Ford to speak at Oaklawn benefit

LOS ANGELES -- Steven Ford was 18 when his father was sworn in as the 38th president of the United States.

"I was getting ready to go to college," said Ford, who will share his story with guests at the ninth annual Oaklawn Spring Spectacular on May 9. "When my dad became president, I decided to take a year off to get used to his being president."

So he headed west toward a longtime dream and started working on ranches.

"When my dad was in the White House, I was cowboying and rodeoing," said Ford, who has never lost his love for the "wild west."

The third of Gerald and Betty Ford's four children, he shared his urge for ranching with a desire to be an actor. Today, he has the best of both worlds, with a little ranch in California and intermittent side trips to movie and TV locations.

But first he studied range management at Utah State University and majored in animal science and equine studies at California Polytechnic State University.

"I thought I was going to run a ranch," he said, an ambition that proved a bit difficult with 10 Secret Service agents always around.

In '81, he earned the role for which most longtime fans of CBS hit daytime drama "The Young and the Restless" remember him, private investigator Andy Richards. It was an assignment he carried out until 1987 and again, briefly, in 2002.

"Soap fans are the best," Ford said, noting that daytime audiences then numbered between 9 million and 10 million, a long way from the estimated 2 million today. But the years don't matter.

"I can always spot a fan," he said. "I know by the way they look at me that they've recognized me."

And he is not complaining. His cinematic career includes "When Harry Met Sally," "Black Hawk Down," "Heat" and "Escape from New York."

His entry into the world of keynote speaking was another oblique segue. As an actor, "I was around some great storytellers," Ford said. "Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Roy Rogers ... all great storytellers. I think it was the combination of being an actor and being around great storytellers that did the trick. I'd tell some White House stories and my friends said put seven or eight together and do a speech."

And that's just what he did, except the stories expanded from tales of life in the White House to include some of his experiences with his mother's alcoholism and his own.

But not right away.

Ford, who has 14 years of sobriety, said he is able to talk about some of those issues because of his own experiences.

"Early on, I never talked about it to anybody," he said. "Betty Ford's son should have known better."

He started his sobriety because "life was going to come crashing down if I didn't" and plunged into the Alcoholic Anonymous program with no rehab prelude anywhere ... not even the Betty Ford Clinic.

"There was no family rate," he joked. "So it was AA and a lot of very hard work."

His life is now divided according to a somewhat academic calendar, speaking engagements from September through May, with time for a TV show or movie in the summer.

"A wise person in the program told me to keep my mouth shut for six years and work the program, then maybe I'd have something to offer," he said. He did and eventually began with talks in schools and for corporations

"I want the audience to walk away feeling that the White House is more personal to them," Ford said, adding with a chuckle, "When you can't afford Bill Clinton or George Bush Sr., you can afford me. You get the same stories but a lot cheaper.”

source: http://www.etruth.com

Genetic Factor In Stress Response Variability Discovered

Inherited variations in the amount of an innate anxiety-reducing molecule help explain why some people can withstand stress better than others, according to a new study led by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"Stress response is an important variable in vulnerability to alcohol dependence and other addictions, as well as other psychiatric disorders," noted NIAAA Director Ting-Kai Li, M.D. "This finding could help us understand individuals' initial vulnerability to these disorders."

Scientists led by David Goldman, M. D., chief of the NIAAA Laboratory of Neurogenetics, identified gene variants that affect the expression of a signaling molecule called neuropeptide Y (NPY). Found in brain and many other tissues, NPY regulates diverse functions, including appetite, weight, and emotional responses.

"NPY is induced by stress and its release reduces anxiety," said Dr. Goldman. "Previous studies have shown that genetic factors play an important role in mood and anxiety disorders. In this study, we sought to determine if genetic variants of NPY might contribute to the maladaptive stress responses that often underlie these disorders." A report of the findings appears online today in Nature.

Analyses of human tissue samples led by researchers at NIAAA identified several NPY gene variants. Collaborations with NIH-supported scientists at the University of Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, University of Helsinki, University of Miami, University of Maryland, the University of California at San Diego, and Yale University, showed that these variants result in a range of different effects including altered levels of NPY in brain and other tissues, and differences in emotion and emotion-induced responses of the brain.

