Where It All Started
I remember it as if it were yesterday: my dad hitting my mum with a pan.
It was the middle of the night. Flashes come back to me—my mum crying, my sister holding my hand, the three of us walking toward my grandma’s house.
I can’t recall my exact age, but I do remember my shoes—the ones with little red lights that flashed every time I stepped on the floor. In my mind, I still see those glowing steps in the dark, while behind me, my mum sobbed quietly.
All of this was because my dad was drunk. And that wasn’t just one episode; there were many. But this one stayed with me.
Their relationship didn’t last long, but my story with alcohol began there—and it wasn’t a pleasant one.
Childhood Shadows
I remember it as if it were yesterday: my dad hitting my mum with a pan.
It was the middle of the night. Flashes come back to me—my mum crying, my sister holding my hand, the three of us walking toward my grandma’s house.
I can’t recall my exact age, but I do remember my shoes—the ones with little red lights that flashed every time I stepped on the floor. In my mind, I still see those glowing steps in the dark, while behind me, my mum sobbed quietly.
All of this was because my dad was drunk. And that wasn’t just one episode; there were many. But this one stayed with me.
Their relationship didn’t last long, but my story with alcohol began there—and it wasn’t a pleasant one.
My Mother, The Warrior
After my parents finally split, I went to live with my mum.
She was a warrior. Not the kind that wears armour and carries a sword, but the kind that wakes up early, goes to work, comes back late, and somehow still finds the strength to keep a home running. The kind that doesn’t have the luxury of falling apart because there are children watching, depending, absorbing.
My mum worked multiple jobs just to keep the bills paid and food on the table. She was a living machine, always on the move, always trying to make our lives better than the one she was stuck in before.
I’m deeply proud of her for everything she achieved, and for all the lessons she taught me. But as much as she was strong, she was also human. She was tired. She was hurt. She was healing from experiences that no one should have to go through.
In many ways, she tried to protect us from what had happened. We didn’t sit around the table analysing my dad’s drinking. There were no long speeches about alcohol, no structured warnings, no emotional lectures. She just did her best to move forward, to give us stability, to replace shouting with calm and fear with safety.
But trauma doesn’t disappear just because we move house.
It lives in the body.
It shows up in the way we react, in our fears, in the choices we make later without knowing why.
I saw what alcohol did to my family.
You’d think that would be enough to keep me away from it forever.
But life doesn’t work that simply.
The First Sip
As I grew older and moved into my teenage years, alcohol came back into my life—but in a very different way.
This time, it wasn’t a drunk father shouting in the middle of the night. It was friends laughing at a party. Music. Jokes. Someone passing a glass or a bottle and saying, “Come on, just try it.”
The atmosphere was completely different. No tension, no fear—at least, not on the surface. Just a bunch of teenagers trying to be older than they really were.
Looking back, I didn’t have a strong family reference telling me, “This is how you handle alcohol,” or “This is what you should watch out for.” Like many people, I grew up in a culture where alcohol was simply normal. Present at family gatherings, birthdays, and celebrations. It was just part of life.
So when I started going out with friends, trying to be cool, trying to fit in, trying to impress girls, of course, I tried it.
I didn’t sit there thinking, “I’m about to make a life-shaping decision.”
I just didn’t want to be the odd one out.
That first sip didn’t taste great.
No one really tells you that—the truth is, most people don’t like the taste at the beginning. But they like what comes with it: the laughs, the belonging, the feeling of being “in.”
I won’t pretend I was forced. I wasn’t.
I raised the glass myself.
I wanted to feel part of the group.
Maybe if I had had a stronger foundation, clearer conversations at home, or a different emotional context, I wouldn’t have tried. Maybe not. It’s impossible to know.
What I do know is that, very quickly, alcohol became more than just a drink. It became a shortcut—to confidence, to courage, to connection.
Patterns Repeated
The first time I got drunk, it felt funny.
I talked more.
I laughed louder.
I felt bolder, braver, less worried about what people thought of me.
On the outside, it looked like I was having a great time.
On the inside, something more complex was happening:
Alcohol was giving me permission to be someone I didn’t know how to be sober.
It allowed me to start conversations, to flirt, to do things I might have been too shy to do otherwise. It also allowed me to do a lot of stupid things, which you’ve probably done too if you’ve ever been really drunk.
But for a while, that’s what made it attractive.
We turned those stories into jokes.
“Do you remember what you did last night?”
“No, man, I was so gone!”
Followed by laughter, teasing, and the usual “We had such a great time!”
We turn regret into entertainment because it’s easier to laugh about it than to look at it.
But there’s a part that no one talks about with the same enthusiasm: the morning after.
For me, that was one of the worst parts.
Waking up with no clear memory of what I did.
Trying to piece together the night from blurry flashes and what other people told me.
Feeling that horrible mix of embarrassment, anxiety, and shame.
The pounding headache.
The heavy hangover.
The feeling was like my body was punishing me for a decision my ego had made the night before.
If you drink, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
What I didn’t see back then was the pattern repeating itself.
As a child, I watched alcohol turn my home into a battlefield.
As a teenager, I watched alcohol turn my nights into a blur.
Different context.
Same substance.
Same root: using alcohol to deal with what we don’t know how to face sober.
My dad used alcohol to escape his own demons—anger, frustration, whatever he was carrying.
I was using it to escape my shyness, insecurity, and fear of rejection.
We were very different people, but in a strange way, we were using the same tool for the same purpose: to run away from discomfort.
That realisation didn’t come overnight. At that age, I wasn’t sitting on my bed reflecting on generational patterns. I was just living, going with the flow, doing what everyone else did.
But the truth is, my story with alcohol didn’t start with my first drink.
It started much earlier, in a house where bottles were louder than words.
The Moment I Realised
I’m not talking about the moment I decided to change—that came later, and it’s a chapter of its own.
I’m talking about the moment I realised that alcohol had always been there.
In my childhood.
In my teenage years.
In the background of my life like a soundtrack I never chose but kept listening to.
This realisation didn’t hit me in the middle of a party or at the bottom of a glass.
It came slowly, like a picture coming into focus.
I remember, as an adult, looking back and connecting the dots. The night with the red flashing shoes. The sound of my mum crying. The first time I got drunk. The mornings I woke up ashamed. The times I laughed off things that, deep down, didn’t feel so funny.
For a long time, I thought my story with alcohol was just like everyone else’s.
You drink, you have fun, you go a bit too far sometimes, you deal with the hangover, and life moves on.
But life doesn’t really “move on” if you don’t understand what’s driving you.
When I began to really reflect, I realised something important:
Alcohol had been shaping my story long before I made any conscious choices about it.
It influenced the home I grew up in.
It influenced the way I saw relationships.
It influenced the way I saw myself.
And that’s where this journey truly begins—not in a dramatic rock-bottom moment, not in a hospital bed, not in a jail cell, but in a quiet, honest recognition:
“This has been part of my life for a long time.
More than I thought.
More than I wanted to admit.”
This book is not about blaming alcohol for everything that went wrong.
It’s about understanding the role it played, and the power it took—and learning how to take that power back.
My story with alcohol started in fear, confusion and pain.
Later, it continued in jokes, parties and hangovers.
But somewhere along the way, I realised something:
If alcohol could shape my story in so many ways…
maybe drinking less could open space for a completely different kind of story.
A story with more clarity.
More presence.
More life.
Drink less. Live more.
This is where that journey truly starts.