I grew up thinking my mother's drinking was normal. I thought it was cool she would let me have friends over and she would buy us drinks. I heard her use more excuses to drink. I saw her demeanour change drastically after her first glass of wine. I saw her spiral downwards and we ended up moving 20 times before my 16th birthday.

The day she left to go to QLD and told her 16-year-old boy to look after his little sister at a caravan park, that's when I knew, her drinking wasn't normal. It took me a decade to come to terms with this.

It's now my mission to help others, and minimise the time to intervention.