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MAIA — I come from a big family. In those days, and I’m going back now, probably until I was about 10 (and that will be 60 years ago now), in those days it was different to now.

As far as the alcohol went we had six o’clock closing then, the pubs closed at six o’clock. My father was a great man. We had a happy family life. He was a hard worker. He worked at the local freezing works. In that area there were many big families. The fathers worked and the mothers were at home with the children.

So, my father would be with his mates. They’re social people. They would call in and have a drink at the pub. They didn’t have much time to spend there, but then they would bring their drink home. It was in flagons, not in bottles. The two or three litre flagons.

Probably 10 would be the age where I was starting to notice the adult things that were happening, going from kids into that age. Dad would bring the flagons home and put them on the table, or he would pour a glass.

That was my first encounter with beer, or with alcohol. I would sit there with my arms on the table just watching the fizziness of the alcohol and the froth on top. I would say to dad, “Can I have a taste?” and he’d say, “No. No, this isn’t for children.” So, even now when I look at a glass of beer fizzing on the table, I remember him saying that to me.

We had a lot of celebrations at home, because I came from a very musical family. With the music, we used to have the neighbours and relations all come. My brothers had a band. Dad loved music. He was a musician. He played the fiddle and played the steel guitar. So, we all were very musical. I still play the guitar now.

We used to all gather under our plum tree on the land, on our farm. All the instruments would come out. But, we didn’t just enjoy the music. People brought their beer, and their alcohol.

So, the alcohol would be coming in left, right and centre. We used to really enjoy those times, thinking that alcohol was just … you see some people who saw alcohol as just in times of celebration and that was it. But there were those who would carry it on through their daily lives, because always at home it was always in the fridge and it was always in the cupboard.

MAIA — It was a normal life, yeah. Then as we got older, my brothers got older and they really drank quite heavily. Then the celebrations became the Saturday night celebration, and then it carried on into the next day, the Sunday. So, you had that continuous drinking.

With my brothers it became part of life. If you didn’t drink you were boring.

The thing is, with alcohol, in my family, you have those ones who when they drank they were quite happy. It made them happy-go-lucky. But there were those ones who became violent, fighting, fighting amongst their own siblings and that sort of thing. Then the next day you wouldn’t think anything had happened.

MAIA — There was always that choice: do I drink, or don’t I? You had that. I did drink. I’d have hangovers galore.

MAIA — I had a choice not to.

Then I met my husband and he drank. They were in the pub at 11 o’clock on a Saturday because they didn’t play sports, they didn’t have anything else to do.

If I look at my life, right throughout, there were choices to be made. I always remember my father and “You make your own choice.”

I think the last straw (and I remember this very clearly) was when we had a party at my father’s place. All my brothers and sisters were there. It was great to see everyone. Somehow or other I thought, “I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want to follow this path. I want to be able to go to a party and not drink.”

The first person who noticed was my father. He noticed that I wasn’t. He said, “Oh, you’re not having a drink with us?” I said, “No, not at the moment.” They were out in the shed and I was in here with the kids.

So, that was my first real tug of war, a tug to actually pull myself back. I said, “I just don’t want any more of it Dad.”

When you’re in that situation at a party, when you’ve got your mates around, it’s very hard, even though you know that’s the wrong thing to do, it’s very hard to say no.

Like going out and meeting my brothers and sisters and they’d say, “Oh you’re not drinking?” and I’d say, “No, no, I’ll just have an orange juice, or I might have a shandy or something.” And, “Oh gosh you’re boring!” That’s what I heard all the time: “You’re just bloody boring.” I would think, “Oh well, too bad!”

That was another thing: do I want a spiritually filled life, without the hangovers, without the worry of having alcohol in the house, or do I want to go to the pub with my sisters? My sisters loved their drink as well. It was a matter of me making my choice about, what am I going to do?

I felt it set me apart from the rest.

MAIA — So, as I was bringing up my family, that was my desire for my children: to be able to find that right path. If you go off that path, then hey, let's pray for you that you’ll get back on the right path.

It came to the crunch I think, when my husband decided he was going to make homebrew at home, rather than pay for beer in the pub. See, my husband was naïve as well. We were both naïve about alcohol. He’d make the brew and put it up in the shed and we’d go away for a holiday, for a weekend. He’d forget that the brew was in the shed. Who got into it?

MAIA — These guys. They were constantly drinking. More so than I ever realised.

