings should only be from the neck to the arse so the bruises where not seen, both Nathan and I knew to lie  if any of the bruises where seen at school which to be fair the school didn’t really notice much for a long time, by the time they did realise something was going on at home my mom had came and taken us from the house (we where often left home alone) mom came on a day that Mike had left us and just taken us.

The reason we knew to lie because Mike had told us that if anyone ever found out he would kill Nathan and go after our mom, this was a threat that permanently hung over our heads and was reinforced on a nearly daily basis, as one or the other of us was often, slapped, punched, kicked or worse on a daily basis.  On top of the violent abuse was sexual abuse although this isn’t about that, it’s about the alcohol and drugs, Nathan is a year younger than me so was just 5 yrs old at the time.

We could both roll joints, knew the difference between cocaine and speed.  We had both been stoned and pissed, both missed school due to being hung over although school was told it was a stomach bug which we agreed it was.  We where both hooked on nicotine and smoked cigarettes on a regular basis, I am not saying that all of the above where because of alcohol and drugs Mike was an evil man but when he was sober he could be quiet loving unless we ‘did something naughty’ !!! And that didn’t take much ie: burning the dinner, being caught stealing, rolling a joint to baggy, not putting his cocaine in neat little lines. 

What I am saying however is Mike was worse when alcohol and drugs where in his system, he was nastier, the things that he said where cruel, he would frighten us with the things he said, made us believe monsters where real, that things would come out of the dark and get us if we didn’t do his bidding and when your young and impressionable you believe these things.

Mike was super controlling we where not allowed to play out, we had to come home straight from school, could not talk to other children that lived on our estate.  We spent all of our time in the house with locked doors, curtains drawn, usually in the living room pouring him drinks, helping him with his drugs or in our bedroom.

(I’m going to jump here to being a teenager when Nathan and I where living with my mom and dad)

Nathan and I carried on smoking we where about 13 and 14 now – we had our own friends and outwardly looked like fairly normal teenagers. As a normal teenager I drank cider on the park with my mates, what I didn’t do where drugs until later on.  I cant really tell you much about what Nathan did as our lives had gone in very opposite directions, we where very different.  I know now it was the aftermath of living with Mike that sent us on the path’s it did, I was a people person, loved company, hated being on my own, I became the loudest, gobbiest of the crowd, not in a bad way but in a funny way.

I liked to make people laugh, I would often use myself as the basis for jokes (it was easier if I could do it to myself before someone did it to me) I was also a very angry teenager.  I never started a fight but I wouldn’t be bullied, if someone hit me they got hit back and I didn’t always have a stop button I have done some awful things to other girls and thought nothing of it, by the age of 14 I had already got a record for Grievous Bodily Harm and was on a warning from the police.

Nathan though was very withdrawn, didn’t make friends easily, listened to heavy dark rock music, drew what I now realise where the demons in his head on paper although people that didn’t know what had happened just thought he was being artistic.  He would steal mom and dads alcohol although as far as I am aware he wasn’t getting legless but I’m not sure as it was things like rum and brandy that he was taking.

I started to smoke weed when I was 16 I met a guy from Ireland who was 21 and we began dating, he smoked weed so I started to smoke it too.  I only did it at weekends and never when I had school.  I liked  the feeling as I hated sex and the weed made it easier for me to relax so every time I saw him I got smashed and the weekends just flew.

(Nathan and I are now 15 and 16 and living in the Commonwealth of Dominica, West Indies)

Young teens, I had just left high school in the UK, Nathan hadn’t even finished school he still had a whole year left to do and all of a sudden we are living on a small island and nearly all boundaries have been removed.  We went clubbing, drank, smoked, came in when we wanted, did what we wanted. Still though we did these things without one another most people may think that what happened to us a little children would have made us super close in actual fact it drove us apart.  We where never able to talk to one another about it, and actually didn’t like each other, we would have the most awful physical fights.  I think mom and dad thought these where normal teen fights although this is an assumption as I have never asked them.

