East London Archives of Alcoholics Anonymous.

First time trying this – below is an audio of me, the archivist, reading Helen’s story.

I used to go to the Catholic youth club with friends from school on Fridays. We would go to the car park and buy Pink Lady, which soon turned into pink vomit. I didn’t get drunk at home – my parents were strict. I once went to someone’s 16th birthday party at the church hall and borrowed my mum’s going-out suit – it was a ’60s night. That night, I wound up with two friends who took me home and held me up straight. My mum said I looked like I’d been rolling around in a ditch and didn’t talk to me for three or four days. I kept saying sorry and that I’d never do it again.

My drinking got worse when I went to university. I lived on campus at Roehampton, and there was a bar on-site. The girl in the room next to me was burning joss sticks – I thought they were drugs – when she introduced herself. Her name was Alison, and we ended up going to the bar every night. She became my bestie, and it was all such good fun.

I spent my second year in France after a friend’s aunt found me a couple to live with. On the very first night I got drunk and, as I lay on the floor, I told them I am Jesus; I am the crucifix. They told me I was an alcoholic.

I didn’t have much money in France, but the family had a bike, and I started using that. I began getting fit. I didn’t have to study that year, so I rode the bike and swam. I got a job in a hotel and got drunk. In my mind, that was my healthy year, but the people I lived with continued to tell me I was an alcoholic.

I finished my degree in the 90s, when ladette culture broke, and this became my personality – my badge. I soon moved to Spain and, on my first night, challenged two male neighbours to a drinking contest. I won, but I also vomited all over their carpet. This was my introduction to my new flatmate and neighbours. In Spain, I taught English from 6 pm to 10 pm Monday to Thursday, and on Fridays we would have staff meetings. Every single night when the clock struck 10 pm I’d head out to drink. At this point, because I barely ate, I started fainting and getting ill, and the English crowd began to get tired of me. I would become loud and argumentative; I’d pick fights with bouncers. I soon started going out on my own and would drink other people’s slops.

At 27 years old, I came back to England, to Oxford, and I got a job in a girls’ school. But after a few months I was bored. At this time, I had stopped drinking during the week so I told myself I cannot be an alcoholic. Soon, however, I discovered an Irish pub that had a lock-in, and I started going there after work. This became a habit. One time I even invited some of my students to the pub and proceeded to get very drunk in front of them. One of them complained about it, and my boss sat me down to have a word. I didn’t understand the problem.

During that time, I would call Alison, who also lived in Oxford, and try to get her to join me in my drinking. I asked her to join me at the pub lock-ins, but she wouldn’t. One time I called Alison to tell her I had met a man and was set to move to Ireland with him, and Alison told me this: “My friend, I’ve got to let you go with love”. In later years she told me she had been to Al-Anon.

While in Oxford, this American girl would pick me up after the lock-ins. I thought I was doing her a favour by telling her my escapades every morning, but one time I told her I think I have a drink problem. She asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting.  Think my reply was “What is that? I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Oxford. I figured I might meet a new bloke there, so I started chatting up the tea maker, but he wasn’t interested. I remember the meeting was dark, lit by candles, and that the chair was talking about playing golf with his son. I also remember interrupting the sharer because I wanted to talk about my drinking. I was told I could do so later, and this annoyed me. I found it difficult to stay quiet and listen. I didn’t go back.

I ended up meeting a guy who told me I was wonderful. He said all the right things, including ‘come live with me,’ which I did … A couple of weeks later I moved to Ireland with him. I remember walking behind him when he suddenly turned around and said, “What am I doing with you?” I would not, or maybe could not, acknowledge the red flags. While in Ireland, I was teaching Salsa dancing, and the Spanish people in Ireland loved it; my new boyfriend hated it. He would call me a slut and various other names, and I became scared. Too scared to leave him. Someone once asked why I don’t go back to England, and I remember telling them: “Because he won’t let me”.

I didn’t see how truly bad it had all gotten, but I was in a low place, so I started seeing a counsellor. I wanted her to tell me to go home, but she wouldn’t. She was very good at helping me come to my own conclusions. I did finally move back to London, to my mum’s, but before long I missed him. And so back I moved to Ireland to be with him, and the same things happened. I just couldn’t let him go. He would sometimes tell me all the things I wanted to hear, and other times tell me I was mad, stupid, and that no one else would want me. This went on for four or five years before it ended.

I moved back to London, to Leytonstone, and wound up meeting a man. Though it was again wonderful in the beginning, he was somehow worse for me. It was love bombing, and again I became scared to leave. We spent one New Year in the Seychelles, staying in a house with a swimming pool. I told the pool man to join us, that It’s New Year’s Eve and you shouldn’t be working, and my boyfriend got so angry that he smashed my head on the tiled floor and tried to strangle me. I ran to the toilet to phone for help, but I remembered nothing after that. We flew home together on the plane with him whispering horrible stuff to me, and no one knew.

