3/Recovery

 

Now I was a married man with responsibilities. Two small children and a job I detested. I can remember sunny days when I would go to the edge of the building site longing to just walk off towards the coast the way I used to. I had tried to keep up drama school but I just couldn’t do it so I left without completing the final year. I don’t think Tess had any idea what this represented to me. I was nothing now, a donkey. My drinking went through the roof.

All my romantic poems and songs I’d written about love had no value any more. I made enquiries about work training programs. I wanted to find out about becoming a social worker or something that would mean something to me. The list they gave me didn’t include social worker or any thing like it. The second time through I ticked the P’s and I started training as a plumber.

I spent a fair bit of the 6 months training course recovering from the night before in the attic of the practice flat in the workshop or down the betting office trying to win hope and freedom for my family and myself.

Sometimes I would be convinced that if only I could get my mental attitude right then I would win. All six horses at great odds. Maybe £100,000. Once I actually won £200. The largest amount of money I’d ever seen in my life. It didn’t last very long.

I scraped through the course by the skin of my teeth and took my certificate off to the south west coast. There was a New Town housing scheme down there to attract workers to the area. I got a job after a few days just when my money was running out. A really decent bloke took me on and found us temporary accommodation in a house 100 yards from the beach. It was winter so the rent was low. This gave us just over 3 months to sort out the New Town house. After that the summer rent would be way out of our reach.

We were still having our ups and downs. I still drank too much but it was the best situation we’d ever been in and we were hopeful. Nicola loved the beach. She was two and Katherine was just about one year old. I loved the sea, I was always drawn to it, and I quite liked the guy I was working with. It wasn’t the same as a building site in London. We drove around in a van doing jobs here and there for interesting people, many of whom had moved away from city life and shared similar values.

Tess and I showed her parents some of the beautiful bays and lovely villages. Me in my fisherman’s smock running into the wind with my baby in my arms. I felt so proud and free. Then in the evening I would be drunk and lonely and restless for something dramatic, anything, good or bad. I felt desperate for big experiences. I couldn’t bare the mundane life. ‘There must be more than this’. My heart seemed to be screaming.

I had fantasised that I would settle down. I’d have a leather armchair by the coal fire in the Smugglers Arms. A Labrador sitting beside me. The barmaid would prepare my brandy, warming the glass before pouring it. Seeing the respect with which I would be served a passing stranger would enquire. She would speak with reverence about this highly respectable man who I had become. In truth I was very nearly barred from the same pub on my first night. I was fearful and awkward and I hardly spoke a word but one of the other men in the bar didn’t like my presence. Nothing happened but the atmosphere remained tense.

I hadn’t followed the proper procedure to qualify for the New Town housing scheme. I should have allowed them to get the job for me. Because I had found my own employment I was disqualified. I was convinced they wouldn’t treat a family like this. Surely they could bend the rules? The object was to attract people to the area, what difference did it make who got the job? When they refused I could not recover from this blow. It was the final straw.

Tess took the children and went back to stay with her parents while I stayed on and tried to find a solution. When I failed to find anything I went back to the prefabricated house in Stepney where my parents lived. I couldn’t go back to her parents in Wimbledon where we’d lived before. I was contemplating entering the big time with more serious crimes in mind. Maybe I would have to use a gun to steal a future for my children? When it was just me it didn’t matter that much. Now it did matter and I couldn’t make a go of it no matter how hard I tried.

I received a letter from Tess. It was a lovely letter. She obviously understood that I couldn’t take anymore. She placed an article in it about alcoholism, which she had picked up from Readers Digest. It listed 4 kinds of relationship to alcohol. The alcoholic, the dependent drinker, the social drinker and the teetotaller. It was obvious which one I was. She appealed to me to seek help. I rang AA.

I was given the address of a meeting so I went along. I cleaned myself up a bit and put on a suit I’d bought with my winnings from a bet. I remember feeling a bit sorry for these poor sods. Some of them had cut their wrists and all sorts of things. Not only that but they had to go to these meetings every day. Sometimes twice a day!