I knew that … and they always laugh about it now, that “I was drinking when I was 12,” or “I was drinking when I was 13.” In my head I’m thinking, “Yeah, I probably knew that you were.” But, like I say, I was naïve because when you’re a parent you don’t have practice at being a parent of kids and teenagers. You’ve had no practice. All of a sudden they’re there, in your face, and you have to deal with them.

You hear these things, these words and terminology that come, “He’s an alcoholic”, and “He’s in the pub every day.” I thought, “I don’t want my kids to turn out to be alcoholics.”

MAIA — He’s very loving. Coming from school he’d give me a hug. The others did, but he was always the first one in and would give me a hug.

When he started going to high school, I think that’s when I really noticed. He was getting bullied in high school. I can remember really clearly … I can remember sitting there with him on the couch, telling him that’s what I was there for, to help. If he was getting bullied at school, I will go into school and I will talk to the principal, or whoever the teacher was. He said, “No Mum, I don’t want you to.” I said, “Well that’s what I want to do.” He said, “No Mum, I don’t want you to do that.”

MAIA — Yeah. I’m so proud of him now. Because I tell you what, it was a hell of a journey with him. I can remember, when he was on that road of alcohol, I can remember getting calls from the police station: “Well, I found him lying in the middle of town, on a bench, on the seat. I’ve got him in at the station. Would you like to come and pick him up?” I said, “No, leave him there till the morning.” I used to get so wild. All those incidents I said, “No, he can stay there till the morning and I’ll come and get him then.”

Then he’d come home and we’d have a talk, chat and laugh, and then he would go with his mates. Once again he had that circle of friends that did exactly the same as he did.

I had that real hard task of trying to pull myself away, whereas he probably did but couldn’t. He was in it too hard and too thick. He was in the thick of it and couldn’t make that decision or make that choice.

One really bad incident with him was when I had a phone call from a friend of his: “Could you come over? It's really urgent that you come.” I went over there and he was black and blue. He’d been in the hospital. No one had told me. No one had rung. He’d been in the hospital emergency ward. Someone had beaten him up. They had bottles of hot stuff and that sort of thing. Someone had beaten him up really badly. I said to the two mates there, “Why didn’t you ring me to come and get him, or to come up to the hospital?” “He didn’t want to bother you.”

It's those sorts of things. He was beaten up. I got him home again. A lot of this to-ing and fro-ing of making them better and patching them up. Taking him to the doctor and paying for this and paying for that. That continual ongoing bailing them out of these situations, so that they wouldn’t get into any further harm.

That was probably the worst, most hurtful time for my whole being, of seeing your son beaten up like that because of the alcohol. And he couldn’t even remember.

MAIA — I think it took him away … how can I explain it? Not the physical thing, just that spiritual. The wairua wasn’t quite … you know what he was like. He was quite restless

MAIA — I see a man who sees what he wants and he goes and gets it. He goes for it. Whereas, before, it was kind of just coasting along and see what today brings.

MAIA — Yeah. He talks really deeply. I sort of think that that’s the Māori and that’s the wairua coming out. His own sort of spirituality that comes out. He believes in God

MAIA — Yeah. They’re all going to take you off in a different direction.

MAIA — The ugly side of alcohol abuse begins when we cross that invisible line, from the light of sobriety into the light of darkness causing heartache, ruined lives, and broken people, whānau.

When the overindulgence in alcohol continues

DAVE — My dad … He’s passed away now. He’s been dead for about nine years now. My mother’s from up north. We’ve got a pretty good relationship. In relation to what we’re doing now, I suppose I didn’t really destroy those relationships because I just ran away and locked all that off, you know? So I’ve got a pretty good relationship with my mum.

DAVE — Yeah. Because I just didn’t want to hear it.

DAVE — Just all the moaning.

DAVE — About all the stuff I did.

DAVE — Oh, it was easier for me to distance from that

DAVE — Well then I wouldn’t have to address it. I don’t have to talk about it if it’s not being talked about!

DAVE — Oh, they taught me how to drink.

DAVE — Yeah. And then I turned into an adult and left home.

DAVE — Yeah, for sure. It’s not all bad.

DAVE — Getting put in police cells to sober up, drink driving, crashing cars, being in car accidents with other drunk drivers, losing jobs, getting thrown out of moving cars.

DAVE — Yeah.

DAVE — I turned into a day drinker, daily. I was going to work under the influence.

DAVE — Yeah. Working under the influence, that’s if I had a job. I used to black out all the time. I went out drinking with some people who I thought were my friends at the time, and they done me over.

DAVE — Clearly not friends, but these were long time friends. When I woke up in the hospital, apparently I’d been an arsehole to them too, being all abusive and stuff. One of the nurses goes to me, “Have you considered maybe you’ve got a drinking problem?”

