Christchurch family gets mum back for Christmas

Ginny* was drunk in the passenger seat as her husband pulled up outside the flat he wanted her to move to.

After years of coping and supporting her through her drinking, he’d finally had enough. He and the children couldn’t take it anymore.

"He got out and peeked through the windows. I said ‘I am not getting out and not going there’,” Ginny says.

He said, "I don't know what else to do. I've tried everything."

That was the tipping point, the moment she reached rock bottom. It was then she knew she had to truly take on her addiction disease.

This was seven months ago and Ginny is telling her story from a comfortable chair in a sunny spot in Wahine Whai Ora Women’s Recovery Day Programme at the City Mission. She’s been sober for four months and is eating and sleeping well. She’s happy and can’t wait to celebrate this Christmas with her family.  

She didn’t spend a second in that flat. The next day she went to the doctor, a few days later she was in our Thorpe House detox residential unit for a second go at detoxing and now she’s on antabuse medication, which will make her feel sick if she drinks alcohol, but she says she doesn’t need it.

Ginny believes you have to reach rock bottom to beat addiction.

She is in her 50s and says while she always perhaps drank a little more than others as a student she never drank when she was pregnant or breastfeeding.

It was only when she developed anxiety problems after the earthquakes and from a wider family dispute that drinking became a way to cope.

“What I liked about the drinking was the way it made me feel numb and calm, mainly calm,” she remembers. But she needed more and more alcohol to get the same effect as her body adapted. Eventually she was drinking three bottles of wine a day over a 24-hour period. 

Sometimes she’d apologise to her children in the morning for whatever she might have said in the evening. They would hide the bottles they found in her hiding places.

Once she tried spending a month in a beautiful resort-type rehabilitation centre in Thailand. She had a month without alcohol and felt great.

To celebrate she bought Duty Free vodka in Bangkok on the way home and when her husband first saw her she was drunk. Later he told her it was the worst day of his life. Later another two-month stay ended exactly the same way.

Ginny tried detoxing at Thorpe House but says she still “didn’t get it” because she was worrying about how she could live and cope without drinking, rather than wanting to live without alcohol.

“I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t hit rock bottom because my husband was propping me up and I could afford to manage it,” she tries to explain.

Days were lost sleeping and drinking and she would go days without eating. Her hair started falling out and the alcohol cravings were now physical as well because drinking helped stop shakes and sweating. She also now needed vodka as well as the wine.

Finally Ginny’s husband had had enough.

“He had tried everything. He had sent me away, he was nice to me, he was horrible to me, he tried everything, and he offered me money if I didn’t drink for a week. But when he said I could go and live somewhere else and drink there, that was the last thing I wanted.”

After the flat threat Ginny says something clicked. 

“I was really into the meetings (at Thorpe) and it was starting to sink in what they were saying. I thought ‘I can do this, I have to do this’. I had too much to lose and I'd finally realised that.”

She says the Wahine Whai Ora group sessions help because only others facing a problem like hers understand how her mind thinks about things. She knows now it is a disease and there is nothing wrong with her.

Ginny is cooking for the family again, she’s reading again and her children tell her they like how she is now - sober and back with them in all ways. She’s looking forward to a Christmas that will be the best for many years.

* Name changed