At the end of the meeting I couldn’t get away. There was a group visiting from Bristol and they persuaded me to go for a coffee and then on to another meeting. I couldn’t wait to get away from them. I felt like I was being captured by some sort of religious cult going on about God all the time.

I had identified though. I remembered going to the pub after work for a quick one and then watching the clock. I’ll go at 6. I’ll go at 7. I’ll go at 8. Then I’d be home after the pub closed making up some ludicrous excuse. ‘I’ve only had four pints of shandy’. Maybe once or twice would be funny but not every night. Agreeing to only drink on certain nights of the week and then borrowing nights from the following week. Having one last piss up. Giving up for good. Drinking only after 9pm. Everything I’d tried was there in those AA rooms in someone else’s experience. I was definitely an alcoholic but why should this mean I have to stop drinking? I was convinced I could beat it.

I got a job as a porter on a slum estate in Stepney. My job was to clean out the dustbin chutes, sweep the grounds and run the community bathhouse twice a week. Thursday for men, Friday for women. There were no baths in the flats. The pay was appalling but we would be given a flat of our own to live in. We were delighted. I made the place look pretty good with my dads help and at least it was a place of our own. I’d tried everything else; action groups, Faceless Homeless. If it didn’t work I discovered that if I left the job the council would have to rehouse us, which they wouldn’t do so long as we continued living with our separate parents.

Six months later I went to the local psychiatric hospital and asked them to tell me honestly if I was mad. The other porter was a big gangly ignorant fool who made the mistake of being rough with his baby daughter and then threatening his wife in front of me. I broke his jaw in three places. I couldn’t stand the violence and the stealing anymore and yet I seemed to be in the middle of it all the time. The whole estate was rife with it. I couldn’t bring my children up like this.

‘Why can’t you just knuckle under for your kids.’ one of the blokes down the pub had asked me. ‘Why? So they can then knuckle under for their kids. Generation after generation. Why?’ I replied.

The psychiatrist told me I wasn’t mad. I thought I was a schizophrenic or something. He asked me who had put that idea into my head. He told me he was in no doubt that I was not mentally ill and diagnosed ‘anxiety neurosis.’

They put me on a drug called Anti-buse and gave me Valium. I refused to take the Valium after trying one. What point was there in coming off booze and picking up another drug? They agreed to let me take just the Anti-buse after an argument with the nurse who tried to insist I take it. I went in every day for group therapy.

It seemed OK for a while. Some of the other patients there thought I was a member of staff. I didn’t realise this until one of them called me ‘Doctor.’. I was given an IQ, test and told that I should go to college. They thought that the fact that I was under utilising my mind was part of the problem. I went down to the local adult education centre and I enquired. I had made attempts to find out about adult education before but for one reason or another I didn’t find the people I spoke to in the least bit helpful. This time the man said he thought there were some leaflets around about courses that might suit me. He couldn’t find them but at least he was trying. None of the others had bothered to look. As I walked out the gate and down the road, he came running up behind me. He’d found the leaflets and an application form.

That man may never know the difference that effort made for my family and me. I filled in the form, sent it off and forgot about it.

It hadn’t even occurred to me to stop going to the pub. The idea was unthinkable. I just drank soft drinks and played cards. I then decided to try bottled shandy. I mean, its only 2% proof. This had an adverse affect with the Anti-buse so I stopped taking the pills. Well, what else was I supposed to do? I was so confident that I would never drink again that I didn’t think I needed them. When the bottles ran out after a few days, I was drinking it by the gallon; I had a little bit of beer and the rest of the glass full of lemonade.

I couldn’t continue going to the hospital forever so they discharged me after a few weeks. I felt a fearfulness in my heart about my ability to continue without support. I didn’t voice it.

I remember the night when I said forget the lemonade. There was a roar of ‘NO’ from the guys who had got to know me sober. They knew my family, my parents were both barred from this place that’s why I choose it, so they respected my effort. ‘Don’t do it Jim’. It was too late. I’d got the taste.