I made friends and we went to the hotels drank cocktails and partied without getting hammered, I rarely touched weed even though it was everywhere on the island.  I did get really drunk sometimes and even drank way too much but I didn’t like the sensation of being drunk as I felt out of control. Nathan though made friends with the fair people and at 15 was taking heroin, I hated him more for doing this.  I found out one night when I went to the fair looking for him, I went to the cabs they lived in drew the curtain back and there he was with his arm tied off and just pulling a needle with his eyes rolling in his head.

I struggled to talk to him after id seen him doing this, he also began to drink heavily as white rum which would be referred to as ‘bootleg’ anywhere else in the world was made all over the island, it was cheaper to make than buy. To me this is when Nathan’s problems with alcohol started as when we lived in the UK even I thought his drinking was normal teenage stuff, but he would steal bottles of alcohol off mom and dad if he didn’t have enough money to get into town.  He ran tabs up in local bars, which is when I think mom and dad found out he was getting legless drunk as they ended up having to settle these tabs for him before he got his head smashed in for non payment.

I think it’s at this point that he made friends with people that lived in the mountains, hard to get to places that he would leave to go to on a Thursday and come home on a Sunday.  He started to play Dominoes which he was good at, but the games where played at bars where he would drink the bootleg rum and get stoned on high grade pure weed, it was while he was in the mountains and away from the fair people that he came off the heroin.
Being in the mountains though meant that mom and dad didn’t know how much he was drinking or that he was smoking high grade weed.  I will be eternally grateful to the guys that lived in the mountains for helping him get off heroin. Nathan told me many years later that they stopped him from injecting by putting the heroin in the joints and bit by bit reducing how much was put in until they got him clean of the heroin altogether.
(I am now 22 living in the UK in a relationship with 2 young children)

My relationship with the children’s dad was breaking down I was desperately unhappy at the time worked in a pub, I started to drink when work had finished so that I didn’t have to go home to my partner sober as I couldn’t bear the thought of having to be near him or deal with him.  I started to drink vodka and on 3 occasions ended up in hospital unconscious having my stomach pumped.  I knew why I was drinking but that still didn’t make it right, I was too hung over to look after the children who where only 8mths old and 23mths.
I became angry and it was unleashed more when I was pissed, this pattern had been going on for about 4mths because I had found out that my partner was having an affair with a 16yr  old girl (this brought memories of many things back that I didn’t want to deal with as my partner was 24 then).  Drink seemed like a good option to blank out the pain, but when I sobered up I felt guilty, I hated myself for what I was doing.  My self esteem was non existent and the bubbly happy go lucky girl was gone.  I was just a shell of the person I had become and didn’t even know who I was anymore.

I rang my mom and dad, 24hrs later mom was in the UK as she and dad still lived in Dominica at this point.  Mom saw what was happening she saw that I wasn’t coping she recognised the path I was walking and knew that I had given up on me.  She took the children to my aunts for a weekend while 2 of my uncles arrived in a van while my partner was at work packed as many belongings into it as they could and took me a couple hundred miles further up North to live near family.
My mom followed with the children and the 3 of us moved into a refuge, I stopped drinking immediately as I was out  of the relationship I didn’t have to go home to him and the less I drank the more the demons in my head shrank into the deeper depths of my mind. I started to find clarity again found a house for me and the children and started over.

Once I was settled an aunt of mine who is ten years older started asking me to go on nights out with her, she was a vodka drinker and we used to smash a litre of vodka between us before we even left the house so that we wouldn’t spend as much when we where out.  The cycle began again, this time though I felt I had too, I loved my aunt worshiped her even she had always been the one that I had been closest to so I didn’t know how to say no to her. 
I was on very little money and living on state benefits, I would allow her to bully me into going out, borrowing money from her that I knew would mean less food shopping the week after and get into such states that I wouldn’t remember how we got home or who we had gone home with.  On a few occasions we got separated this used to scare the hell out of me because I never knew where I was and sometimes how I would get home.

