Barras market businesswoman Jeni Stevenson on alcohol addiction

Her father was known in the local community merely as "the alkie with the big brown dog"; no one knew his name, just that they would see him drinking on local sports pitches with his pet.

"I grew up in an alcoholic home so I always knew that alcohol was a big part of my life even before I knew what alcohol really was," Jeni said.

"I thought it was normal because all the people I was around liked to drink and we rarely saw adults sober in the circles that we were around.

"And I always said that would never be like my parents, I would never rely on it."

Despite an early determination not to become dependent on drink, Jeni left school to attend college while also working as a cleaner in nightclubs where having five or six pints across a shift became routine.

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By her late teens she was binge drinking - having four or five day blow outs then abstaining completely for weeks before the cycle began again.

At one extreme low point Jeni attempted to complete suicide and credits her survival to a passing stranger who stopped to help her.

Now 14 years on from alcohol addiction taking over her life, Jeni is in recovery and running her own businesses - and managing Christmas party season thanks to support from the charity WithYou and her closeknit groups of friends.

But it has been a traumatic journey to reach this point.

Jeni's parents became addicted to alcohol following the death of her older brother when he was 19, an event she believes was the catalyst for everything to come.

Along with her identical twin sister Claire, Jeni was involved in the children's hearings system and had a supportive guidance teacher at school but says they were manipulated by their parents into telling adults that everything was fine at home.

Sporadically the sisters would be moved into kinship care but were always returned home where the situation was chaotic and unpredictable.

At just 12 years old Jeni came home to find her mother dead. In further trauma for the twins, their father attempted suicide following the loss of his wife and also developed Korsakoff syndrome, a condition caused by alcohol abuse.

Both parents would regularly be hospitalised but, Jeni said, family members would never explain why they were so sick.

Her father died of cancer when she was 19 but, before his death, had relapsed and begun drinking again.

"When I was old enough to understand," Jeni said, "I always said, 'No, it'll never be me. It'll never be me.'"

After leaving school Jeni went to college to the then-John Wheatley College to study photography and took on cleaning shifts in pubs and clubs.

She said: "We'd have a pint after every site but we were doing five or six sites in a shift.

"I would end up steaming by the end of my shift and then I would end up going out."

This would happen every week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

One night Jeni "went on my usual bender" but became black out drunk and "I found myself in a really bad predicament."

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She had no memory of the night and that scared her so she quit alcohol entirely and was sober for three years before relapsing at the age of 23.

Her boyfriend at the time was abusive and also an alcoholic and he isolated her from friends. Following the end of this relationship she then entered a cycle of binging and having months of sobriety before binging again.

Eventually she asked for support, entered counselling and stayed sober for 10 years, setting up a successful photography business.

But in January this year she relapsed again.

The 34-year-old said: "I found myself in the exact same situation that had been the catalyst for my drinking back then.

"I'd got myself into a situation where I felt like no time passed and I was back there as though it was 10 years ago where I felt like I'd messed up and I was completely alone.

"I felt like I had nobody and I got myself into a headspace where I was going nowhere. I wasn't achieving anything."

At 3am one morning she made a plan to complete suicide in Glasgow city centre.

She added: "I can't remember getting there. But all I can remember is someone tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to phone Samaritans.

"And I probably wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that person happening to show up at 3am."

A few days later she opened a bottle of Prosecco. She said: "I thought, 'This is going to be bad if I start drinking. I won't survive."

Jeni's photography studio is near the offices of the addiction support charity WithYou and the next day she happened to walk past the organisation's offices.

She said: "I just walked in and I said, 'I think I need some help' and they got me.

"That was the Friday and I had an appointment by the Monday. I then had a worker, I was signed up for all sorts of groups and since then it's just been one good thing after another."

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Jeni's photography career began completely by accident when a friend who was doing a college course bumped into her in the street and told her to come and sit in on the class.

She said: "It took the lecturer a while to realise I wasn't supposed to be there but eventually, because there was space, they just let me stay on."

Because of her addiction, however, she was unable to make the most of the course and then went on to study beauty therapy for three years.

Jeni, who is from Glasgow's Easterhouse, said: "I had a boyfriend at the time who was incredibly supportive and he persuaded me, after beauty therapy, to go back and do the photography course properly.

"One of my lecturers said that with my attitude, I'd never make it in the business. So the next day I started my business, Cheese Louise, as an f-you basically."

Jeni said that her childhood home and those of her friends had no quality photography on the walls so she decided to take affordable, fun family portraits and dog portraits.

During lockdown the business had to close and Jeni was terrified she would use her Scottish Government covid small business grant to buy booze so, instead, she used the money to set up a shop.

Little Shop of Chaos - which now has a space in the Barras Market - sells eclectic items Jeni and her friends would want to buy.

Jeni said: "It was a task to keep me busy. I was so sure in my sobriety, I had all my plans in place for being in social situations but sitting in the house by myself I changed.

"But and I could easily see how people could slip back at old habits for that out of boredom alone.

"They say that idle hands are the devil's play thing and it's true."

Jeni is now building on her sobriety with the support of her WithYou worker Karen and taking part in group sessions such as Arty Farty, an art class, and group women-only counselling sessions.

She understands her parents had an illness but that knowledge does not lessen the impact of what she and her sister endured as children.

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Jeni said: "The burden was always put on us if the house was a mess or if we didn't go to school it was our fault but we were children.

"When my dad had cancer and started drinking again I was angry. After all those years, how could he just throw it away like that - it was as though the drink was more important to him.

"Addiction changes you and it changes who you want to be. I wasn't a nice person when I was drinking so I sympathise with my mother, but I don't forgive her."

Does she want to be able to forgive her mother? "There are things you can't forget. I'm not as angry as I was but I'm also not going to just give it a pass."

Following her suicide attempt Jeni told friends - who she calls her "bad ass family" - about her alcoholism and they have changed their behaviours to socialise over coffee or mocktails to support her.

She says the traders at the Barras are also incredibly supportive and will have alcohol-free events to help her.

The women-only groups at WithYou, she says, are vital for giving a space where women can talk about their specific traumas without men in the room.

She added: "At the women's group, we can talk about things like sexual assault and you can be brutally honest about it in a way that you can't do in a mixed group.

"Most of the time women drink because of things that happened in their past while men drink because of problems they're experiencing now.

"And it's really important to find your voice among other women because if you can't do it in front of women, you'll never be able to do it in front of men."

Claire, who is a student, volunteers at Little Shop of Chaos and Jeni's ambition is to make enough money to employ her sister full time and support her. She said: "Claire is so talented and has so much potential. Our potential was completely missed when we were children and I want to move forward and make a difference now.

"I don't want the past to define who we are now."