I needed a drink just to get up in the morning. Nothing else mattered to me

Sunday February 4, 2007 – Sunday Mail

SIAN BROWN celebrated her 18th birthday last week.

But instead of toasting the mile-stone with champagne, the teenager instead enjoyed her first sober birthday for six years.

Sian, of Inverness, started drinking at the age of 12.

By her early teens she was in the grip of an addiction that saw her downing two bottles of wine and five litres of cider every day.

At one stage doctors thought Sian would need an organ transplant for chronic liver damage.

Sian said: "I started drinking at weekends when I was 12 because I wanted to be like friends who were doing it. You had to drink to be one of them.

"I hated the taste and used to try to secretly pour it out. But then I started to love drinking."

Before long, Sian was drinking every day.

She said: "I needed a drink just to get up in the morning. Nothing else mattered."

Sian started having panic attacks and psychotic episodes. She said: "I was admitted to psychiatric wards with the DTs.

"My family didn't know how to deal with me but I didn't care. I was different then, really selfish."

Eventually Sian tried to kill herself, washing down a handful of pills with a bottle of red wine.

She was flown to hospital in Edinburgh, where her family kept at anxious bedside vigil.

She said: "Doctors warned them that my organs were shutting down and I might not live.

"They even said they thought I would need a liver transplant.

"I was in hospital for a month and a half. As soon as I was able, I went out and got drunk."

Sian says she finally realised she had to seek help.

For the past three months she has been receiving treatment at the renowned Castle Craig residential hospital for the treatment of alcoholism in Peebleshire.

She said: "This place has given me back my life. I am a different person. I had no idea how good life can be."