When I came home drunk Tess begged me in the morning to take the Anti-buse again. I placed it in my mouth but didn’t swallow it. I spat it down the toilet. I knew what I was going to do. Her parents had money. My children would have a future with them, which they couldn’t have with me. There were decent schools over there. I was overwhelmed by that poverty which so few people with any power understand. The poverty of feeling that I had nothing to give. Especially to my children in terms of hope and happiness.

I went out and got absolutely plastered. When I woke up. Tess was still there, still trying to get me to seek help. I told her to fuck off. When she didn’t leave I made it stronger and stronger until she took the children and left.

For the next three days I tried to drink myself to death. I drank huge quantities of anything I could get my hands on. When I ran out of money I went to the men who’d seen me sober and I begged them to give me some money. When that didn’t work I knelt on the floor and offered to kiss their feet. ‘What fucking difference does it make?’

I sold every thing I could sell. My guitar. My leather jacket. I even tried to sell the keys to my flat. I met up with another one like me. An older man who had also been to AA. He paid me rent to move into the flat and we drank it. I remember him talking about setting up a business together. He would run the office and I would be the plumber. ‘If we had £5,000 we’d still be sitting in this same fucking shit hole drinking this same old shit so what fucking difference does it make?’

On the final night I was wandering around a pub called the Pearly Queen and saying to people. ‘I don’t understand. Life doesn’t make any sense to me’. I think eventually someone got fed up with me and suggested that if I didn’t like it I should fuck off and top myself. I went into the toilet. I vaguely remember trying to fall back against a sink and then backing out half way. I ended up sitting on the floor. I leaned forward and threw my head back as hard as I could.

When I staggered out of the toilet there was blood pumping up into the air from my head. I could see it spraying a couple sitting to one side. The landlady screamed and said. ‘What’s he done, what’s he done?’ Before fainting behind the bar. The ambulance came and I was taken to hospital.

There was talk of a psychiatrist and an appointment was made. I didn’t give a shit one way or another. A young nurse, a Catholic girl with lovely soft white skin spoke to me about God. I remember saying ‘Each moment of my life is precious to me.’ and then stopping in my tracks in the face of my own stupidity. It came out like a tape recording of something, which sounded clever and meant nothing. I had read five pages of a book called ‘Philosophy made simple’ and I thought I was a genius.

I am glad she had the courage to share her faith with me. When I left that hospital the only thing I knew for sure was that I knew absolutely nothing.

I set off towards London Bridge. I was debating with myself about whether to jump in the river or from a tall building. Either way I was heading in the right direction. By shear chance I had to pass the building where I had been to the AA meeting almost a year before. By an even greater coincidence I was passing it at the very time it was in progress. There was a sign on the door saying that they had moved to a building around the corner. This would require a decision on my part. Should I eliminate this last hope before taking my life? I went to the meeting. After listening for a short while I was satisfied they had nothing to offer me. I got up to leave. Someone caught my arm and asked me were I was going. I told him I was going to kill myself and I shook his hand off me. The meeting responded to me. A man called John W spoke across the room ‘Let go and let God’. I engaged with him strongly. Not so much his words but his belief in what he was saying. His faith. I don’t know what we said.

At the end of the meeting several men came to a cafe with me and they sat all around me so that I couldn’t get out. These were businessmen men and city dealers in smart suits. John was a TV reporter. Not a TV personality but one of those serious reporters whose voice you hear from battle fields and famine areas. I was covered in blood and dirt. My hair was matted in blood and I felt an atmosphere of unconditional love. They were ready to take time off work to persuade me to stay alive. I was given telephone numbers and told to ring if I needed help at any time day or night. They were not the sort of people who have a neurotic need to see themselves as good. It was the heart felt response that I needed. Not a romantic or sentimental love but the unselfish concern of one human being for another.

I agreed to stay alive a day at a time. I wasn’t interested in just not drinking a day at a time. I wanted to be happy. If happiness were not possible then I didn’t want to live drunk or sober. John persuaded me to experiment with God. If you flick the switch and the light comes on do you need to have a rational understanding of electricity? To flick this particular switch I would need to kneel and pray when I got home. I think my arrogance must have still been concussed in some dark corner of my mind because I did it. I asked God to help me.

