On March 8th 2020, I landed my dream job as a full-time recovery worker in the field of alcohol and drugs. On December 16th 2020, I handed in my resignation.
I loved that job with all my heart. I still do! I adored my wonderful friends and colleagues. I still do! The service does amazing work around the UK and has helped to save many of the lives of countless addicts for over Fifty years. So, why resign?
Self-preservation. If I hadn’t, the person writing this probably wouldn’t exist. But thankfully, I do exist, and I held on to my sobriety – just.
So, what happened? How did things turn out?
The world changed devastatingly quickly for everyone. Far too fast for this human. I was still very early into my recovery, and at the very beginning of a brand-new, extremely demanding job. People’s lives and welfare were my business.
Without going into too much detail, three weeks into my new job, Bang! Lockdown!
The service rapidly, as everything did and has, had to go virtual. Everything via video link, email, or phone. Apart from a handful of us still working in the building, everyone at the service worked from home. The personal contact with clients and workmates vanished. I did well, for a while. I had a lot of good successes with my clients. I was a hardworking and dedicated worker. All my volunteering, and part-time work at the service from 2018 had stood me in good stead.
But eventually, without the personal contact, hug-ability, and constant life-saving humour of my peers, everything went dark inside my head. Too dark. Black! The psychological tide turned on me: daily thoughts of suicide, self-harm, and drinking reared their head once again. Too many conflicting and negative thoughts, spinning at light-speed in my mind. All wrong and at the worst time. So, I made the hardest decision of my life. Instead of concentrating on helping addicts to get clean, sober and improve their lives – I decided to save my own.
It certainly wasn’t plain sailing, away from the job. The work on myself had only just begun. The demons had come to visit and the beast wanted to move in again.
I had no confidence. My fire had gone, and my lust for life was no more. My lust for self-oblivion had replaced it with a venom. I would only leave my bed to eat and go to the bathroom. As I lay on my bed, I covered my face with blankets because the darkness was too bright. My mobile phone gave me panic attacks. Notifications of kindly messages (there were many) came through from friends, freaked me out. I would not answer the phone, only listening to voicemails in terror.
I’d lost my closest friend to a toxic relationship. So, she was gone. At the beginning of my job, I was weeks away from moving into my own place, finally moving out of the family home. Lockdown soon coshed that into a pulp. I had to remain with parents. Not the best of arrangements.
The temptation to ease the load with the liquid antichrist screaming at me was coming ever closer. But I’d look at photos of my son (who is 250 miles away thanks to alcohol) every day and the beast in my head finally went away.
But the months of black-nothing continued. A big lifeless nothing. No reading or writing, and my love for art had long died. Antidepressants were not working. But then something happened!
I randomly picked up a book from my towering ‘to be read’ pile. It was non-fiction, White by Bret Easton Ellis. I tentatively read the first line. A few hours later I was a quarter way through the book without realising. Something was happening. The rusted cogs and worn gears in my head had slowly begun moving. I finished the book and went on to the next, and the next, and the next.
Things are now much better.
I’m now reading my thirty-sixth book of this year.
I’m writing the first draft of my novel.
I’m making art again.
I have my best friend back.
I am volunteering again. But this time on a farm, helping adults with learning disabilities. I’ve been asked to do bank work there, and I seem to have turned into the resident photographer. I still keep in touch with my recovery workmate buddies. I’m going to volunteer at my old recovery service and see how things go.
My wonderful son passed his chef exams with flying colours, and we’re hoping to meet up over the summer holidays. I’ve connected with the most wonderful writers and artists from around the world on Facebook and made wonderful creative discoveries. I could go on and on, but the list is long now.
All because I decided to save my own life. All because I read the first line in a Bret Easton Ellis book. All because I looked at pictures of my son every day.
That was my route out of Hell’s basement. Everyone has their own. These are just a few ways I did things. You will find your own if you’re in your own personal Hell.
You’ll do it. You really will. Stay safe everyone xx
This is a dark post. A bit grim and raw. It’s not in the slightest bit uplifting, because it’s the ugly truth. It’s a snapshot of the future if addiction gets hold of you. If you want your day brightening up, I’d skip this post today. It’s not for you.
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The days, weeks, months, and years are so full of time. We continually think of all that time, time and time again. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Addicts can magically erase all that time. Poof!
Once our bloodstreams, brains, and bones are flooded full of our substance of choice – time, no longer exists. It never did – poof! Every day is a filthy, bloodied, tear-stained, non-existent, Groundhog Day. Our next drink or fix dissolves the minutes, hours, months, and years into a liquid and mercurial state.
Addicts exist in a swirling grey fog of nothing. It’s the first wish granted when we rub the magic addiction lamp. Eventually, further down the line, ‘I wish the next drink will kill me’ is the one wish that never seems to come. But give it time. That final wish will come true. It always does. Just give it time.