When I was able to finally break up with him, I moved back to mum and dad’s, and I just stayed in. I basically watched TV and went to work. I had no idea about hobbies or how to talk to people … so I called him again, the same man who had attacked me, and we started back up. Before long I was holed up in his flat just drinking. My mum and sister were terrified. At work I would hallucinate and sweat, and I thought people were coming after me. Finally, my boss came up to me and told me that people were worried about me. I agreed to see a doctor, who was also a family friend, and he was an angel. I told him the truth about my drinking and my boyfriend, about everything. The doctor advised me to cut up my SIM card and that he would not contact you….I cut it up, and he didn’t contact me.  

I looked in the Ilford Recorder, and A.A. was in a little advertising box. My sister came with me to a meeting – Ilford on Saturday at 6 pm – and I cried all the way through. They told me to come back and that there are meetings every day. I told them I ain’t that bad, but it was clear I was in bad shape. I was withdrawing, and I couldn’t settle. I was 31 and back at home. The fact I didn’t smoke in front of my parents probably got me to more meetings, as I could smoke in AA rooms.

At one meeting, a lady called Kay sat next to me and gave me a lift home. She took me to meetings for about six weeks. I was scared of men. I didn’t want hugs. I was vulnerable, but Kay looked after me. At one Leytonstone meeting, Scottish Angie did the chair, and I couldn’t believe a woman could talk so openly. Her chair got me as I sat at the back with my hood up. Although the self-obsession was on me, I really tuned into the Irish contingent. I listened to Jean, Zita, Kevin and Denis, especially when they advised me to stay away from certain people. I was just so vulnerable back then.

My sober date is 6^th September 2003. One of my first home groups was the Seven Kings meeting, and I stayed because of the regulars. I would sit next to an older Irish woman who became my AA mum; she was so kind. I did meetings at Whipps, Leytonstone, Stratford, and I loved the before-and-after café at Forest Gate on Saturday.

When I attended meetings at St Clements Hospital, I walked the wards, and it was heartbreaking to see people in their beds due to alcohol and related issues. I’d tell them about AA meetings; that there is a solution downstairs. I did bring some women from the ward to the meeting, but most would say, “nah, I’m alright.” 

Doing service helped a lot. I was a phone responder for East London, and my first commitment was literature because I didn’t need to talk to anyone. I soon got asked to speak at meetings, and I remember smoking the whole way through one early chair at Hinde Street. Someone shared back and said I should stop smoking. I did love smoking in meetings.

My first sponsor wore Gucci boots. She was sober for two years but drank again. A Scottish lady became my temporary sponsor until she moved back up north. My current sponsor is Christine, who had been sober for twenty years when Kay suggested I ask her. I made my first ever call to Christine when I was brand new. It was late at night, and I asked her if I could drink shampoo. She told me not to phone at this time, and that was that! I now know she was setting a boundary.

But Chris became my sponsor, and she has been great. We went through the steps and did step 3 at Waltham Abbey. I was so paranoid someone would read my step 4 that I wrote it in Spanish, Italian, French and code, and then struggled to decipher it. I wound up telling everything to our family doctor, a man, and he understood psychosis. I message him every year on my AA birthday.

One of the many gifts of sobriety has been reconnecting with the couple I stayed with in France thirty years ago. When I left France, the wife was pregnant, so I had been invited back to meet the baby and attend the couple’s wedding. I proceeded to get drunk, make a show of myself and had to be put to bed by a grandmother. Thirty years later, their son – who I briefly met as a newborn baby – found me on Facebook and invited me to his wedding. I was so surprised. I’m sober, and the family asked no questions. I was able to introduce them to my own son and to thank them for all they did for me, including encouraging me to follow my love of languages.

This programme has given me the ability to be at peace with myself and know myself; to be a safe person to be with and to be trusted. Today I have a voice and backbone; I’m not vulnerable, and I have male friends with no agendas. You know my mate Alison – the one who told me she had to let me go with love – well she’s back in my life, and today I call her Ali Babar. I was eight years sober when a mutual friend gave me Alison’s details. I wrote her a card, told her what I was doing, and apologised for how I had treated her. I told her I had a one-year-old baby and left it at that. She rang me the day she got the card and said, “Oh my god, you’re alive!”

She invited me to come and stay with her and her husband; she even looked up meetings for me in Oxford. Later, one Christmas, she pushed a 24-hour chip across the table, to which I said, “I already got one of them”. It’s still all about me. But Alison said, “No, this is mine; I’ve been going to A.A.”

I didn’t know the extent of Ali’s drinking, but she is now 10 years sober. Today we have a recovery friendship, and I was a bridesmaid at her second wedding, and I managed not to make a show of myself.  I thought AA was a cult, but I realised it isn’t. AA is people who want others to get well and see the lights come on. I didn’t see it in myself, but I’m grateful that today I can see it in others.

If I spoke to the me who came to AA for the first time, I would tell her that you have no idea how much this is going to help you. No idea how much this is going to change your life. I’d tell her to grab this with both hands and stick with it. These people know what they are talking about. Look for the similarities, not the differences.