My husband, always drunk, was waiting for me at home. He put an open bottle of beer in front of me and muttered: Have a drink, bitch! You like it! I drank because I was afraid of him, I was afraid to stop. Because I was looking for consolation, because I was weak. Because I wanted to drink!
Man doesn’t know when to start drinking. Is it possible to call one or two beers drunk after lunch a day alcoholism? Is it possible to think of yourself as “a drunk, drinking dirt with a neighbor, sipping drinks with a friend, assisting an eternally dissatisfied husband to bring down a quarter, who treats you better then?
As long as you clean, wash, cook, feed your children and get out of bed in the morning, you don’t think of yourself as an “alcoholic”. You think: I am unhappy, I have a disabled child, my husband disregards me, I have no job … You find more reasons for dragging your young son from kindergarten and stopping at the local monopoly. You’ll feel better again after lunch. The children sleep, clean on the table. You think: I deserve a reward. One beer becomes ten, one drink becomes a bottle.
Sometimes it takes years for you to see it clearly: I am an alcoholic, I am addicted to it. I need help…
Joanna, 45 years old, Bydgoszcz. – This is how I got into my addiction. Innocently at first. I drank beer mostly because it was cheap. I was able to run a house when I was ready to go. I was even able to look after my disabled daughter. I didn’t think about myself that I was starting to have a serious problem. My husband had a problem, he was drinking water and having a fuss. I was just a poor, boisterous woman who sometimes drowned her sorrows in a golden liquid … But with “time” the daily ritual began. Beer after lunch, before dinner, before going to bed. In the morning coffee, cigarette and… beer. I was able to drink a dozen of them during the day! No, I wasn’t falling off my feet like a pig. There were times when I fell into a drunken sleep. Then I had a huge hangover, I went around neglected. But I was always watching over the pots and the kids. In the morning my son pulled my hair and said: Get up, mama! And I was dragging myself off the couch. The fact that I am an alcoholic never thought. Asia believed that her husband was a drunkard in their house. – Grzegorz was drinking. It’s hard to call it any other way. Almost every day he came home from work drunk, he was sick and he was making names. In order to curb the fear of him, I preferred to be slightly drunk. I often drank with him because he treated me better then. How did it end? Row! Crap – too bitter tea, unwashed plate. He yelled at me like a man possessed, so I yelled at me too. It was only when he hit me that I couldn’t give him back. I was afraid for myself and the children that I would throw my paws at them as well. I swallowed down my tears and locked myself in the living room with the children. For a few more hours we heard him throwing around the apartment, gibbering, blaspheming something, calling out … Three rattled animals – mother always drunk and scared kids … This was my life back then.
The real horror began when Grzegorz lost his job and stopped giving Asia money to live. – All the neighbors from the block knew that we had pathology. They got used to the constant screams, to the intervention of the police. But probably no one would have thought that we were starving! I got up in the morning and stared blankly at the empty fridge. Christ, we have nothing to eat! ”I despaired. So I went to my neighbors and friends. I borrowed a nozzle here, a fifth there. When I was buying bread and margarine, the rest had to be enough for the cheapest beer. I gave the children bread, I drank.
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In order to find a living, Asia went to MOPS to get her daughter’s nursing benefit restored. – But you are drinking! – she heard. She promised to go for treatment. Because when she stops drinking, they’ll give her money. So she was lying.
– Even then, I was not able to break the addiction – says the woman. – For several months I was deceiving the officials that I was undergoing medical treatment so as not to lose my benefit. I even went to the center for therapy! My husband, always drunk, was waiting for me at home. He put an open bottle of beer in front of me and muttered, “Have a drink, bitch!” You like it! – I drank because I was afraid of him, I was afraid to stop. Because I was looking for consolation, because I was weak. Because I wanted to drink! My husband humiliated me, beat me, and I continued to defend myself by drinking. Came to believe that I was a worthless rag, I had terrible remorse as a mother. I came to the conclusion that I am zero. I can’t take it anymore. I wanted to die.
