Liz Fraser - Coming Clean: A true story of love, addiction and recovery

Oxford, May 2020

Hello. You saved my life. Theres no question about that. Your empathy, your willingness to learn and understand about this disease and have enough faith in me to keep trying through all the pain you endured, saved me, and Im here doing everything I do now, because of it. I love you. Mike

Contents

I wrote the first draft of this book in my partners first year of sobriety. When I finished it, I thought I had written an accurate, and indeed fairly tame, version of events compared with what had actually happened and how it had been to live through at the time.

Only three other people read that first draft and their responses suggested it was perhaps not quite as gentle as Id thought; one said it was so relentlessly shocking she needed a few days off to recover, another called me every day for a week to see if I was OK and the third asked if I knew any psychotherapists I might be able to see as soon as possible.

A few months later, in which time many more bumps in Mikes sobriety journey were navigated and my own recovery from all the trauma had begun at least a little I went back to the manuscript and read it again. Now it was my turn to be shocked: burning a hole into my eyes were three hundred and fifty pages of distilled rage, broken only by brief moments of light relief in the form of hate, anger, pain and fear. There was almost no pause for breath in the gunfire of awfulness and it read less like a story of love and recovery than an excuse for murder, or suicide. Or both.

I had pretty much bled my pain onto the keyboard and it did nothing to help the telling of a far more human, layered story because Id been nowhere near ready to write it yet.

Emotions need to see out their natural life cycle, be registered for what they are, allowed to express themselves, be processed and understood and, eventually, learned to cope with better. If the scarring is light and we have the required mental tools, the healing happens fairly quickly and successfully; but some experiences are so deeply damaging, the recovery time can be very long indeed.

Recovery from alcoholism whether as the alcoholic or those affected by their illness cannot be rushed. It takes its own path and we feel what we feel in each moment. What I had clearly felt, so soon after the events themselves, was a knock-out cocktail of traumas. (Not a beverage Id recommend, if Im perfectly honest.)

It took me a lot of time and some slow, difficult self-examination and learning to be able to view our story with any sense of perspective at all and to see it as a three-dimensional, complex, nuanced whole. Its shape still continues to change every day, because this is a real story of real lives that are still being lived, a journey were still on, both together and independently, and every week brings a new realisation, a new challenge and a new piece in this big, complicated puzzle. And so it will go on, for as long as we do.

So really, there are two versions of this book; the first is a blistering catalogue of everything that happened, for me to keep and, hopefully, never look at again.

The second is this one, for you. A true story of two flawed humans, both battling their own demons, and both now on the long path to recovery. Its a path far better negotiated while holding hands with our fellow travellers, instead of fighting them, or ourselves, all the way.

This is a true story about two people driven apart by addiction, and held together by love. Its your classic boy meets girl oh, hang on, boy is an alcoholic love story.

Its about human fallibility, strength and hope for recovery. But mainly its about drinking.

I never expected any of it to happen in my life, but it did, just as it does to countless others who didnt expect it either. Were just everyday people with everyday jobs and lives; we pay our bills and take the bins out, we eat vegetables and occasionally think about doing some yoga. We take our kids to the park, call our friends on their birthday, filter our Instagrams and recycle our plastic. We floss. To look at us, youd never know the secrets we hold or the daily struggles we endure.

Id never (knowingly) known an Actual Alcoholic before I met Mike, nor had any idea what the word really means , far less what its like to live with one, love one and have ones life smashed apart by one. I did know he had a bit of an issue with drink sometimes, but lets face it, so have most of us. Who doesnt get shit-faced at a wedding, drown bad news in vodka or slip into unhealthy drinking habits occasionally? Almost everyone I know has done this at one time or other, or many times, and so have I. But the line between occasional bad habits and addiction is unhelpfully blurred and its remarkably easy to slide over it especially if theres an underlying problem being ignored.

When Mike finally fell over that line and descended into an alcoholic vortex of destruction, I found myself alone with our 18-month-old daughter, in a foreign country to which we had just moved to start a new life together, with no childcare or family nearby, working to pay all of our bills on my own, with no idea what was happening or what on earth I should do.

For months, I battled on in silence, too ashamed, scared and gaslit to speak out, until I eventually lost all of my emotional strength, my self-confidence, my health and my mind, all the while trying to keep myself and my child afloat. When I finally broke and started tentatively talking to friends and strangers about the truth I was living, I found a huge network of people who helped and supported me without judgement, and countless others who live, or have lived, with addicts.

We all have different individual circumstances, but its in the similarities and there are usually many where we can find much-needed empathy, spot our own mistakes and learn how we might cope better in the future.

Im going to tell my story honestly, fairly and, I hope, with kindness and compassion. Its quite shocking in places because the truth of addiction is shocking and we can find ourselves in situations so dreadful its hard to understand how they could be a part of our life, or our childrens lives. But these situations happen, and I hope that in sharing all the things I didnt know about, didnt have the words for and didnt dare speak about for far too long both when Mike was drinking and in the unexpected challenges of recovery it might help you if ever you need it.

We will travel to some beautiful places where terrible things happened: from the Entry-Level days of alcoholism occasional disappearances, inconsistencies and changing moods graduating to manipulation, blame, rage, humiliation and loneliness, and even to the ugly, still largely taboo realms of verbal and physical abuse. These are things nobody ever wants to darken their doors, but they can arrive so fast we dont even hear them approaching.

There are no winners in addiction; everyone, including the addict, is a victim, and everyone involved needs support and love in order to become a survivor. None of us knows when it might be our turn or how we will handle it, and you might never be able to tell anyone about your experiences and thats OK. You have to do what feels safe and right to you .

This isnt a how-to guide or academic examination of addiction its a memoir, a diary, an account of one persons experiences of it but I hope it might change the way we think and talk about addiction, open peoples minds to both sides of this all-too-common human experience, encourage dialogue and mutual support, break stigmas and provide support for those who need it. All sides of a story need a voice. This is mine.