At 14 years old, Christine Wright was a bright and vivacious teen who was always known to be the bubbly and outgoing one amongst her circle of friends. Her weekends were spent socialising with alcohol being a focus that led to her binge drinking.
There was a dark reason for Christine's regular bouts of drinking. She turned to alcohol to escape the reality of a traumatic event from her past.
The teen had difficulty accepting the breakdown of her parent's marriage, which led to a divorce. It was shortly after this seismic relationship breakdown that Christine embarked on a party lifestyle and increased her alcohol intake.
In a tumultous childhood, it was another traumatic event that sent Christine on a downward spiral of addiction which would last for three decades, reports Manchester Evening News. Christine was 17-years-old when she was raped at a house party on Boxing Day 1993.
She said: “To get through that trauma just meant more and more alcohol. To escape from that reality, I went away to university.
"Rather than look at it head on and seek support, I ran away from where I grew up.” Christine, now 47, enrolled at Manchester Metropolitan University and found her life began to stabilise.
While studying, she met her future husband and went on to have two sons. While alcohol was still present in Christine’s life, with the mum drinking a bottle of wine every night, things were starting to look up.
But then her marriage ran into trouble. “It led to a divorce,” she said.
“From there, it got worse and worse. I had a baby loss, I had debt and I had numerous toxic relationships.
"I was drinking three bottles of wine a night and still getting up to function the next day in my job at an events business.” Christine can recall the moment she turned her life around for good in 2020.
She was driving in her car when she came across a man in distress standing over the rails on a motorway bridge. She managed to pull him over the railing and cradled him for half an hour while waiting for emergency services to arrive.
During that time, the stranger told Christine about his struggles. As she listened, she realised his life story almost mirrored her own.
“I had a gut intuition feeling that I needed to be somewhere,” she continued. “I got in my car and ended up on a motorway bridge.
“I saw a chap to the right of me who was in some distress, but I chose to ignore it and drove off. But I had a voice in my head saying, ‘You have to turn around'.
“I did turn around at the next set of lights and he was over the safety guard. I pulled him over and cradled him for half an hour while help came.
“His story and his life was pretty much a mirror image of what I was going through at the time. Right down to the toxic partner, the loss of his brother, I had just lost my father and we were both grieving.
"He was an alcoholic. After that, I knew something needed to change.”
Christine quit her job and sought a therapist. She visited doctors and told medics she had been drinking too much and was placed on a programme with a three-month waiting list.
Knowing she had to make a change sooner, she booked a plane ticket to Bali where she set up her online business Habitbreaker – an organisation which helps people break negative habits that have detrimental impact on their lives – and finally became sober.
Now alcohol-free, she advocates for other young girls and women who may have chosen the same destructive path to get themselves through life. “There is an increasing need in this world for us to provide our young people with more social education to remove the still existing barriers about being open about our struggles and mental health challenges," she says.
“Things are improving. But there is still so much more to do.
"The healthcare systems are still not set up to fully support young people overcoming such challenges. I feel it’s a duty of people like me who have lived experience to use what I have learnt and connect with others on a very ‘real’ basis, to show there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
There are a number of charities and support groups across the UK that provide support and advice for people with an alcohol misuse problem. Here are the details:
- Drinkline national alcohol helpline on 0300 123 1110
- Alcohol Change UK
- Alcoholics Anonymous helpline on 0800 9177 650
- Al-Anon Family Groups helpline on 0800 0086 811