But it’s not easy to take your own life. Man has a strong self-preservation instinct, and I still had children! I thought that when I died, I would leave them to their fate. This monster – father will take care of them. That’s why I changed my mind: I won’t die, but him. I’ll kill him!
We drank together that evening. My husband, although we had not slept together for three years, asked me to have sexual intercourse. I felt a wave of disgust flood over me. When I flatly refused him, he stood up, banged his head on the doorframe until blood flooded his face, and he called the police. When they arrived, he muttered that I was lunging at him with my fists. They took me to a sobering-up center. He, that motherfucker, got drunk at home with the kids. In the room, I devised a naive plan – I’ll take rat poison from the basement. I’ll put him in his tea in the morning. Then let the bastard die, I’ll finally be free. After returning home, a frightened son opened the door for me. – Where’s father? – I asked. “He’s asleep,” he replied. So I went down to the basement and scooped some reddish powder off the cardboard tray. “Even the rats don’t want to eat it” … It flashed through my head. I took it upstairs and poured it into a glass. “I’ll put some tea in the morning and pour boiling water over it,” I decided. That night I did not sleep a single minute of sleep. Tears came at dawn. A sea of tears. They ran down my mouth, smudged my cheeks and neck. I was shaking, I was sobbing and choking from crying. My whole life flashed through my mind like some fucking movie. God my God! What happened to me? It was a breakthrough. Something shuddered inside me. I continued to drink, had a row with my husband, but I also felt that I was ripe for a decision. Not to kill yourself or him. But to finally let it out, articulate it, hear clearly in your head: Aśka, you are an alcoholic. And you know what? Do something damn it!
A few months after the fight with the door frame, on a spring, May day, I got up early in the morning and dressed and combed my hair carefully. Then I made the children breakfast and went with them to the addiction treatment center in my neighborhood. I said I wanted to talk to the therapist that I AM an alcoholic. I asked them to call a woman to see me. I couldn’t open up to the guy.
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For the first time in my life, I confided to Renia’s therapist about the deep, never-ending sadness after the premature death of my mother, about the domineering father, about the adolescent love for my husband and the desire to break out of the house, about a toxic, burning hate marriage, and a never treated depression because of the child’s disability, about the feeling of complete loneliness and helplessness in raising a son. The conversation lasted several hours. I felt relief. Then I heard a magic sentence: You can still change your life. I only had to meet one condition. No drinking. Every day, day by day. Zero!
Almost ten years have passed since that conversation. Asia admits, “It is impossible to describe in a few sentences how difficult the years were. The psychotherapist kept me on my feet for a year and a half. Then the meetings in the self-help group and the support group started. I ran on them persistently, because I drew the strength needed to fight the addiction. I knew I couldn’t neglect it. That although I don’t drink for a year, two, three – I’m still a sick and susceptible person. That I live with my sentence. In the meantime, there was a stormy divorce with her husband, financial problems, progressive illness of my daughter, difficult, another relationship with a sobering alcoholic, pregnancy and premature death of a little daughter, Oliwia …
– But not once, all this time, did I reach for alcohol. Not a drop! Joanna is happy. – There were times when I cried out in pain. I dreamed of losing myself. I wanted to break this damn streak of life’s failures. Drink, then close your eyes and don’t wake up any more. But I persisted in sobriety. And although my life is still no idyll, I regained myself, a sense of dignity and worth as a human being and a mother.
Epilogue: Joanna has been in a successful relationship with a sobering alcoholic for three years. They are engaged, they are planning a wedding. The son is already grown up. He works, lives with his mother. They have had no contact with their first alcoholic husband for years. Her daughter’s illness worsens, but Asia tries not to bother with it. The fact that he has not been drinking for almost ten years does not allow us to speak. – Please write – nine years and five months. There is still a long time to come. The worst, when an alcoholic feels confident, will be carried away by the pride. I stay sober for a long time and I want to endure to the end. I hope this is my destiny. That God will hold me accountable for this perseverance.
Text: Joanna Weyna Szczepańska
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