I was a beautiful baby…. Apparently. Born in Hampstead which was a good start and then we moved to Tottenham. I was never right; I could never figure out why. Then I went and had a pint at the Goat in Tottenham, which is no longer with us. It was an original Wetherspoons. It was me and three old boys at the bar…I was rocketed into the fourth dimension of existence at 4 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon.
I learnt how to go the bar, say “pint please sweetheart” or “how you doing, love”, or “have one yourself”, they would just look at me and shake their heads. I was still at school. I used to pretend I was a builder, wear pretend builder clothes, with an Evening Standard rolled up in my back pocket and sit on my own with my pint. Whatever the others kids were getting up to at that age, I wasn’t. I didn’t care, I wasn’t bothered about speaking to girls, I had found my thing. I didn’t do exams, no qualifications, I had found my vocation and found my higher power. My anxiety went, my racing mind calmed. I was a self-harmer before and for a while all that stopped, but them it came back with interest. I was running in the wrong direction looking for the answer. I was just a kid.
It became very dark, very quickly; it was suddenly kamikaze drinking. I was drunk at school and put myself in bad positions. I’d get physically attacked and Tottenham in the 80s it wasn’t that difficult. It became normalised, waking up with a pillow stuck to my head with cuts and blood. I liked seeing my own cuts, it made me feel…..well it made me feel something, I don’t know what. It was quite alarming for my parents. The mainstay of my drinking was the ripple effect it had on people around me, in my stratosphere, anyone who was nearby; all were affected by me popping out for half a lager.
I knew I had problems. I moved to another country and still had problems. I came back and carried them with me. I finally made that call; I was 17 years old, and phoned A.A. I waited for my mum to go out and called from the phone in the hallway. I spoke to a guy, he said it’s not how much you drink, it’s what it does to you. That disturbed me. I was so young, and this guy was ancient, he was 40 years old or something. I said I’ll go. A van turned up at Turnpike Lane station to take me to Muswell Hill Step ……I never got in that van.
I spent the next twelve years making sure the guy I spoke to was right, which was variations on a theme; get a job, get a girlfriend, all go to wrack and ruin and move….I moved in three-mile increments from Archway, eastwards. The thing about London is you can disappear quite easily, always at night, always with a bin liner, leaving a trail of destruction, landlords wanting their rent, employers asking where have I gone.
I ended up in Leyton. I slept on park benches, lived in squats, had nice jobs, nice girlfriends, did college and did psychiatric units. For a while I had it sussed and then wallop, I’m on my arse again, how did I get here? what happened?…The only solution was to be like my peers and settle down…what is called the B&Q disease, where they would stop turning up on Saturday and Sunday nights because they had to do the family stuff. I thought that may be the answer.
I met a lovely woman, Laura. We got pregnant, did the anti-natal classes, breathing classes and Alice was born; she is beautiful. My drinking got worse. I wasn’t on the streets, I had a house, a business on the go. I could not stop drinking; I was working in the Royal Parks during the week and hid my cans everywhere. I knew I had to have my livener that day, I planted cans in the shrubberies, so they wouldn’t be too far away in case of an emergency. There were still IRA bombings in London, so the bomb squad would go through the park. I would see them go near my cans and think they might do a controlled explosion of my take outs. In the mornings I would be watching the Big Breakfast and drinking wine while feeding my daughter; she had a bottle and so did I.
I finally made that call again and ended up at Leytonstone Step on a Tuesday night. They were on Step 11. It was a tiny room and I couldn’t leave because I wasn’t drunk; I was trapped in there. Someone mentioned meditation and said they couldn’t do it, because it gives them panic attacks. My ears went up, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t be with me. I was identifying straight away.it was the internal dialogue. I had a really bad chat show going on in my head. It disturbed me and this meeting was waving me in front of me again.
I went home and hatched a plan to get married and decided to run a half marathon in Scotland. Fresh start, we were gonna live happily ever after. I didn’t make the wedding or the half marathon I ended up in Homerton psychiatric unit, but they chucked me out. I was hoping to stay in there for a while, they said I wasn’t that bad, just mildly psychotic. They gave me two elephant tranquilizers and told me to take them when I get home; so, I took them straight away and nothing happened; my system was shut down, the drink stopped working. The only place left for me to go was Whipps Cross hospital Friday night meeting.
The Whipps meeting looks like a courtroom. It looked huge. It was packed and felt like I was in court. I walked all the way and it felt like the buildings were falling on my head. It was a level of fear I cannot put into words. I sat in this room with these people. After the meeting two guys came over, bikers, they saw my barnet. These two men gave me a copy of the Big Book and wrote their names and numbers down. They paid for the book; they didn’t know me. I’d gone in there and thought ‘I’m going to do whatever they tell me to do; I’m done’. By the end of the 90 minutes the guy said ring me up, I said why, who are you? They said, suit yourself. That was the best thing they could have said. I was used to, ‘please don’t, you’re gonna die’ They just said, suit yourself and that threw me. I wanted to throw a chair at their heads; it baffled me. There was something going on that I couldn’t explain, so I came back.