When Tess came back to collect some of her things after a short break, I was out at a meeting, she was expecting to find the place in a dreadful mess. Bottles all over the place, me in bed with a tart. Instead the place was spotless and there was a copy of ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran besides my rocking chair. I had read this book 3 times in the first week after I found it. I loved it. I had read as much of the bible as I could, that was the only other book in the house, but I preferred this. I liked a lot of the things Jesus said but I knew I wasn’t a Christian like my Father in Law or any of the other people I knew who went to church on Sunday.

I discovered the twelve steps of recovery. I was delighted. It seemed to me that I needed some sort of integrated pattern of recovery so I didn’t feel any great need to argue about the details. ‘The way is easy save for picking and choosing ‘ as Lao Tsu would say.

As far as God was concerned I think the critics have a lot to learn. When someone is so utterly demoralised and cannot believe that any human power can help, they may well need to believe in a power outside of themselves. Metaphysical intricacies are irrelevant. Faith works.

I loved the meetings. The honesty of peoples sharing. The fact that I could identify with others for the first time in my life. They were like me. We could talk about the mad things we had done and have a good laugh or maybe cry about it. Together. I don’t mean just the funny stories or the dramatic moments. Nor the roguishness. I mean the stuff of secrets and lies. The fact that when I came back from the New Town in despair I used to roll over in my bed when I was drunk and piss onto the floor. The prefab floor sloped under my bed so it gathered under me. It must have been an inch deep. I’m not exaggerating.

I loved the ritual surrounding the meetings, the preamble and the serenity prayer. ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference’. I loved the fact that a villain like Paddy O C could say ‘AA works for those who believe in God, those who don’t believe in God and those who think they fucking well are God.’ and still be loved and respected for his kindness and compassion while doing dodgy deals with Mick the tick. Mick had more watches up his arm than the local jewellery shop, that’s where he got his name. He said he’d decided to commit intellectual suicide to believe in God in order to stay sober. ‘That’s how bad it got’. The only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking. No one could be rejected. No one had power over anyone else. I could be honest without fear of humiliation.

It seemed like a miracle to me that I could be still. I could sit and read a book and reflect. I could do what I had never done before and feel at peace with myself.

After a few days I felt better than I’d ever felt before. I rang John every day and he helped me stay alive. Believe me, left to my own devices I was quite capable of throwing it all away. ‘What are you doing for your sobriety today?’ He wasn’t interested in what I’d done yesterday or what I planned to do tomorrow. He was interested in now. ‘Well I thought I might go to the pictures John.’ I told him, thinking I was entitled to a day off now and then. ‘Oh so John Wayne is keeping you sober these days is he?’ He never actually told me what to do. He never gave me advice as such he just lead me to reaching my own conclusion. I went to the meetings.

I got a letter from Hackney College inviting me to go in for an interview almost as soon as I joined AA. I had forgotten all about this. I had been paying attention to basic things. I wanted to clean my teeth every day and wash myself and my clothes. Things I hadn’t done before. I wanted to honour my word when I gave it. Not for him or her or them or it but for me. Because I said so. I wanted to be a man with dignity and integrity. I wanted to become someone worth being and I realised from the depth of my being that what I do today creates who I will become in the future. Not in another life, in this life, in 5 or 10 or 20 years.

I wanted to be able to get up in the morning at a set time. I was fed up with the fact that I was always late for everything if I even turned up at all. I can remember my eyes opening and my body lifting up and out of the bed at the exact time I had said. It was as though it wasn’t me. As though whatever benevolent forces there are in the universe where there with me. As though I had gotten out of the way and allowed a higher power to do for me what I could not do myself.

I seem to recall that I offered my will and my life to God not because of any great nobleness on my part but because I didn’t want it any more. I just wanted to be kind and gentle. I wanted to be free from the violence and cruelty. I stopped struggling with it all.