The researchers evaluated the NPY gene variants' effects on brain responses to stress and emotion. Using functional brain imaging, they found that individuals with the variant that yielded the lowest level of NPY reacted with heightened emotionality to images of threatening facial expressions. "Metabolic activity in brain regions involved in emotional processing increased when these individuals were presented with the threatening images," explained Dr. Goldman.

In another brain imaging experiment, people with the low level NPY variant were found to have a diminished ability to tolerate moderate levels of sustained muscular pain. Previous studies had shown that NPY's behavioral effects are mediated through interactions with opioid compounds produced by the body to help suppress pain, stress, and anxiety. "As shown by brain imaging of opioid function, these individuals released less opioid neurotransmitter in response to muscle discomfort than did individuals with higher levels of NPY," said Dr. Goldman. "Their emotional response to pain was also higher, showing the close tie between emotionality and resilience to pain and other negative stimuli."

In a preliminary finding, the low level NPY gene variant was found to be more common than other variants among a small sample of individuals with anxiety disorders. The researchers also found that low level NPY expression was linked to high levels of trait anxiety. "Trait anxiety is an indication of an individual's level of emotionality or worry under ordinary circumstances," explained Dr. Goldman.

The researchers conclude that these converging findings are consistent with NPY's role as an anxiety-reducing peptide and help explain inter-individual variation in resiliency to stress. "This inherited functional variation could also open up new avenues of research for other human characteristics, such as appetite and metabolism, which are also modulated by NPY," said Dr. Goldman.

source: Science Daily

Brain imaging shows there may be a cognitive difference in people with addictions

Scientists have for the first time identified brain sites that fire up more when people make impulsive decisions.

In a study comparing brain activity of sober alcoholics and non-addicted people making financial decisions, the group of sober alcoholics showed significantly more "impulsive" neural activity.

The researchers also discovered that a specific gene mutation boosted activity in these brain regions when people made impulsive choices. The mutation was already known to reduce brain levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. The newly found link involving the gene, impulsive behavior and brain activity suggests that raising dopamine levels may be an effective treatment for addiction, the scientists say.

The research is reported in the Dec. 26, 2007 issue of the "Journal of Neuroscience."

Lead scientist is Charlotte Boettiger, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Boettiger led the research as a scientist at UCSF's Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center. Senior author is Howard Fields, MD, PhD, a UCSF professor of neurology and an investigator in the Gallo Center. He also serves as director of the UCSF Wheeler Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction.

"Our data suggest there may be a cognitive difference in people with addictions," Boettiger said. "Their brains may not fully process the long-term consequences of their choices. They may compute information less efficiently."

"What's exciting about this study is that it suggests a new approach to therapy. We might prescribe medications, such as those used to treat Parkinson's or early Alzheimer's disease, or tailor cognitive therapy to improve executive function" she added.

"I am very excited about these results because of their clinical implications," Fields said. "The genetic findings raise the hopeful possibility that treatments aimed at raising dopamine levels could be effective treatments for some individuals with addictive disorders."

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to image brain activity while subjects were faced with a hypothetical scenario: choose less money now, or more money later.

Boettiger recruited 24 subjects:19 provided fMRI data, 9 were recovering alcoholics in abstinence and 10 had no history of substance abuse. Another five were included in the genotyping analysis.

At the fMRI research facility at the University of California, Berkeley, financial decision tasks measured rational thinking and impulsivity. Sober alcoholics chose the "now" reward almost three times more often than the control group, reflecting more impulsive behavior.

While decisions were being made, the imaging detected activity in the posterior parietal cortex, the dorsal prefrontal cortex, the anterior temporal lobe and the orbital frontal cortex. People who sustain damage to the orbital frontal cortex generally suffer impaired judgment, manage money poorly and act impulsively, the scientists noted.

The study revealed reduced activity in the orbital frontal cortex in the brains of subjects who preferred "now" over "later," most of whom had a history of alcoholism.

The orbital frontal cortex activity may be a neural equivalent of long-term consequences, Fields said.

"Think of the orbital frontal cortex as the brakes," Boettiger explained. "With the brakes on, people choose for the future. Without the brakes they choose for the short-term gain."

The dorsal prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex often form cooperative circuits, and this study found that high activity in both is associated with a bias toward choosing immediate rewards.

The frontal and parietal cortexes are also involved in working memory - being able to hold data in mind over a short delay. When asked to choose between $18 now or $20 in a month, the subjects had to calculate how much that $18 (or what it could buy now) would be worth in a month and then compare it to $20 and decide whether it would be worth the wait.