My sober date is 24th October 2000. So, I’m not drinking and I’m not at home, so my home life was difficult. I wasn’t there when I was drinking and now, I’m not there when I’m sober. Eventually Laura quite liked it; she would be sitting in watching TV, I’d say ‘I’m going to be a good husband and stay at home’; after twenty minutes she’d said, ‘do you want a lift to a meeting’? I would leave the house mildly psychotic and come back a bit depressed…and she thought it was better. I started doing secretary at Homerton hospital on a Monday night.
I love a bit of martyrdom; it could be the rainiest autumn since Noah and I’d cycle to meetings in Finchley. It’s really hilly and people speak well and I’d decide if they were going to do a chair at Homerton hospital psychiatric unit. I would get the hump if I got a speaker and other AA members knew them. I thought I was like an agent, so I would have to travel even further. If I almost had an accident with a lorry while on my bike, I’d believe that’s more God points. I was willing but I was bonkers. So, what I was actually doing was making loads of connections and getting numbers and I wanted to get the best chair in the World so I would cycle through my panic attacks.
Eventually I asked a guy to help me.
My parents died in my first year, and the guy gave me a pair of shoes, because I didn’t have a pair for my mum’s funeral. Irish Ray came. He recognised the priest who took the funeral. I was in bits and Ray and Eugene, the Irish Mafia, said that I might want to talk to the priest. I was desperate, so through my dad, Eugene took me to meet the priest. This priest said, I hear you like a drink? I said I’m alcoholic and really scared, he said, so am I. He said, never mind them, (he pointed to his congregation), he said, if you can stay as honest as that, you’ll be alright. Next to the church used to be the worst nightclub in North London; it wasn’t somewhere you chose to go, it was somewhere you ended up. It was called the Silver Lady. The church took it over; On Sunday there was a meeting I would go to. At this meeting, which was once known as the Silver Lady, would be the Parish priest who took my mums funeral, old Walter who passed away at 90 something and his wife. They used to live the other side of the estate from me, so I had known them since I was kid. That was the meeting, in what used to be the seediest night club in the world, there I thought something is going on, I have no idea what God is, yet I am going to run with it.
I used to go Friday night Hackney Step and Tradition, where smoking was mandatory. In a tiny room I learnt about the Steps and Traditions; they were hot on it; if you were doing a Step chair, you had to have done the Step, same with the Traditions. Harry, David, Belfast Brian, Angie, the east London faces were there, I loved it, you could smoke without lighting a cigarette. If anyone came in and spoke about not smoking, everyone would light up. The previous guy I asked to help me drank. I asked another and he said yeah, I haven’t got all the answers, but get your book. The best Big Book study I ever done was in his flat in Hackney. He told me things about himself you wouldn’t take to a job interview. Long before I revealed anything about me, he let it all hang out. He took me slowly through the book, which I got the hump with. He gave me his time.
In the meantime, me and Laura had more babies and we moved. I paid the TV licence because I couldn’t sleep at night. No one told me to; I just couldn’t sleep. I went to Beulah Road meeting and financed their literature department. I bought all their books so, I could read while not sleeping. I didn’t realise it was my guilty conscience, because my conscience had been turned off for so long. I had to completely change; all the things I used to protect me no longer worked, so I had to find something bigger than me. I went at it like a bull in a china shop; went to every temple, church, you name it. I have since discovered it’s a little more chilled out than that. With me it is the unsuspected inner resource mentioned in Appendix 2 of the Big Book. How am I doing this? Or how am I doing this and not worrying about it? I don’t think it is something I can force. It’s around love, do a loving thing for someone. If I can be in a position to help, then that’s beautiful.
In sobriety a lot has gone on. My eldest child, Alice, died. We put on a fun run at Great Ormand Street in memory of Alice. We didn’t know how to celebrate her life, so we do that every year and raise money in her name. We basically lived in Great Ormand Street. Members of A.A came from all over. The chaplain gave us a room for a meeting. The room was small; our knees would touch, we used alco wipes on the Big Book.
My wife, Laura died. Lots of grief, and I managed to bury people with dignity and be there for the loved ones around me. We have been in the middle of some horrendous pain and been able to do the right thing. Now I’m a single dad. My children are growing up and are fantastic company. I have a daughter who is 22 years old, she now lives with three males and we think it’s tidy. I have a 14-years-old son who is cleverer than me. When Laura died, she wanted one of my kids to do a marathon, so my eldest son, who is pretty fit, was chosen. We did one together. I have always run, but never trained, just winged it; but this is my boy, so we did 8 months of training.
In my mind I can’t cope, but I have been coping. It’s been nearly two years now since Laura passed. I’m managing to keep the house and home together, through the pain and grief, leaning into it as opposed to running from it. Sadly, there are no levels. You don’t get to level 10 sobriety, when you are a quarter of century without a drink, but you get a day, like everyone else. You get the same aggravation as everyone else; you get the same good stuff as everyone else. My sobriety revolves around my kids. Their experience of being teenagers is different to mine; they don’t appear to have that fear. They have never seen me drink let alone drunk and if I’ve got nothing else, then that is the blessing I’ll take from A.A.
East London Archives of Alcoholics Anonymous. 