reunited

I’m told the ratio of recovery is 3 to 1 by a man at a Sunday evening meeting ‘one person dies, one person is in a relapse, one person is in recovery’, he says this with a sadness and smile that tells me ‘you’re doing okay’, but he sees needles and public toilets and pain in his mind. And I am tense in anticipation. Because nothing in that ratio is solid, but death. This is the reality. Although I think the real statistic is 1-10 chance of recovery.  Sadly, neither feel wrong, and that makes me ache. And so, I go, back to rehab for the day, the annual reunion. My first trip back.

We listen to music, talk loudly, silly singing and laughing, and bubbles in our tummies as we drive. It feels like it’s the only right thing to do, that there is only one way the car can go. Outside are the hills of Gloucestershire, I know this drive, something skips in my soul. There is coal in my chest that can’t be swallowed, it’s indigestible. As the roads get smaller and we get closer I am somewhere between me and who I was two years ago; I’m sitting between the two, sweaty palms and hospital stained skin, and clean and serenity. Squashed and suddenly nameless in thoughts. We turn in and I breathe deeply, pull together the two parts of me, squeeze them into each other. The tires roll over the gravel in that beautifully familiar sound. We walk up to the happy and joyful, who offer tea and name badges. We’re early, we wait. Sip tea under the marque that looks like too grand, too out of place, a sour thumb. It sits at the bottom end of the car park. The rest looks the same. It’s how I remember it but it’s shrunk. All the memories are still here, they’re right where I left them.

As people drift in the bells start to ring in my brain, with ‘it’s you,’ and everyone begins to feel like family again. We swap stories, talk of therapists we feared and ones who fell asleep. We are naughty school children with giggles and cigarettes. We laugh at the tedium and the tears we shared. The changes are huge, ‘not fast car- big house’ huge. But happiness huge, ‘I have my family back’ huge, ‘I walked the dog’ huge, ‘my life in now manageable’ huge. ‘I don’t want to die’ huge. One mother shares about how she’s now a grandmother, how she couldn’t be happier since her daughter left treatment three years ago. A woman talks about the old parts of herself she’s learnt to live with and ignore. Someone who’s voice was once stuck in their chest, picks up the microphone and talks of becoming a man, studying at university, being free from pain, being brave. And I am so proud to be part of this.

 There are faces that are mending, hopeful and full. Chubby where sullen cheeks once sat on grey sunken bones. Fresh with colour, eyes alive again. None of us want to go back there, back to the madness. We eat, spread ourselves busy across this space that now looks so small. Children play on a bouncy castle that sits on a piece of grass where I had sat and wept in hopelessness. Where I had felt this pain was forever and it was always. I scan the faces, the faces of the people who have dug themselves out. Spat out the dirt and scrubbed off the soil. And have come back here on a Saturday afternoon to keep fighting.

Some have relapsed and come back. My self-included, I’m almost six months again. We all say- ‘this time I’m doing something different, this time I have hope.’ That’s what today’s about- hope. The hope we find in each other. Because we know how dangerous this game of life can be. But today we are fighting. And it’s beautiful.

Back to Bristol and rain spits at the glass of the car window. I remember the fear I had of this city before. Terrified the place would steal me into its stinking underbelly. I’m not afraid of that any more.  

It went too quickly. I wanted to hold it longer. To crawl back into the space that saved me in the moment I needed to be saved to the most. To let it cover me in warmth. It’s a little bit like going home, like slipping into a memory or a dream or a world where time doesn’t exist at all because you’re back there and everything’s changed but nothing’s changed at all. Today is a tiny fragment of all the collected moments I’ve had so far. A day where the dots join up and new picture begins. 

how much for my life

I search ‘drug rehabilitation’, there are hundreds that flash up; beautiful buildings, clinical rooms, promises of a life lived like a hotel. Hidden price tags. I try again- ‘free rehab,’ up pops adverts like package holidays on a website- ‘At home detox, only £1295’, ‘7 day residential detox £2500’, LATEST OFFERS screaming from the screen like Tomas Cook’s Tenerife get away. Pay for your pain because you are the pain in society, that’s what I hear. It’s what I see in the streets, clay faces, glazed eyes, ignored. Prisons full of the aches and no escape. Almost as if our answer is in our bank balance, blind the side lines and tunnel vision to debt and empty pockets.  

I called up Bristol Wellbeing when I was low, lower than low, needed to talk to someone again. Half an hour of questions and heart and soul pouring, rated the highest on the depression “scale”. A call back months later to tell me they couldn’t help me because I am a drug addict. Because I have a disease that separates me from the rest of humanity. But this story is small, mine is small and I am lucky. I talk to recovery friends, they talk of waiting lists and bedsits and mould and mattresses on floors, park benches, fear. Hospital beds that kick from underneath them when the shaking is dulled and slowed by medication.