The parietal cortex and the dorsal prefrontal cortex were much more active in people unwilling to wait. This could mean, Boettiger said, that the area is working less efficiently in those people.

The researchers also focused on a variant of a gene called COMT. The mutation is associated with lower dopamine levels, and the study showed that people with two copies of this allele (resulting in the lowest dopamine levels) had significantly higher frontal and parietal activity and chose "now" over "later" significantly more often.

"We have a lot to learn," Boettiger said. "But the data takes a significant step toward being able to identify subtypes of alcoholics, which could help tailor treatments, and may provide earlier intervention for people who are at risk for developing addictions."

The bigger picture, she added, is that her study provides more evidence that addiction is a disease, something even some of her peers don't yet believe.

"It's not unlike chronic diseases, such as diabetes," she said. "There are underlying genetic and other biological factors, but the disease is triggered by the choices people make."

"It wasn't that long ago that we believed schizophrenia was caused by bad mothers and depression wasn't a disease. Hopefully, in 10 years, we'll look back and it will seem silly that we didn't think addiction was a disease, too."

source: http://www.ucsf.edu/

Genetic link to alcoholism looks likelier

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Bay Area researchers probing the brain for genetic factors behind alcoholism found one more piece in the complex puzzle of the condition, according to a study published last week in a leading neurology journal.
Scientists with a research center run by the University of California-San Francisco found that a genetic variation, which produces lower-than-normal levels of the feel-good brain chemical dopamine, were strongly linked to impulsivity — one of the hallmarks of alcoholism.

"That's the major finding of this study," said Dr. Howard Fields, a neurologist and one of the study authors.
Fields works at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center, focused on the biological basis of alcohol and substance abuse. The article was published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience.
"With this gene variation, you have almost double the chances of being impulsive," Fields said.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that induces pleasurable feelings, and is sometimes called "the courier of addiction," since many disorders, such as alcoholism and narcotics abuse, are linked to a powerful urge to create a "dopamine rush" by imbibing or injecting.

With this finding, neurologists can keep refining their targets for developing drugs that might ultimately help alcoholics kick the habit, Fields said.
"There won't be a pill that can cure alcoholism," Fields predicted. "But there will be a pill you can take that, in combination with psycho-social strategies (like Alcoholics Anonymous), will make alcoholism much more manageable."
But Stanton Peele, a New Jersey-based social psychologist and author of the 2007 book, "Addiction Proof Your Child," among several other books on addiction, noted that researchers have long sought in vain for an effective treatment for alcoholism and have few tools in their arsenal.

The paucity, he believes, is because value systems, not biological factors that lend themselves to medical treatment, largely determine why some people drink so heavily as to disrupt their lives.

source: Arizona Daily Star

Mother, son warn how both struggled with his alcoholism

Toren Volkmann started drinking when he was 14 or 15. By the time he was 22, he was a self-described “full-blown alcoholic” whose life revolved around his next drink.

Yet his parents had no idea of the scope of their son’s addiction.

Toren and his mother, Chris Volkmann, shared the story of their struggle with alcoholism Tuesday at Magna Vista and Bassett high schools, and they will continue to speak in the area today. The presentations were organized by Communities Helping Improve Local Lives (CHILL), a youth task force that encourages teens not to use drugs, alcohol or tobacco.

Like most teenagers, “it wasn’t ever my intention to have any problems with alcohol,” said Toren, now 28. “I just wanted it to be fun.”

A student athlete who did well in school, Toren said he started drinking in high school and soon earned a reputation as a partier. He was brought home by the police more than once for underage drinking and kicked off of four sports teams, but Toren still didn’t think he had a problem. Although his parents grounded him, took away privileges and talked to him about drinking in moderation, they didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation either, Chris said.

The family should have done what Chris tells parents to do every time she shares her story: They should have talked about it more seriously, she said.

Instead, Toren left the family’s home in Olympia, Wash., to go to college in Southern California. There, his drinking only worsened.

“Everything was magnified and intensified” at college, Toren said. “All I was concerned about was drinking.”

Kicked out of the dorms by the end of his freshman year, Toren met with a counselor who told him to attend 10 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous before he returned to school the next year.

Although he went to two meetings, Toren said, he didn’t really believe he needed to be there.