Every day we hear people say the same thing. Time flies! Where does all the time go? I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed! The time has literally gone! Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
Anything and everything merges into mush. Life (whatever that may be) swirls around us like the filthy blood sloshing around our veins. We have given ourselves a licence not to think any more. Our feelings put on pause. We laugh and we cry but never know why. Some of us cut and slash our sick, yellowing skin because we need to transfer the searing mental pain onto something tangible. Something we can see. There is enough rage and guilt in our bodies that the cuts never hurt. The pain moves a million miles away. The screams become distant echoes.
The dried blood and scars become the addicts Braille our fingertips read when the lights go out.
The door never opens because it’s always locked. The phone never rings after it’s unplugged. The outside world is simply that – outside.
Outside exists only when it must: when we get our drinks, when we meet our dealers, or when we finally have to sleep in it. Life never comes to us because we never let it in. Too embarrassed, too angry, too ugly, too far gone, too paranoid – too dead.
We don’t know where time is anymore. Time rots our food, rots our guts, makes us stink, takes our kids, un-employs us, desexualises us, imprisons us, removes our souls, cages our minds, makes shop doorways our beds. It builds our crosses and crucifies us.
But we don’t care. We never care.
We’ve spent many years re-wiring our brains with poison. We hacked our fleshy, sputtering software so that giving a shit does not compute anymore. We’ve crashed our system – blue screen – error 404. No option to reboot or reinstall. We are totally corrupted. All data lost. Blip! Gone.
Our tiny universe has stopped all the clocks. Nothing revolves around our world – only drink or drugs – drugs and drink. Our weather is toxic; the ground is a waiting grave. One day we will be worm food, plant food, maggot-ridden and fly-blown. It’s then up to heaven and hell to fight over our ragged souls and show us our new home.
I wonder if Jesus still does his water into wine trick! Does heaven have a rehab? Can the biblical and eternal screaming hell that our churches and priests condemn us to, match up to the hell we created for ourselves?
That is a massive can of worms that squirm around the recovery world and stubbornly refuse to go back inside. It’s a minefield that addicts and professionals have been debating, often heated, since the first ever addict thought to themself, “I like doing this! I like it a lot! It’s all everyone else’s fault anyway, not mine! Fuck ’em!” That’s the subject of my next post. But until then . . .
Do we pre-programme our self-destruction as we grow up? When we embark on our addictive careers, do we simply pick and choose our own triggers and happily flick them as we darken our lives around us. Switching off our self, bit by bit. Lots of questions there and I realise that I’m digging quite a hole for myself because the answers, if they exist, aren’t readily springing to mind.
One of my earliest memories is wobbling on tiny feet up the hallway in my parents’ house as a very young child. I stopped dead in my tracks, craning my neck back to look up at the light switch. Way out of reach of chubby little fingers. But I remember wishing and hoping that one day soon, I’d be big enough to be able to turn the light on and off all by myself. Was that my first sense of optimism, wonder and awe? Was it already there or was I pre-programming it for the future?
Skip forward a couple of years.
I was pushing an electric plug, half in and half out of the wall socket; metal prongs still exposed. I was intent on touching them, aware it was very dangerous! I was happily conscious that I’d get a shock. I probably may have even known I could die. I couldn’t quite get my fingers inside to touch this live suicide device so off I trotted to find something thin and metal to get in there. Thankfully I must have been distracted because I didn’t return to it. But I remember not caring about the huge bolt of electricity that could have charred my skin and bones black. I gave no mind to being flung across the room, shocked into unconsciousness, or death. I really wanted to do it. Give it a try. I was around three or four years old. I didn’t seem to care. The strange thing is, I was a very happy kid with lots of friends and a good family. But I wanted to give pain or death a real go. Right out of nowhere. Was it already there or was I pre-programming my insanely self-destructive nature for the future?
In my early twenties, I caught the train from the north where I lived to go to see my drum teacher for my lessons. Local? Just around the corner? No. A little bit further; all the way down south to a bustling, professional rehearsal studio in Kings Cross, London. A good two hours on the train.
Terence Trent D’Arby. Remember him?
He was unknown(ish) at the time and rehearsing his hit album there as I had my lessons. Little did I know that hit songs were being worked out and rehearsed there by other bands – as I had my lessons. I met these people and watched them play. They watched me play. It didn’t seem like a big thing. I simply wanted my lessons with one of the UK’s top drummers. I didn’t care about all the exciting stuff going on around me. Nobody really knew who Terence Trent D’Arby was at the time (he was eventually huge in the 80’s) and the hits hadn’t been released yet. I just wanted to learn drums. I knew what I wanted and who with. I wanted to be as good as the best. So that’s what I did! Many trips and many lessons. Because that’s exactly what I wanted and I did it! I got good at drumming, damn good. Whatever it took to get better, I did it. Motivation, blinkered focus, dedication, and determination at such a young age. Right out of nowhere. Already there or was I pre-programming for the future?
