And now it’s done: finally stopped drinking

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At the age of seventeen, Florine (35) started drinking too much. Until five months ago. For Butterfly (12), Sterre (11) and Joy (2) she now really wants to stay away from alcohol.

Florin: “Then you can sleep better, without worrying. That’s what my mother used to say to me when she gave me a glass of wine. I was fifteen and sat on the couch with my parents almost every night with a glass of red wine. Fine, they thought. For me it was the way to fight boredom. My father was always working in his own company and my mother paid particular attention to my younger sisters, who are more like her. I was an introverted, cheerful and creative child. My mother didn’t know very well how to deal with me.

“I was fifteen and almost every evening I sat on the couch with a glass of red wine, together with my parents”

I was not lacking in material things. We went on holiday to the most beautiful places in South Africa, Japan and Malaysia, among others. A weekend in New York was quite normal. I was spoiled with gifts and expensive clothes and on the outside our family was the perfect picture. Deep down I always felt that something was not right and that I was missing something. That ‘something’ was love and connection, as I discovered later. I never really felt connected to my mother. A trauma that eventually led to my addiction to alcohol. Moreover, alcoholism runs in the family.

Wine while painting

Alcohol has always been in my life, but it became a real addiction around the age of seventeen, when I often went out with my group of friends. During my studies at the art academy I also started drinking during the day, because I could always use a bottle of wine while painting. And when I later went to study in San Francisco, I was already drunk in the taxi from the airport to my apartment.

At that time my life mainly consisted of very hard sports and healthy eating, because I wanted to be slimmer. At the same time I drank. Now I know: it was all to compensate for the inferiority complex I had developed in my youth. The first bottle opened around five o’clock in the afternoon and I kept it that way for years. Even when I was back in the Netherlands, had a relationship and had children.

During my daughters’ pregnancies, I managed to stop drinking for a while. I took my responsibility for the babies in my belly seriously. And strangely enough it didn’t even take me too much effort to give up the booze. But as soon as I gave birth, my craving for the alcohol started again. I therefore did not breastfeed for long, a maximum of two months. Because of my craving for alcohol, the choice to continue or not was quickly made.

Alcohol addiction

My relationship with the father of my first two children got worse and worse over the years. He was always gone and hardly looked at his family. I actually felt like a single mother of two daughters. I saw only one solution: the wine. And drinking so much was also easy, because he never noticed it anyway. I always bought the drink from a different store, so it was less noticeable that sometimes two bottles per day went through.

“I didn’t get out of bed until I had to pick up the kids from school”

Of course it’s not good for you if you drink that much. I actually always felt bad. In the morning I was so broke that I could barely get out of bed to take the kids to school. I did it all well, you know. But I didn’t feel like putting on makeup or dressing up nicely. When I didn’t have to work, I jumped right back into bed after dropping off and didn’t get out until I had to pick up the kids from school at a quarter to three.

When their father and I split up, I was left on my own. He left me with a lot of debt and we ended up in a messy divorce. I had so often planned to cut down on alcohol, but the stress was so great that I just couldn’t do it. For years I had nothing left and my financial situation was worse than bad because I had to pay the high costs my ex had incurred. It was so bad that I had to sell my furniture.

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Stand in the way of

Whatever happened, I didn’t want my drinking to get in the way of the girls’ happiness. And I also believe that they haven’t noticed much of that all these years. I did notice myself that the addiction was getting physically heavier. I was systematically tired and overstimulated, it took me more and more effort to recover from the drink. With my last energy I managed to do fun things with the kids. Girlfriends always played with us, because then I didn’t have to leave the house and I could start drinking in the afternoon. When those parents were at my door to pick up their child, I kept a meter away so they didn’t smell the booze smell.

“When a boyfriend was brought in, I hoped the parents wouldn’t smoke the alcohol”

I was very careful not to endanger the safety of my children. Others also often noticed how rested my children were. Logical, I always put them to bed as early as possible because I was already exhausted early in the evening or because I wanted to drink wine.

When they went to their father on the weekends, I could go one of two ways: either I was just sleeping because I had exhausted myself or I went completely wild. Sometimes embarrassing. For example, the police once broke down the door in the middle of the night and woke me up. The neighbors thought I was being attacked because they heard rumbling and I didn’t respond to their calls. Of course I did that rumbling myself with my drunken head. I didn’t remember anything about it and only thought about that broken back door that had to be fixed. Of course, at these lows, I resolved to finally stop drinking, but I never managed to do that for more than ten days.

New relationship

Strangely enough, sometimes I managed to do it during the holidays. That was also double: when I was alone, I drank a lot or slept. When I was expected to attend a Christmas dinner, I dreaded it. A lot of drinking and holidays are so inextricably linked. It is almost expected of you, an obligation. I already did it every day and did not link drinking to fun, but to trouble. And in order to protect myself and not go too far with others at the table, I would rather not drink at all or be absent.

Even when I got into a new relationship and got pregnant again with my third daughter, I didn’t manage to stop. Yet my addiction began to gnaw at me more and more. It didn’t feel right to have to hide something so big from my growing daughters. I hid empty bottles around the house so that the bottle bank didn’t seem so full. And once a week I had the empty bottles taken away by the au pair we had at the time.

But as my children grow up, they see more and more. A few months ago, a half-full forgotten wine glass that I had left in one of them’s bedroom while going to bed, for example. There were more scattered around the house. I would also like to inform them that something like Swimming in Bacardi Lemon is not necessarily a nice song, but that drink is also an enemy for many people. But then of course I have to set a good example for them myself.

Read also – Stephanie was addicted to alcohol: ‘I drank three liter packs of wine a day, but no one noticed it’ >

The right example

On Instagram, I started following more and more accounts related to the topic of “alcohol-free living.” That’s how I came across the podcast of Saskia van der Zee and Jeroen Otter, the No more hangover cast. They are experts by experience and therefore have a lot of useful things to say.

I listened to the podcast over and over again, got more and more confident that I could do this too and contacted Jeroen. We succeeded with him. Thanks to his instructions and support, I have now been off alcohol for five months. Luckily I haven’t really had a relapse yet. A difficult moment though, when I had a fight with my friend. For a moment I thought, shall I? But I chose a better option and emailed Jeroen. He coached me through it.

New life

I’m not at the point where I’d like to be yet. Sometimes you see people on Instagram talking about their new sober life and they immediately seem to be completely healthy and fit again. I don’t experience it that way yet. I notice that those years of addiction have taken quite a toll on my physical but also my mental health. I am far from fit and emotionally I sometimes have a hard time. Then I think: what have I done to myself? What gang did I end up in?

“Sometimes I think: what have I done to myself? Which gang am I in?”

Still every day I seem to wake up a little more from the long-standing addiction, I notice. Still, I know I’m on the right track and I’m also sure I’m going to keep it up. I never want to become so dependent on the booze again. I notice that the energy is slowly coming back and I feel a little better every day. This allows me to do more fun things with my children and give them even more attention that they deserve. I don’t feel like I’ve ever failed them, but feeling better now allows me to be there for them even more. And above all: enjoy it yourself even more.”

This article is in the Kek Mama Winter Book 2022, available in stores from November 29.

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