“I said, ‘My name is Toren and I’m an alcoholic,’” he recalled. “... But I didn’t really know if I believed that. I just wasn’t ready to listen to what they had to say.”

Toren told his parents he was going to the meetings, but Chris didn’t ask him about it.

“I missed the opportunity to talk,” she said.

Despite his drinking problem, Toren graduated from college and entered the Peace Corps. While working in Paraguay, he sometimes went two or three weeks without drinking. But he struggled with withdrawal symptoms, such as sweating and shaking, and he always went back to binge drinking.

Eventually, Toren went to a nurse and asked for help. He was flown back to the United States, where he checked into a 30-day treatment center and spent six months in a halfway house for recovering alcoholics.

Now sober for four years, Toren lives in Portland, Ore. He and Chris travel the country sharing their experiences and talking about the book they wrote together, “From Binge to Blackout.”

As they spoke Tuesday, Chris and Toren shared facts about alcohol and its effects on teenagers.

Among them:

• More than 10 million people in the United States between the ages of 12 and 20 are heavy drinkers.

• Because people’s brains do much of their developing during adolescence, binge drinking is more dangerous for teenagers than it is for adults. Drinking as a teenager can affect the way your brain processes alcohol for the rest of your life.

• Having one family member who is an alcoholic makes a person four times more likely to develop an alcohol problem.

Toren said he knows it is difficult for teenagers to believe alcoholism can affect them. Ten years ago, he might not have listened to a speaker like himself, he said.

But he hopes not all the students are like he was.

“Even if I’m not affecting the kids that are just like me, I might affect 10 to 15 kids who are on the fence,” he said.

source: Martinsville Bulletin

Mother's ruin: how my mother's drinking sent me down that same dark road

The truth is, I was born drunk. I lay screaming on the delivery table, blowing out alcohol fumes as if my life depended on the stuff, the smell so strong a theatre sister asked who'd been drinking - so my mother told me, years later.

She had tippled gin the night before to calm her nerves and my father, a consultant anaesthetist, told me she'd been drunk again on the way home from hospital a few days later.

He'd smelled her breath, stopped the car and dragged her out onto the road. "You useless bloody woman," he bellowed, shaking her shoulders. "Can't stay sober long enough to have a bloody baby."

"I know what I'm doing," she shouted back. "I'm a doctor, too, you know." That was how they went on all the time. She was terrified of him and drank because of his shouting, and he shouted because of her drinking.

By the time I was 12, my mother was a chronic alcoholic. I watched her drink from the bottle until, one day, the tables turned and the bottle began to drink her; all of her. In a matter of months, she turned from being a strikingly beautiful woman into a pickled old prune, her youth sucked utterly dry.

As for drinking, I started really young myself, heading exactly the same way as my mother; drinking simply because there were so many things I couldn't face.

By 17, I couldn't even dry my hair without a glass of something in my hand. I had watched for years as booze stripped my mother of her face, friends, figure and life - yet I let it set about destroying me as well.

It was almost impossible to believe how privileged my mother's own childhood had been; her family's beautiful homes in Guernsey and London, the servants, a first- class education at a top girls' school, Roedean.

Her mother, Lady Edith De Saumarez Craig, had been a debutante presented to the Queen. Her father, Sir Maurice Craig, was a prominent psychiatrist famous for treating the Royal Family. But my mother had swallowed the silver spoon she'd been born with and had nothing left over.

My mother, Monica, met my French father, Claude, as medical students at Edinburgh University. Conventional and ambitious, he fell for her ebullience and passion.

My parents moved to a terrace of three-storey Georgian houses in Murrayfield, Edinburgh, in 1949, and in their early days they both drank a lot and liked a good time. But it wasn't long before my father's beautiful wife became an embarrassment.

By the time I was eight, they were restricting their social life to the odd cocktail party, until she started sneaking into the pantry for drinks - and was seen, standing in a smart party frock, tippling straight from a bottle.

She invariably ended up in an armchair, dress pulled up to reveal her underwear, legs apart, brain elsewhere.

My father - scolding, disapproving and unhappy - kept everybody at arm's length, including his children. My brothers Michael, Peter and Richard, who were just a few years my senior, were dispatched to Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, and when they came home, they either stayed in their rooms or went out.