Around the same time, I was happily (happily?) slicing my arm with a scalpel. Nothing deep or savage but something that would have shocked friends who would have seen it. Nobody did. It was always hidden. I was getting a bit low, possibly slightly depressed, mentally isolating myself and lost. Nothing major. I was merely at a low ebb. But rather than ask for help from friends and family, (I still had a lot of friends and doing well playing in bands) or go to the doctor to discuss medication or therapy, I simply decided to transfer all this unwanted mental pain onto my skin. I was placing something unseen onto a brand-new canvas. I could look at it, touch it and add to it as the waves of darkness washed over me. The cutting didn’t hurt as much my mind did. In fact, it didn’t hurt at all. I’d learned a sort of mind-over-matter from somewhere. I managed to put a pain buffer on the physical act, something I couldn’t achieve with my mental self-bullying. It worked. I found a newly discovered tool that (rightly or wrongly) worked. Unconventional coping tools, mind-over-matter, a dogged stubbornness against asking for help. Already there or pre-programming for the future?
In my early thirties and I wanted to become a fiction writer. From childhood I had always been a bookworm but hadn’t given a thought to writing. But right out of the blue I start writing. I wasn’t very good. But as with my drumming, I knew I would improve with practice. I practiced a lot. I wrote letters to a professional horror author who I had read and enjoyed. He replied with very kind and supportive advice. I sent him my first ever short story and he sent it back to me, splattered with constructive, editorial notes. This confirmed to me – the story was crap. I had a lot to learn. But I was good with, and actively encouraged constructive criticism. The author had given me the starting blocks to build with. Gradually I improved. After a year or so of rejections, my short stories began being accepted in magazines and published. Eventually I met and befriended the cream of the crop of British crime, sci-fi, horror and fantasy writers. The best of the best in their chosen fields. It was a wonderful family of motivation, friendship, and peer support. I felt accepted. Home. I had found my people. My writing continued to improve. I was making a name for myself as I became very active in the writing community. I was being regularly published. I even began and co-edited a brand-new magazine. My friendship and writing network grew. A promising writing career was slowly being born. My first novel was all planned. Everything was going fantastic! Then . . . I simply stopped. I allowed life to get in the way and the whole thing ground to a big nothing. In the Seventeen years that followed, I wrote one short story in a creative writing group. It was good but apart from the group, nobody saw it. Hard working, learning new skills, good with criticism, building a support network, encouraging peer support, positivity, highly motivated, promising career – all gone. Already there or pre-programming for the future?
Thirty-nine years old and my drinking career is well on its way to thirteen years of chaos and oblivion. The alcohol is increasing to toxic levels and my tolerance level is rising like a thermometer in the Sahara. Everything is a trigger. It’s already everything and everyone else’s fault. The pity-parties have migrated online thanks to the invention of Facebook. Most mornings before work are spent deleting spurious, worrying, and forgotten-about posts. But never worry, furious and frantic workmates have already taken screenshots to show me what an arse I had been the night before. Just so I’m reminded of what I’ve already forgotten. But I still do it all again. Every night. That’s the least of my worries.
The razor blades are out in force and the gentle slicing of old have turned to savage sweeps covering the full length of my inner-arm. Wrist to elbow. The early days of pain displacement are a romantic memory that my mind drunkenly retains because the pain is both physical, mental, and constant. The cutting is merely because I hate myself. But I pre-programmed myself for pain so I simply and drunkenly slice away. It’s just what I do. And it’s bad. I’m metaphorically putting the plug half in and out of the socket because my insane self-destruction is off the scale. Fear of death isn’t high on my list – if it’s even on it. As you know if you follow this blog, my constant prayer was that the next drink would kill me. I’d pre-programmed my own hell and damnation and the software was running nicely (nicely?). “But I wanted to give pain or death a real go.” Remember that? My pre-programming did, as it rapidly kicked in! “I was getting a bit low, possibly slightly depressed, isolating myself and lost. Nothing major. I was merely at a low ebb.” If the young me only knew what legacy it was leaving for the older me down the line. Old habits really do die hard. They never leave. “I couldn’t quite get my fingers inside to touch this live, suicide device . . .” I had become my own suicide device. If an accident with a drunken blade didn’t get me, the alcohol would . . . eventually. Alcoholism, the slowest suicide known to man and woman.
But I haven’t self-harmed or drunk alcohol for almost two years. I don’t hate myself quite so much as I did. I hate addiction and how weak and vulnerable it made me for so long. I have no plans to be that person again. How do I know it won’t happen again?
I don’t. It’s not a promise any of us can make. We are only human. But we can fight it day by day, minute by minute. Don’t forget all the good and positive pre-programming: unconventional coping tools, mind-over-matter, optimism, wonder and awe, motivation, blinkered focus, dedication, determination, hardworking, learning new skills, good with criticism, building a support network, encouraging peer-support, positivity, highly motivated, promising career.
All that is inside me too and that software is running nice and smoothly, so far.
I can never promise addiction won’t get me again. But I will fight it to the death – its death not mine. I’ve pre-programmed that now, for my future.
When I want something, I give it everything I’ve got. That has always been there. I just need to remember not to let life get in the way of my life again. Ever!
Stumbling Towards Hindsight 