As a primary school pupil, Jamie-Lee Day dreamed of becoming a high-flying barrister. But when she started drinking cider, aged just 12, she quickly lost interest in studying. Now, at the age of 17, Jamie-Lee is a full-blown alcoholic, knocking back up to a litre of vodka and eight cans of beer every day.
Shockingly, the teenager doesn’t seem to care about the health risks posed by drinking. She has no job and spends most of her L47-a-week benefit on alcohol. “I do feel guilty about blowing my benefits on booze,” says Jamie-Lee naively. “But I need it to get through life and would rather buy vodka than food. “My mum worries, so she helps with food shopping and bills, leaving me cash for drink.”
Jamie-Lee, who grew up in South Wales, first tasted alcohol at 12.
“Mum had always forbidden me from drinking, but one evening, me and a friend stole a bottle of rum from her parents and drank it in the park – we wanted to see what it was like to be drunk,” she admits. “I was so wasted, I had to crawl home. When I arrived, I threw up – Mum was so worried. I felt terrible the next day.”
Her mum, Meryl, 35, then a single parent and teetotal, made her daughter promise not to drink again. Meryl says: “I was so shocked. Jamie-Lee was well-behaved and was forever talking about becoming a lawyer. This was the last thing I expected. I assumed it was a one-off.”
For a while, Jamie-Lee kept her promise. But when Meryl found love with chef Les Cox in 2004 and they moved five miles away, Jamie-Lee began to secretly drink. “I liked Les, but was jealous of the attention Mum gave him,” says Jamie-Lee. “Even though I was only 13, one of my friends’ mums would buy us a bottle of cider each, saying she’d rather we drank at home than on the street.
“I found getting drunk hysterically funny and it made me feel confident. Plus, by the time I got home the next day, I’d be sober.” Inevitably, Jamie-Lee’s drinking affected her behaviour – she became aggressive, her grades slipped and she started skipping lessons. But Meryl only found out about her daughter’s drinking when Jamie-Lee was spotted drunk in town by a family friend.
By the age of 15, Jamie-Lee was drinking bottles of vodka and whisky. “People would pick on me because I was drunk and I’d end up in a fight. It wasn’t always my fault,” she insists. “One night in February, I woke up in hospital, with blood all over me. I had no idea how I got there,” admits Jamie-Lee.
Eventually, when Jamie-Lee turned 16, Meryl persuaded her to get counselling. “I’d been trying to get her to stop drinking for ages – I hoped professionals would be able to persuade her,” says Meryl. Determined to quit, Jamie-Lee began sessions with a substance misuse adviser. Her mum allowed her to return home and she started a business admin course. But, just two months later, Jamie-Lee was placed in a hostel by youth-offending team workers, after attacking her mum.
“I was desperate for drink, but I had no cash,” says Jamie-Lee. “When mum refused to give me money, I saw red and I punched her.” Left unsupervised, Jamie-Lee went back to her old habits. She quit her course, got charged with assault and her boozing continued to spiral out of control. “I can drink Absinthe like water,” says Jamie-Lee, who is currently single. “Sometimes alcohol makes me want to fight, sometimes I just cry all night. When I wake up in the morning after a house party, I drink again.
“Most of my day is spent in front of the TV till it’s time to go out at about 5pm. It’s hard to sleep at night. But I also find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning.”
Meryl says: “I live in constant fear she’s going to drink herself to death.” Doctors have warned Jamie-Lee that her continual drinking could damage her liver. “I’m having tests to see if I’ve caused any damage. But I’m young, I don’t think it will affect me yet,” says Jamie-Lee. Although still drinking, Jamie-Lee aims to restart her college course in a couple of weeks. “I want to get a job one day. I hate the way people fund my habit,” she says. “I know it’s all wrong, but I don’t know how to stop.”
Closer Online
Vocabulary
booze – alkoholos ital
primary school – általános iskola
barrister – ügyvéd
cider – almabor
full-blown – kész, kifejlett
to forbid sy to do sg – valamit megtiltani valakinek
one-off – egyszeri, elsö és utolsó
to crawl – (csúszik-)mászik
to throw up – kihány
jealous – féltékeny
counsellor – tanácsadó
to be unsupervised – felügyelet nélkül lenni
liver – máj
Synonyms: DRUNK
The word drunk is often said to be the English word with the most synonyms. Euphemistic terms for drunk include examples such as She’s had a few, He’s had one too many, She’s had a drop too much and the term tired and emotional. More examples of direct expressions include legless, plastered, hammered, wasted, wrecked, loaded, trashed and tanked up. One of the most common is pissed, which can cause misunderstandings in conversations between British and American speakers of English as it has a different meaning in American English, where it means ‘angry’.
Onestopenglish
Idioms :DRUNK
drunk as a lord
– very drunk.
commode-hugging drunk
– heavily alcohol intoxicated; drunk and vomiting.
dead drunk
– very intoxicated; totally inebriated.
drunk and disorderly
– a criminal charge for public drunkenness accompanied by bad or offensive behavior.
be punch-drunk
– to feel very tired and confused, especially after dealing with a difficult situation.
– If a boxer (= man who fights as a sport) is punch-drunk, his brain is damaged because he has been hit on the head too much or too hard.