The interview at Hackney College couldn’t have come at a better time. It was just to do 5 ‘O’ levels. Not a lot to some one who takes them at 16 in the normal way but it was certainly a big deal to me. I arrived at the interview terrified that I might not get in. I had my speech ready but the good man who conducted the interview said to me. ‘Wait a minute. Your old enough and ugly enough to make your own decisions you don’t have to convince me. We just need to give you a few tests to determine where you should start’. He also gave me a tip about reading. I was honest about rarely having finished a book. He guessed that I probably just read and reread the same pages thinking that I wasn’t taking it in. He was spot on. He told me to just read anything. Not necessarily academic, just anything. ‘You’ll be surprised how much you’ll take in.’

A wise old bird in AA said to me ‘just think how helpful you could be to other people like you if you succeed at college.’ I was ignited. Nothing would have stopped me. The thought that I could be of value.

Tess wanted to come back when she saw that I was changing. I wasn’t sure. I confided to John that I wasn’t sure if our marriage would work. When all the shoulds and oughts and supposed to bes are out of the way some times we see things more clearly than we think is fair or right. I told her that I couldn’t promise her anything. She would have to make her own decisions and I would do whatever I felt I had to do to stay sober. Without it I was no good to anyone anyway. I would certainly be no good to our children. She came home and we were evicted.

The council rehoused us about 15 or 20 miles from Hackney. We were so grateful to be given a council flat I just got on with it. I had no money so I had paid the fees for my first term not knowing where the money for the second term was going to come from. I never asked my AA friends for money. I got a job in a West End cinema as a doorman. I used to get up at 6am and travel just over 2 hours on three different buses to college. Then I would travel into town and go to work early so that I could sleep for a short while on a table in the staff room before starting work. During my breaks I would run to an AA meeting around the corner. Fortunately there were loads of them in the West End.

The number of people who showed me kindness during this time was astonishing. One of the other doormen for some reason told the manager that I was going to AA meetings during working hours. I was called to the office. The manager asked me if I went there to help the alcoholics? I said ‘No I go there because I am an alcoholic’. He never said any more to me about it but my pay packet increased because he started giving me all the available overtime. This had the added advantage of meaning that the cinema would then pay for me to have a taxi home because I was working beyond midnight. It must have cost a fortune. I don’t know how he got away with it.

I would sleep for a few hours and then start again. At the weekend I did my homework.

The lecturers realised there was a problem because I was barely able to stay awake in class. I remember literally falling off my seat. I was still producing the essays for four of my subjects but I was relying on my vacation to catch up with the maths. My mother in law, Grace bought me a small motor bike which made a big difference but I was still running on the unstoppable desire to bring back a message of hope to my fellow sufferers. I would have walked if I’d had to. They eventually persuaded me to apply for a discretionary award. At first I didn’t want to do this because in order to qualify I would have to prove that my education had been disrupted as a child. My word would not be enough. I would have to give them the names and dates of which hospitals treated my parents so that they could check the facts. I was given £1,000 for the year, which I received half way through the course back dated to the beginning. We were rich.

When I passed my 5 ‘O’ levels I went along to the AA meeting where my closest friends would be and I tried to tell them as casually as I could. I wept like a child from the release of air and energy with which I’d held down my fear that maybe I wouldn’t make it. In my head I knew I could do it but in my heart I never felt it. I had been a loser all my life. I was vomiting with fear while I waited for those results. I had to have tests at the hospital because my stomach was tied in knots. An A, two Bs and two C s. I even got the maths, which I could only afford to commit three weeks study to. I must have scraped through that one by the skin of my teeth.

It was as though I had broken the cycle of failure. The knowledge that I could succeed was now embedded in my psyche. I think this change is irreversible.

The administrator from the Inner London Education Authority rang me to enquire about my results. I don’t know whether this was normal procedure or personal interest. They awarded me a further discretionary grant to do ‘A’ levels over the following two years. The ILEA used to do this sort of thing before the Conservatives closed them down for wasting money. I am eternally grateful that they were willing to help me make the most of this opportunity.

If I passed my ‘A’ levels then I could go to university. If I had suggested anything so grand when I was at school Mr Parsons would have laughed in my face. The idea would have been inconceivable to me anyway so let’s not kid ourselves about equal opportunities. An opportunity is only an opportunity if people have a reasonable chance of success. The ILEA understood this. Margaret Thatcher and her evil cronies did not.

jayanatha76@yahoo.co.uk