Richard Hogan: No one should have to grow up with addiction

Richard Hogan. Photograph Moya Nolan

All this week I have been moved by the emails and letters I have received from children of parents who struggled with addiction.

I am fortunate to have a public platform.

I hoped in writing my book, ‘Home is Where the Start Is’, which outlines my experiences of growing up with addiction in my family, that it might help others to process theirs.

I oscillated between writing it and not writing it. Families can be secretive, and we can struggle to speak about our childhood because we feel we are betraying those involved.

But all this week the messages kept coming in:

“Thank you for expressing my childhood.”

“I don’t know what to say, but your childhood was my childhood.”

“Addiction destroyed my childhood.”

“In telling your story you told my story.”

Children of parents with addiction are a particular tribe, and we are many.

Alcoholism impacted my childhood, but here is another aspect of it: I never thought of my father as an alcoholic.

I thought alcoholics were destitute on the street, homeless and marginalised by society. I never dreamed they could be someone who passes you in the corridor or plays the guitar with you.

That idea never entered my mind, until one day I was on a retreat with Rochestown College Cork, and the young guy giving the talk was the child of an alcoholic mother.

Much like what many people wrote to tell me all this week, his story was my story. I was left sitting there flabbergasted. How could this be? How could the guy I admired in so many ways, and feared in others, be struggling like this? What do we do now? Growing up with addiction changes how you perceive the world; it makes you guarded and secretive.

You are always worried someone might find out what you are desperately hiding. I have worked with so many families that have struggled with addiction, and I always meet children who are very slow to express what they are experiencing, for fear of outing their parent.

One teenage girl said to me many years ago, “I don’t want to get my mam in trouble. If I tell you something, do you have to report it?”

She was 12 and her mother was driving her to school drunk.

Alcohol is an incredibly powerful drug. I’m not a prude, I drink myself. But I don’t drink excessively anymore.

I did in my early 20s, but once I had children I decided never to allow them to see their father drunk.

I have honoured that, so far. I understand how having a social drink is important for connecting with friends, but I can’t understand how we allow advertising of alcohol to remain a constant feature on our television screens. The ads use very clever, positive reinforcement to highlight how drinking makes life more fun, and without it life just isn’t exciting.

I’m thinking of one ad in particular, and I just can’t fathom how these companies get away with it.

We have to stop the indoctrination of our children through ads that normalise the consumption of a narcotic.

The Government has to step in here, and prevent our children from growing up in a society where these drink companies, like some sort of Orwellian dystopia, have their names splashed across everything.

Let’s stop telling children that to have a good night you must drink alcohol, or to enjoy sports you have to drink.

Let’s allow them to make their own mind up about drink, free from ads and ubiquitous powerful messaging.

The data simply does not support what the companies want to tell you about their product. The societal cost of alcohol use is estimated at €3.7bn per year, with annual healthcare costs alone having been estimated at up to €1.5bn. In today’s sustainably conscious world, alcohol is recognised as an obstacle to achieving 13 out of 17 of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Alcohol places a significant health burden on Ireland.

Understanding the extent of this burden is an important element in policy decisions. Data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study indicates that ‘previous measures of alcohol-related deaths and illnesses are underestimated and that 5% of all deaths in Ireland in 2019 are attributable to alcohol’.

So, rather than allow these companies to present drinking as harmless fun, perhaps we need to get this message out there instead, so more children can grow up without having family members who are addicted and more adults can live happy, full lives, free from addiction.

That would be a win for everyone.

• Richard Hogan's new book Home Is Where The Start Is is out now.