OPINION I love my son Marcus with my entire being, but there was a time when alcohol drove a divide between us. As an alcoholic , all you really care about is that bottle, and drinking was far more important to me than being a good dad. Booze was always in my life.
I grew up in an era when rules around alcohol were more relaxed. As young as 13, my brothers would be buying me pints in the pub. Then in my early 20s, I worked in the corporate world, where it was a beer at 5pm, wine with dinner, a load more spirits and then shots somewhere at 3am.
Things took a turn for the worse about seven years ago, when I started having serious eye problems. I went for every test you can imagine at every top clinic in the country, but no one to this day has been able to find the cause. At one point I couldn’t read my emails.
Fortunately, the doctors managed to reverse the decline in my right eye, but I’ve now lost 90 per cent of the sight in my left. These days I still walk into things, I can’t always see people and I’m lost in the dark. It has been a huge adjustment, and when it first happened I couldn’t cope.
But rather than talk about it and be honest about feeling terrified, I made jokes and pretended everything was fine. Behind closed doors, I buried myself in the bottle and my alcohol intake went through the roof. About five years ago, when Marcus was 14, I was really struggling.
I’d previously split up from Marcus’ mum but we’d always co-parented , and my relationship w.
