Richard Hogan: Parents drink, children suffer — we must end this cycle

Staggering figures around the effects of alcohol in the home must be acted upon by the Government

'We have a drug that we have normalised, indoctrinated children into through advertisements that portray it as a social bonding activity. That has to stop.'

I have sat with children in the quietness of my clinic and listened to their lived experience with a parent struggling with alcohol abuse.

They are reticent, at first, to talk about what is happening, because they feel they are being disloyal to the parent they love. The family is a secretive place. Rarely do outsiders get a glimpse into it.

When a child trusts me, they slowly start to delineate the chaos in the family — the drinking bouts, the aggression, smashing of plates and windows, the hurtful things that were said to them, violence at times, strangers in the house, money going missing, parent going missing, and then the quiet moments where the parent is remorseful about what has happened, everything is going fine, and then alcohol abuse and the traumatic cycle starts again.

I was one such child. Unfortunately, I have personal experience of that cycle.

I remember going to see a psychiatrist when I was a teenager, thinking I was going to get help for the entire family, but the first words from the psychiatrist were to inform me he thought my father was a wonderful writer. He was blinded by my father’s career.

It shut me down in the session. It was an important moment in my life, because I felt completely powerless and hopeless in that moment. I remember leaving that appointment thinking, 'I’m going to do something about this, I’m going to help others who feel like I do in this moment'.

When I’m sitting with a teenager who is living with an alcoholic parent, I never assume I know their experience. I want to hear what life is like for them, not what I think life is like for them.

Teenagers will often explain that when things are going well in the house and the drinking has stopped, they are constantly vigilant, waiting for chaos to break out again. It is like the tectonic plates under them are constantly shifting, and they have no peace.

That is why a child of an alcoholic can struggle as an adult to regulate their nervous system. They have lived so long with chaos, their nervous system is constantly heightened. They can struggle with anxiety or other negative mental health conditions like depression, etc. Peace can seem alien to an adult who grew up a child of an alcoholic. The ripples of that childhood can last a lifetime.

Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI), through its ‘Silent Voices’ initiative, recently launched a new report on parental problem alcohol use. It found more than 200,000 children in Ireland are living with harm caused by a parent’s drinking. They also showed one in three children in Ireland has a parent who regularly binge drinks or is dependent on alcohol.

They released a staggering figure, which should motivate our Government to act — that up to 1.5 million people across the State are, or have been, affected by alcohol harm in the home.

This has life-long impacts on health, including high rates of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.

Children who grow up in these kinds of environments have higher rates of early death in life and are more likely to struggle with addiction themselves in adulthood.

These statistics are a stark reminder of our need to protect our children so they can become healthy adults and live healthy, peaceful lives.

The report from AAI suggests we must prioritise the protection of children from the direct and indirect harms of alcohol across the whole of Government. It is calling for a coherent Government policy in relation to seeking a reduction in alcohol consumption at a population level — ie controls on the availability, advertising and pricing of alcohol.

I still can’t believe that alcohol advertising, promoting the positives of alcohol use, is still permitted with all that we know about the damages it causes.

AAI also explains the provision of direct services for children should be provided, regardless of whether a parent is in treatment or not.

It highlights how important it is that all professionals, including health/education who are likely to encounter children/adult children in services, are adequately trained to deal with the complex issue of parental alcohol abuse.

When I was starting out, I didn’t receive adequate training on how to deal with this complex issue that impacts so many children in this country. And that is not good enough.

How can we support our children, when the people charged with protecting them and supporting them are not receiving the adequate training?

This is one of the most important issues facing children in Ireland today. We have a drug that we have normalised, indoctrinated children into through advertisements that portray it as a social bonding activity. That has to stop.

The Government has removed alcohol from the front of shops — that should be lauded — but we must go further. We need well-trained specialists talking to children in schools about the impacts of alcohol abuse.

I remember sitting in a workshop in North Cork in 1989 and a guy talked to us first-year students about life for him growing up in a family where his father was an alcoholic. I had never heard that word before, I had heard "fond of the jar’", "big drinker", but not alcoholic.

It was in that moment I knew what I was living with wasn’t normal, and it helped.

We must protect our children from the harms of parental alcohol abuse, so they can become healthy, happy adults.