I understand that it’s our responsibility to get clean. Recovery is a choice, but how can you choose when no one is giving you the option? The utter bleakness of this illness is reflected in the way it’s treated. The best treatment to seems to be the hardest to find, almost a secret. It feels like our freedom is sold to us. Our lives are sold back to us. I praise the NHS, love the NHS but drug rehabilitation isn’t really provided by them at all. Just detox after detox. The irony of doctors pumping more drugs into our systems to get us clean, detoxing our bodies when the toxins are in our brains. We know more now, we are smarter than this now. Aren’t we? Can’t we look back over the years at what’s worked and what hasn’t.

I overdosed twice. I was pumped out and pumped in and once my body was better, I was sent home. But I was sick, sick stained, ready to die. Had I not been so lucky I would have. I went to a private rehab, a private rehab that cost £10,000 a month. £10,000 that my family didn’t have but they were able to find in precious people. What could I have done? Being ill is a luxury for the wealthy and dying is almost a certainty for the poor.  Recently I read that there were no beds in any mental health wards on the NHS. None. Zero. Nothing. There are stories of people being put in beds miles from home, teenagers and children separated from their families. It’s not enough. Not good enough at all. Because this isn’t just about addiction, this is about mental health. When will mental health be considered just health? When will it no longer be segregated and covered in barbed wire, for horror films to written about, fear to be spread with, lives to be played with.

The vulnerable have always been taken advantage of. The dreadful cost of the Grenfell fire was only felt by the poor and the hiding. Addicts are vulnerable, their disease tells them they want to die. It lies to them and it’s a terrifying place to be. There are free ways to escape the pain, but the place between using and that safety is a long and tough stretch during which there is very little support. Charities do incredible things, staffed with experienced survivors who know how hands should be held, know that addiction is forever and therefore treatment must be forever. But they are few and far between – underfunded and overshadowed by the promise of quick release, by a week in hospital which may seem more appealing than confronting demons. Getting sober is a battle, a bloody and hideous battle. It’s horrible and scary and we cannot do it alone. Why must that mean that we pay through skin and bone to be well? Why must that mean, just because this illness takes such an ugly shape, that we ignore it on our streets?

It seems that the homeless addict loses his or her right to be human. People pass a person who has passed out in filthy clothes but if that person was suited, briefcase in hand, they would be much more ready to help. Why do we lose our souls because of our bank balance? Everything else is treated, but our mental health is so often ignored. It’s not good enough. Our heroes are crowned – the famous drug survivors, the ones who sparkle in their sobriety and use their celebrity to shout about how good it feels to be clean. We need Russell Brand and his ilk – he inspires and he is proof that there is another ‘country’ on the other side of the demon bridge but he is a one-off and most of us don’t have his wonderful money and confidence to help to blast away the agonies.

In the meantime, the ‘crack head’ on the corner is blamed, belittled, berated and perhaps worst of all, invisible. He will keep scoring until he dies unless someone ‘sees’ him and his many many ‘friends’. The people who could make a real change need to dust off their glasses, look straight at these struggling souls who are just minutes away from being you and me and come up with some real answers.

http://www.charislondon.org/home/4541859091

http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

http://www.cauk.org.uk/index.asp

http://ukna.org/

https://www.focus12.co.uk/

A relapse

 I am tight fisted in nerves. Clenched and furious. Sorry for my silence.

But I must write what I need to say.

Sometimes a relapse is big. I have heard about them. The chaotic fall and the fear.

Sometimes it is fast. Moving before you. Speeding past you.

This is what I had feared. This is what I had thought would happen.

But it didn’t happen like that at all.

For me it was tiny, small, slow, it built and built. It lied to me, I lied to myself and people around me. I was quick in my lies. Like I have been so many times before.

I have been silent because I have been ashamed. But in reality, I know I am allowed to fuck up and make mistakes. I didn’t let myself sink to the bottom again. I quit before I went far too far.

I am back and I am stronger. I didn’t know if I should post about this. Fear was there with the shame and the pain. But I started with honesty so will continue with it.

It started before it really started. Like I was told it would. It started with me denying my story and ignoring my needs. With my silence. Sometimes I believed with such power that I was okay. I was convinced that I could drink. I disbelieved that the simple sip would let me slip into that safe and warm oblivion I was seeking.

For that, I feel foolish.

After the minuets that lasted for months the truth spiked through my gut. The voice became loud again and was followed so quickly with all that regret.

Someone told me that I didn’t have to wait for the disaster to make a change. So his voice rang all too true. And it’s with relief I start sober again.

It’s been a while and sleeping is hard. Long nights are hard. Difficult, a problem that is too tricky to be solved so I sit with it. And ask it over and over ‘when will you leave?’

But I refuse to fall back into the deep. I refuse to wait till the change is a need. I am fierce and strong once more. I can and will walk into rooms where I know I will find help. Calling for it once more brings me relief and joy. It’s a joy to be fighting and fixing again.

A relapse is not worth it. I do not wish to play with fire by fucking up my world. I wish to be back and I am. 

And I am, once more, so sorry to all who stood with me in the tornado I ever so recklessly brought.