DAVE — Yeah. I was, “No.” This was just an unfortunate accident. It was just an unfortunate thing if you ended up in the police cells. It must have been a good night, you know? Just real lame stuff like that. That’s just how I thought back then, which is what it is.

Then after that, that’s when I started considering that maybe I’ve got a drinking problem, which then made me aware of the fact that I couldn’t control my drinking, which then led into the three years worst drinking of my life because I was aware, and it just led into the worst drinking of my life.

DAVE — No, things got way worse.

DAVE — Yeah. Destroying friendship and wreaking havoc all over the place with no intentions. But I had people who were really close to me, they were turning around and telling me I had a drinking problem. These were people who drunk just like me. It was like, “You’ve got a serious drinking problem.” So at the time, for them to turn around and say that to me, it must have been pretty bad.

When I look back at that stuff now it seems like this hazy fog way, way back in the distance and sometimes, it may sound a bit weird, but sometimes it feels like a dream. It’s weird.

DAVE — I remember waking up one day and I got out of bed and there was a big gash all on my forehead over there and my flatmate was there, well she was more like my sister really. We were real close, we still are. And she said to me, she goes, “What are you doing? Where have you been the last three days? I haven’t seen you for three days! We thought you were dead in the ditch. We thought something had happened to you. And you got thrown out of a moving car outside our house. Where have you been?” And I said, “I don’t know.” And that was three days and I lost my job because I didn’t turn up to work. To this day, I don’t know.

A lot of my drinking was characterised by that, just blackout after blackout after blackout. I mean, I was aware. It’s pretty hard when you’re waking up and you’re saying, “I’m not going to drink today,” and then hop back on it. You’re back on it again. It’s like, where was it? Where was the fight to not do this?

DAVE — I don’t want to drink today. I want to have a sober day.

DAVE — When I couldn’t hold a cup of coffee in the morning.

DAVE — Yeah. I couldn’t outrun it anymore. It was everywhere around me. And I didn’t want to know what happened in black out. I don’t want to know, but then people would tell me and stuff started coming to me, and not nice stuff either. It started coming to me and there was one point where I was just like…

DAVE — Yeah, “I can’t do this anymore.”

DAVE — Yeah. I was over it.

DAVE — It took me a long time to feel like I belonged somewhere. My own head was telling me, “I can’t drink anymore,” and then the other part of it was saying, “All right, so …” I was trying to find people who didn’t drink, but I didn’t feel like I fitted in any of those places. And that’s what it was like when I was drinking as well, I didn’t feel like I fitted anywhere.

So, I didn’t feel like I fitted here or fitted there, and I felt isolated from my family and I felt isolated from my friends, and it was just easier for me to drink.

My father passed away, cancer blah, blah, blah, you know. Regrets and resentment and all these different things like that, that naturally come along with that. So, the end result of me not wanting to deal with it ... I could shut that all off and not even think about it. I just pushed it all the way down. But then eventually it caught up with me, and I ended up going for a ride on the psychosis train for 10 days.

I met this person and she said to me, “Man, I don’t know how to help you,” and stuff, but she introduced me to this Māori tohunga

DAVE — I saw the bigger picture, and for me I saw what was happening to people around me and it was from that point almost that I knew that it was okay, not that it was wrong, but I finally felt like I fitted in. Well, actually, I figured out I didn’t have to fit in. I didn’t have to fit in with nobody, I just had to be comfortable in my own skin and have my connection to the whenua."

DAVE — Yeah ... I’m not the person to go and jump on the anti drugs and alcohol train, but I’m certainly the sort of person that’s going to say, “Hey, you don’t have to do it like this. There are other options if you want it.”

DAVE — To say that I’m connected back to my whakapapa and stuff

DAVE — I’m happy with it. Driving down the road and you get three green traffic lights in a row and you go, “Thank you.”

DAVE — Yeah, it’s all those things. I don’t know how to define it and it’s not my place to define it. I just know that it is and somehow it all fits together into the greater scheme of things, but I’m not privy to that information.

DAVE — Oh, a million times better. I still have the same problems I had, but I’ve learned how to deal with them.

DAVE — I manage my problems better. I’ve got my own kete of tricks which I come back on.

some things?"

DAVE — Yeah.

DAVE — As people, we have to make that choice. We know if it’s bad and it’s not right and it’s not good or it’s unhealthy. If it bothers us that much, well then we have to know that there’s other ways.

Sometimes we only know what we know. So if we grew up in a family where there was lots of alcohol and drugs ... it’s not the only way.