Because the neighbours were polite, nobody ever said anything when Mummy staggered out in the mornings, her black leather shopping bag full of rattling empties. Eventually, her drinking made her reluctant to leave the house. By the time I was ten, she was sending me out to collect stashes of vodka from a friend.

One day, I arrived back with the booze to find Mummy shaking. "Hurry up, you stupid bitch," she shouted. "You should be at school by now. You're always late."

She snatched the bag from me and took the bottles up to her bedroom. Minutes later, she was back out on the landing, begging me to go to buy some cheese and a loaf of bread - her favourite snack.

I loved Mummy more than anything, but just wanted her to be normal like other kids' mothers, to bake scones, make us meals and look after us.

If I found one of Mummy's bottles of vodka after she'd had too much, I'd chuck half the contents away then refill the bottle with water. Usually, she was too drunk to notice. If she did realise, she beat me on the bare bottom with a belt.

The scariest times were when she came into my bedroom in the middle of the night, drunk, stumbling about in the dark. On one of these nights, she fell on top of me and lay there, refusing to move, a ton weight. I felt all the air being squeezed out of my chest as she crushed me into the mattress.

Often, drunk and full of sleeping pills, she would perch on a chamberpot in her room at night and fall asleep sitting like a Buddha until, eventually, something would startle her and she'd jump, sending the pot and its contents flying over the carpet.

She spilled medicine and booze onto that carpet every single day of her life.

I was ten when I arrived home from school and found I couldn't get into the house. The door was blocked by something large. I realised to my horror it was Mother motionless - possibly dead.

Dad was on one of his frequent climbing trips, so I ran to a phone box and dialled 999. The police smashed their way in and I could see she was lying on her back in a torn nightdress, her face tear- stained and bruised from the fall.

I put my arms around her and hugged her for the first time in years, amazed at the sense of relief I felt.

"I thought you were dead," I said. "Poor Mummy."

They took mother to hospital, where she became more and more agitated. She pointed at me, screeching: "That girl there, she's trying to poison me."

She lurched towards me, raising one hand as if to slap my face. A male nurse grabbed her arm.

Back at home, life carried on as normal. My father grew more and more remote, staying away from my mother as much as possible.

At 13, I went to board at a convent in Littlehampton, Sussex. There, in the middle of a lesson, my mother stormed in. She had come all the way from Edinburgh.

Seeing her standing in my classroom - her hair dishevelled, wild eyes darting, made my heart thump. The room went quiet, then my mother turned to me and screeched: "Nic, I've come to get my skirt . . . that one you're wearing. I need it to go away on holiday. Take it off immediately."

She came closer, until I could see the pinks of her eyes. I wondered whether she had slept recently. She must have stopped drinking for a few days and developed delirium tremens, the DTs. I knew the highpitched voice and ridiculous, illogical requests from past experience.

"All I want is a short holiday but I can't go if Nicola doesn't give me that skirt," my mother complained. The headmistress approached with the school doctor, and gently led mother away. She was admitted to a local nursing home, where she remained for several days before she went home.

By now, I had watched for years as booze stripped my mother of her life - yet I was about to let it set about destroying me as well. My first taste of alcohol came just before my French oral exam. I was 16 and I asked another girl to buy me a bottle of vodka.

I'd seen my mother drown her terror with gin. I would do the same with vodka. I drank enough to make me feel very confident for an hour or two and I got full marks for the exam.

After A levels, I spent a year teaching English in France. I started buying vodka from the local shop and drinking alone in my room.

By the time I returned to Edinburgh a year later I was drinking a lot, usually in secret, just like my mother. I rented a flat, doing odd jobs to fill in time before university.

One morning I set out to see my mother - I tried to visit her once a week to check she was OK.

Letting myself into the house, I found my mother lying face down in the kitchen, totally still. I dabbed her forehead with water until she opened her eyes.

"What the hell have you been drinking?" I asked, glaring at her. "No, wait at minute," she retorted very slowly. "What the hell have you been drinking?"

My mother, now in her late 50s and despite her years of drinking, managed to look elegant occasionally. She had neat, greyish-black hair swept back off her face and large brown eyes, somewhat redrimmed of late.

Her chin was beginning to slacken and lipstick, always applied in the morning, had smeared around her mouth by lunchtime. Her breasts and stomach sagged, her shoulders seemed to cave in.

