Nottingham continues to have some of the highest levels of problem drinking in the UK – with the death rate for chronic liver disease nearly double the national average, and tens of thousands of people in the city struggling to control their intake.
As part of Alcoholics Awareness month, Notts TV News has exclusive interviews with Nottingham people battling addiction. All identities have had to be concealed and names changed. Here Tom, a former drink driver, tells his story to Sharon Walia.
“Igrew up in a disrupted household and I came to learn that my mother was an alcoholic, so some of my first memories were fear.
“It wasn’t a nice upbringing and when I reached my early teens, I discovered alcohol and never really drunk normally.
“Certainly, when I became 16, 17, I found drinking gave me confidence.
“I can look back on my drinking career and perhaps qualify for alcoholics anonymous at that age.
“I drank drove at the age of 18, put into prison at the age of 19 for that offence and I grew up in a part of the country where people don’t go to prison yet I managed it.
“I lost my licence and gained a criminal record yet I still managed to get to university and successfully completed that but I still drank heavily there but in that environment everyone did.
“Graduating university saw all of my friends grow up yet I carried on drinking.
“Drinking 20 pints in an evening with spirits on top of that affected my body quite badly when I was in my early 20s.
“I couldn’t drink regularly, I had to have periods off just to recover.
“I lost a very prestigious postgraduate qualification through my drinking as I wasn’t able to complete that.
“My rock bottom was when I started my own company and run it for seven years.
“Things were going well for the first four but for the final three it became very difficult and my drinking started to increase.
“At the same time, I became a parent as well and the bottom line there was that my drinking cost me my company and nearly my marriage and my 10 month old son.
“Realising history was repeating itself was the turning point; realising that I grew up with a mother that was abusive and alcoholic.
“That stopped me from drinking, that was my wake up call.
“I was facing bankruptcy and losing my family and I knew if I did something, if I drunk again, then all bets would be off.”
To contact Alcoholics Anonymous in Nottinghamshire call 0115 941 7100 or visit the organisation’s website.
Specialist support for those struggling with alcohol is also available from a range of other local organisations including Recovery in Nottingham and APAS.
