The relationship between trauma and addiction was not well understood 50 years ago
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We were forced to eat in shifts in that small kitchen because there were nine of us living in the house. We did all manage to cram in there for important announcements: Granddad Harrison dying of lung cancer at 60; our mother in hospital being treated for depression; our 19-year-old brother Terry having to marry his pregnant girlfriend. We were warned not to talk about any of this outside the house.
In the evenings when we gathered in the sitting room to watch the BBC, Josephine would place beside her armchair a wicker basket of the kind she kept her knitting in. This basket would contain no yarn but several bottles of Carlsberg Special Brew and a tall glass and a bottle opener. That night, my father Murray would have been sitting at the kitchen table, his tie loosened, a pot of tea by his side, the Irish Times open before him. He would have looked up from his paper as I made my pronouncement. He would have been relieved to hear that it was only about the drink. Then, when my words had sunk in, both would have been angry.
My mother took her first drink when she was in her late 30s, after she had had her children. It took another five years or so for the drinking to become a serious problem and some 20 years before she found her way out of the trap, reducing her intake to the occasional glass of wine with dinner.
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