My aunt would get so paralytic that she wouldn’t be able to drive me home until early evening the next day, so my children would be left with my 14 and 16yr old cousins for nearly 24hrs at a time.  The guilt I felt for the children and for my cousins is indescribable yet I felt totally helpless to do anything about it.  I felt I owed my aunt so wouldn’t stand up to her and tell her I didn’t want to go out, she would ring my cousins mom for them to babysit, it was like none of us had a choice in the matter, looking back she prayed on my vulnerability because she herself was going through her own shit, doesn’t make it right that’s just how it was at that time.

Once my aunt met a guy and started dating the nights out with me where not needed so I was left alone then, I rarely drank and smoked weed on weekends to relax, I was 24 now.  My life was pretty simple I stayed single and enjoyed spending time with the children, drank the very odd bottle of wine and sometimes went to the local pub for a couple of pints.
(I am now 26yrs old)

I met my now husband Mikee on a night out, he really could drink large amounts of alcohol.  Thinking that I needed to keep up with him I began  to drink again, again getting into bad states of unconsciousness.  Luckily I had him to look after me so I felt safe, I knew how I was getting home, I knew there would be 2 of us the next day to look after the children, but there where lessons I soon learned.

With alcohol comes problems, people get angry when they are pissed, do things they shouldn’t do, try to do things they shouldn’t do and eventually I decided to stop drinking altogether I didn’t even want to be around people that where drinking. Mikee stopped drinking to and spent the weekends at my house with me and the children.  We then moved in together and started over since then I have only drank on special occasions that though doesn’t include things like my birthdays or anniversaries’, its usually when we go to other peoples weddings or party’s.
But trouble still managed to come and find me, an ex girlfriend of Mikee's from 10yrs before he met me, took a dislike to me turned up at our house and started a fight with me, I got the better of her but what I didnt know at the time was that she had come with other people.
Outside in the garden where another woman and the biggest man I have ever seen, the other woman was giving me verbal abuse so I bawled back at her she then kicked the living daylights out of me like a man beating on a woman.  The HUGE man that had come with them stood in the doorway stopping Mikee from getting out into the garden.  My 2 children where there and also 2 other little girls that where stopping over at ours that night, they stood screaming watching the whole thing play out in front of them.
I had knuckle marks on my forhead, cheeks, my nose had been split down to the bone.  I had a footprint on my chest, bruises all over my legs and back and my face had been so badly beaten that all the blood vessels in both eyes had burst looking like my eyeballs had been bleeding. I was seriously concussed, my head had 4 lumps the size of golf balls where my head had made contact with concrete. I was also 6wks pregnant at the time and within minutes of the beating started to bleed horrifically, the hospital told me I had miscarried the baby.
A friend of mine thought it would be a good idea to give me an E (ecstacy) for the pain both pysical and emotional it worked, it worked really well.  The next day when the E had worn off the pain kicked in.  I couldnt even begin to deal with the miscarriage as I hadn't even told Mikee I was pregnant at this point I didn't know if I wanted to keep the baby or not, I had only known myself for 5 days that I was expecting a baby.
I rang the friend who gave me the E to ask for more, she told me the down sides to taking them all the time and suggested that I take speed (amphetamine) instead.  She said it was cheaper and lasted longer than an E.  It took away all my pain the pain in my body from the beating and the emotional pain.  I found something I liked.
Mikee knew I was taking the speed I didn't hide that I was doing it, he didn't like me doing it, he told me he didn't want me doing it.  What he understood though was that I was in turmoil and wanted an escape as the girl that had beaten me made sure that I got the message that she would burn my house down when we where asleep children in the house too.
I had pressed charges and gone to court where she was found guilty of serious assualt and battery.  This didn't take away my fear though, I wouldn't leave the house, go shopping, take the children to school.  I just stayed locked in the house all day terrified of what might happen.  We applied to other local councils for housing, the police wrote a recomendation letter for us explaining what had happened and within 4wks we where offered new housing. We still live in that same house, a house I felt safe in, a house we have made home, a home we became husband and wife, a home we conceived our baby in.
I was still taking speed when we moved house, and one scary incident made me realise I was losing the plot.  I hadn't slept properly for days and I went to put some makeup on I had already taken a ball of speed that morning.  I looked in the mirror and all I could see was a yellow person looking back with spots all over her face.  I started to pick at the spots (I had LONG nails) I sqeezed, scratched and pulled at my face the whole of my face.
Mikee walked into the room and asked me what the hell I was doing, I screamed at him I'm yellow cant you see and look at all the spots.  He said your not yellow and the only marks on your face are from whatever you have just done to it.  I realised I was hallucinating.  I never touched speed again what I had left went down the toilet. I had counselling to deal with what had happened and healed in an appropriate way rather than the further damage I was causing to myself.  Im so glad that I got to that point as 12wks later I found out I was 7wks pregnant.

