If you want to hear Keith’s story – then click on the link below (it is my voice though)
I had my first drink at 16 and my last at 56. I remember my last drink; it was cheap vodka at 9 am. That was 40 years of drinking. My story is one of the insidious progression of this bloody illness. That first drink at 16 was at the George in Wanstead. I loved the atmosphere of the pub. The mahogany bar, the optics, a baby grand piano – I loved it. The first 10 years of my drinking were spent in pubs and clubs in the early 60s; I was in Soho, at all the music venues, loving it.
At 26, I met my first wife in the Green Man pub in Leytonstone. We got together, married, bought a house, and had a couple of kids. I had a business going; everything was hunky-dory. My drinking had changed; I was now flying, so I was drinking wine. I had gone from beer at 4% to wine at 13%, with a couple of liqueurs afterwards, and I loved that as well. I didn’t notice how it was creeping up on me, but my wife did. In 1987, we moved to Scotland, and now I know it was an effort on her part to change my drinking, it worked for a while, I got a good job as bursar at a private school, and she was building her own company, but the insidiousness of it crept back in, and one Sunday morning she said I’m leaving you; you’ve always got a drink in your hand. She left me; the kids stayed with me. She was going with another bloke called Alec.
It got worse after she left. I fought her over the divorce. I wanted everything, after all; she left me for another man. We came to an agreement in the end. I bought a bungalow in Bridge of Alan with the kids. It got worse there. I was arrested for drunk calls to a client. I knew nothing about it until the police knocked on the door and arrested me. Took me away and charged me, but they were later dropped.
I told the kids I had been drinking a bit too much; it was the pressure of mum leaving and looking after you two. They were 16 and 13 at the time; it was traumatic for them… it slowed me down a little. Within three years, it got worse: the eldest went to university, the youngest went back to live with her mum, and I moved to Potton, Bedfordshire. I got a job, a car, a little flat, and was a free agent. I went mad in Potton. One day I rang A.A. out of the blue.
Someone took me to my first meeting at Lister Hospital, and I loved it. I bought a copy of the Big Book, went home and read it, and went to one meeting a week for 8 weeks. That was in 1997.
I came up with a masterplan. I’d move in with my mum who had Alzheimer’s. So, looking after her would get me back on the straight and narrow. Alzheimer’s and Alcoholism is a volatile mix, and it wasn’t very good; it estranged me from my brother, who had been haranguing me about my drinking all the time, and…….it got worse.
January 2001, my mum’s birthday was on the 6th January, and on the 7th, she fell in her bedroom and broke her hip and ended up in Whipps Cross hospital. I was there all night with her. I got home at 9 in the morning, and I wanted oblivion. I had half a bottle of vodka tucked away and sunk that and assumed the position on the sofa and a while later I was still wide awake…’The bastard hadn’t worked’………I haven’t had a drink since that moment. Something broke or something healed. I went to my doctor; she gave me a leaflet for a treatment centre called WACS in Walthamstow. Dot interviewed me, and I signed up for two weeks and stayed for three months.
The memorable thing Dot said was, ‘Keith, the cruellest thing you can do to an alcoholic is take away the alcohol and put nothing in its place.’
I loved WACS; I was getting back into society, chewing the fat, but they kept banging on about AA. I said, I’ve been to AA and done that, that’s why I have come here. Around March or April 2001, Sean and Geordie Dave dragged me to the Whips Cross meeting one Friday night, and I’ve been going ever since. I went from scathing AA to getting bang on AA. I was doing a meeting every evening, four meetings at the weekend.
In 2003 my mum died; I had to get out of the family home and rented a flat, and I changed jobs. I applied for a job in the civil service; I was 58 at the time and thought I was on the scrap heap. I was examined at Harley Street and admitted I had a drink problem but hadn’t had a drink for two years. The doctor gave me a piece of paper – it said, ‘ This man has admitted to a mental condition that can recur in times of stress’. They gave me the job, and then they put me under stress……..
I started doing the literature at the Whipps Cross meeting; I shared it with ‘Little’ Mark. We would put all the books out on the boardroom table, and it would, at times, look like Tracey Emin’s bed. It was a close-knit group. At Whipps on a Friday, we would go to the tea hut; this was the fellowship and on Saturday at Forest Gate, the café before and after the meeting. It was the consistency of seeing the same people.
I got involved with Intergroup; Denis was chair, then Avi, and when I finished, I think it was Ivan. I was vice chair for a while, and one year helped with the cockney convention at Stratford. On Thursday, we went there to check the rooms, and the chandeliers had fallen. We panicked and ended up doing it outside; luckily, it was a sunny day, and I was exhausted by that. I didn’t carry on with the committee afterwards; I think that was in 2017.
I was very involved with the phone service, loved that commitment. When the Southern Office had to leave Cynthia Street, we looked for a new venue and found LaFone Street near Tower Bridge. Even then, I could feel myself getting too involved, so I had to step away. That has always been my trouble: I get too involved, and it gets personal… I have learned all this by going through the steps and having a sponsor. For me, I have only ever had one, and that’s John. I asked him because I liked how he shared. We would spend a couple of hours weekly going through the work. He gave me a really good grounding in those first 5 steps. We are still good friends; he has crossed the line, though; he moved to South London; that isn’t on.
I met Mary at the Walthamstow feelings meeting, and we grew into more than friends; my son was back in my life. He met a girl who was over here from Toronto, and he went over there to be with her, and Toronto happens to be Mary’s hometown. We go back there every year to see Mary’s family and my son. Mary and I got married in 2008. All the way through, I have kept close to AA.
I have always had a group of people I can tell I’m struggling. I love going to group meetings and speaking to people like Sean C, who does the fun run for his daughter; I had people like Geordie Dave and Little Mark, as we all had this connection. For health and other reasons, Mary and I now have two meetings a week; initially, we had separate meetings. Mary would do Euston, and I stuck to East London. We are man and wife, not sponsor and sponsee; we have our programmes, and this has worked for a long time. We do two meetings together, and they are big meetings in Walthamstow: Thursday Lunch and the feelings meeting on Sunday.
I owe AA a lot. My son needed help, as he was having some mental health problems, and I was using all the AA slogans and God willing, he has got through it.
I went looking for my higher power; I went to Romford market and bought a cross; I did the Alpha course, and it was here all the time: stop looking; it’s here. I have so much to be grateful for. I get up in the morning, make a couple of cups of tea, I sit in this conservatory, do my little readings, have my quiet time, watch the birds… everything is ok. I love isolation; it is no longer being lonely; it’s solitude, and I’m comfortable with serenity. If I could speak to the me at my first meeting, I would say to myself, trust the process; the evidence is there. Give it three months. Some people say, when will I get it? It’s like what Arthur says: “You get what you get, when you get it.” This higher power of mine dropped a bit of grace on me at 10 o’clock in the morning on the 8th January 2001. It all goes back to that moment. It took me a year to realise that.
I stopped drinking at the age of 56. At 58, I started a new career; at 64, I got married again; next month I will be 82 years old. When I turned 70, I thought this was the three score years and 10; I’m at the end… but when I hit 80, I suddenly felt like I had a new lease of life. I have become a gardener; I love it. I love my life at the moment. I hear people say they have been sober for as long as they drank. Well, for me, I would have to hit the age of 96, and you know, what, I think I can do it.