Sitting in her bed the next day, she had a rare moment of clarity. "There must have been so many times you've come into the house and found me in that state and been disappointed, angry . . . hated me even," she said sadly.

"A kid coming home, wanting her tea, and all she finds to greet her is a drunk mother."

A statement or a question, I wasn't sure which. "I know you won't believe me, darling, but I have tried to stop. I used to think I could stop any time I wanted. Now I'm not so sure . . ."

My father had been particularly cold towards me recently, the result of two drink-driving episodes in the same week. I was 19 and borrowed his car to drive to a party in Edinburgh. The first time the police stopped me I'd had 20 vodkas. I was stopped again, well over the limit, just a week later.

In 1970, I met a gentle marine biologist called Colin at university in St Andrews. I was 20 and he was my first serious boyfriend.

Mum begged me to invite him for dinner and finally I gave way. She was in her room when we arrived, knocked out by tranquilisers and drink. Colin and I ate together, and eventually the door handle rattled and Colin prepared himself to greet a possible mother-in-law.

Then Mummy chose to stumble into the room, totally naked, intent on finding something to eat. Colin sat frozen. My mother's face was streaked with make-up, her thighs covered in bruises from bumping into furniture. Her backside wobbled along behind her.

"Hi," she said, her voice thick with alcohol, "I'm Nicola's mother. How are you?" Then she wobbled out.

I drank more during the time I was with Colin than ever, yet we stayed together for five years. At times I felt I was turning into the one thing I dreaded: my mother. Like her, whenever I was called upon to make an impression, I needed drink.

One night, Colin took me to a restaurant to meet his friends. I drank a whole bottle of wine beforehand for courage, downed a vodka and tonic when I arrived and then needed the loo.

An Italian waiter was watching me beneath hooded eyes. I winked at him and he jumped to hold open the toilet door. In the dark corridor that ran past the Ladies, the waiter drew me towards him. He was kissing me, and I didn't object.

This was something I did when drunk - went along with a person's wishes because I couldn't be bothered fighting.

Unsurprisingly, Colin and I finished. I graduated and flew to Japan to teach English. In 1976, a diving accident left me with a broken neck. I returned home - still drinking a bottle of vodka a day. Even an attack of alcohol-induced pancreatitis which nearly killed me didn't stop me.

Finally, on Saturday, September 16, 1978, I called around to see my mother, to check she was OK while my father was away. I didn't need a key to get into the house - which was unusual because Mummy always locked the outside door.

I opened her bedroom door as quietly as I could and stuck my head inside. The first thing I noticed was her bedside lamp lying on the floor, its bulb dead, having burned a hole in the carpet.

Next to it, in a disorganised heap, was my mother. Her head looked awkward, as if it had been screwed onto her body back to front. She lay on her right side, facing the door. Her old blue dressing gown, gaped down the middle.

Her arms were outstretched, mouth wide open; saliva running down her chin and down the front of her dressing gown. I wanted to go to Mummy, but my legs wouldn't move. I could see empty bottles of vodka and pills scattered around her. She was dead.

The moment I had been dreading so long was here and I didn't want to know. "Mummy, I did love you," the words blocked my throat even as a voice inside my head asked: "Did you really love her that much?"

I stumbled into the garden and sat for an age, sobbing, before finally phoning my father. I had always promised I would take her to be buried alongside her parents.

So, a few days after her cremation I drove her ashes to an old Sussex village, close to where she had lived as a child. There, I met my brother Peter and a vicar. As we stood in that churchyard, I vowed that I was not going to waste my life in the way she had wasted hers.

No matter how hard it proved, I would not allow myself to sink into drink and drugs. I was going to live my life to the full. It was the greatest tribute I could pay to a woman I felt I had not loved enough.

I turned to Alcoholics Anonymous for help and I never went back to drinking - not even after the death of my father or my beloved brother Richard in climbing accidents.

Occasionally, I start a glass of wine, but I rarely finish it. Drink represented a battle my mother had fought, lost, then passed on to me.

I miss my mother and wish I could see her now, to bring her up to date with my life as a writer, happy wife to be and stepmother. She is still managing to exert a powerful influence over my life.

During the good times and the bad, she lives on like a faint but persisting echo.

source: Daily Mail

author: Nicola Barry

• ADAPTED from Mother's Ruin by Nicola Barry, published by Headline on July 12 at £12.99. °Nicola Barry 2007.