While all the above was going on in my life Nathan was living on the streets he travelled all over Europe hitch hiking and begging in every city he visited. He lived on the streets for nearly 10yrs begged money for him and his dogs and used the money for drink and drugs.   Every now and again when he was back in the UK he would turn up at my door unexpected and live in my garden in his tent for roughly a month.
It was on these visits that I realised just how bad his problems with alcohol where getting, he would shake if he didn’t have a drink, needed a drink first thing in the morning, he would vomit violently if he didn’t have a drink. He was yellow in colour sometimes, underweight and his face look ravaged he looked so much older than he was, it was sad to see. 

The only thing when Nathan drank he would get angry the arguments that ensued between me and he when he was pissed where woeful, eventually we had a row so awful that I kicked him out of my house and told him don’t come back.  He did a couple of years later, told me how sorry he was for his behaviour and could we fix it.  Mikee and I agreed with Nathan that he could only drink cider or larger no spirits, and only enough to stop him going into shock, we also got him loads of weed to help with any withdrawal he may be experiencing and to help keep him calm.  He came and visited often after this and we never rowed again.

I really used to look forward to his visits, although was deeply saddened that he had no intention of stopping drinking, he didn’t want to stop.  Mom had tried many times over the years with rehab and housing but he only did it for her not for himself.  She couldn’t accept this as I am sure any mother wouldn’t want to, as his sister though not his mom and by now a qualified counsellor who had spent 2.5yrs working with people with alcohol problems I knew.  I also accepted that these where his wishes he was an adult with no responsibilities, no wife, no children, just his dogs whom he adored like children. Because of my total acceptance of his wishes he would be totally honest with me about what and how much he was drinking also drugs that he was taking.

Mom got him a little house in Scotland in 2007 he was settled for really what I would say was the first time in his life.  He seemed happy although was still doing things to please mom like lying to her and telling her what she needed to hear.  Maybe to protect her, maybe because he didn’t want her to be disappointed in him, there are many reasons why he may have lied to her the way he did.  What used to anger me more than anything was that he would use her vulnerability and love against her because as an addict he was selfish and I mean selfish with a capital S.

He would call to say his money didn’t go into the bank so she would send money for him, this was spent straight on alcohol and drugs, she thought it was going on food and bills.  My mom  however was his enabler and no matter how  many times I told her not to do it and why she shouldn’t she didn’t listen, because to listen would mean she would have to accept that she was enabling him and she didn’t want to admit that,  she called it helping him.  She would order his food shopping, toiletries etc online every 2 weeks and have them delivered to his house, meaning that he had the whole of his social security to spend on alcohol and drugs.

On the 7th August 2010 my mom rang me to say Nathan had died.

This is what alcohol and drugs did to my family !

(I dont drink much now  maybe twice a year.  I dont take illegal drugs and havn't for the longest time, I know the damage they cause, and want my children to watch me grow old also to be raised in a healthy, loving, non selfish enviroment.)