My Life Story

I guess I've always been an alcoholic. At least, I've always drunk alcohol. My mother used to put a few drops of whisky in a bottle of warm water and give it to me when I was a baby. And that was a long time ago.

I had my first real drink when I was 14 years old. On my paper round a woman said she'd give me ten pounds to make dinner for her, and I did. Then she gave me some martini. It really made me feel good. For the first time, I really felt all right. Until then, I'd always felt all wrong - a loner with no real friends.

Well, I found out pretty soon that the woman wanted more than breakfast. I got out of that okay, but with a brand-new taste that was to stay with me for years.

The next weekend I ventured to town with some friend. We purchased a bottle of Archer's and found a place to drink it. I got drunk, blacked out, and was sick, and we went back to get some more. In my hometown of Durham the accepted attitude was: When you take a drink, you're supposed to get drunk.

I'd been pretty unhappy at home. It was a quiet home. Nobody drank much apart from medicinally, and my parents were very dull. I had a sister everybody said was prettier, and I remember I used to get sick on purpose just so my mother would pay attention to me. But now I had booze, and when I was drinking, I felt warm and handsome and loved - at least for a while.

Because I was skipping school to drink I was sent away to a boarding school where booze was difficult to obtain. I learned to use substitutes: inhaling glue, lighter fluid, petrol, paint, or hair spray and drinking aftershave lotion or mouthwash. I would collect my own alcoholic urine and save it for when I had nothing else. I was expelled from that school and sent back to live with my grandparents in Smallfield, Surrey.

Sex also became very important, because I wanted love. I would stand by greengrocers until I saw one of those women who go in and buy only a cucumber. Then I would expose myself to her and I'd go back to her place, demanding a Pimms or a Barcadi before we made love.

I got sick now almost every time I drank. It wasn't long before I decided I really needed alcohol to function. When I got my first job at a lens-cleaning factory I used the booze to dull the pain I felt from cutting my fingers on the sharp lenses. I'd sneak out for a Bailey's every day at lunchtime, and soon I switched to Diamond White. Every weekend was a blur, and by Sunday night I'd always be lying in state, passed out cold and paranoid.

At university I decided that enough was enough and that I'd have to change my ways or die. No one would know that I was alcoholic and I could make a fresh start. I tried to engage myself in as many clubs and societies as possible so to take my mind off drinking, and I even founded the "Use Your Head Society", trying to encourage people to take pleasure in life, and cope with pressure without resorting to alcohol.

But it was no use. I still had no real friends, and fell in with a group of people who were rejected from the rest of college for their sick humour, anti-social behaviour and drunkenness. Because I had so little self-confidence I joined in their drinking games until one day I ended up in hospital, in a coma for 3 days because I had drunk so much.

Now the old feelings of guilt returned. People knew once again that I was an alcoholic. I couldn't wait to leave university and go start afresh once more. The rest of my time I spent in a drunken haze and almost failed my degree. I was stealing to pay for my drink money, stealing anything, burgers from Ali's kebab van and even used to stuff Pic'N'Mix sweets from newsagents into my jacket.

I got a job in London. They didn't seem to mind heavy drinking when they interviewed me, and that was why I joined. They even joked about their name: AA. It certainly wasn't a good job and it involved spending several months doing data-entry in a locked underground room with water dripping down through the ceiling from the street above.

But even in this hard drinking firm there were problems. When I started I was on medication for 2 weeks for an abscess in my tooth. As soon as the 2 weeks was over I drank myself literally into the gutter and had to get my suit dry-cleaned.

Drinking prevented me from doing most of the things that normal people take for granted like brushing my teeth and changing my underwear. Sometimes I would even lose a drinking competition because I had drunken so much before it even began.

I went back to drinking at lunchtime, except that I started drinking from lunchtime, because when I started drinking I couldn't concentrate at work afterwards. I had not had a proper girlfriend since the early greengrocer days when I was just starting out on my addiction, and I had still never had a meaningful relationship with someone who loved me.

I had heard in Sweden that the girls were really impressed by feats of heavy drinking so I moved there and for a time was happy. But I could never keep a girlfriend because I was always too drunk to perform. One year after I moved to Sweden I had been arrested 17 times on charges of intoxication. With my monthly pay I did nothing but drink. My friends I had left behind in England. My sister no longer spoke to me. I lived alone and friendless except for the company of a few other drunks like myself. I had spilt so much beer and ketchup on my suit from Åhlens that I didn’t even bother to clean it anymore.

Finally, just when I thought I was going to die from my addiction I went to a friend’s house party. He was not drinking himself, and when he saw how fast I was drinking he took me to one side and asked me if I wanted to stop drinking. I didn’t know what he was talking about because I can’t speak Swedish, so I nodded & smiled politely. He went into the kitchen and brought me out a 500ml can of Budweiser. I took a sip of it and realized I was saved. It tasted almost like normal alcohol, but was piss-weak, and I could drink as much of it as I wanted without further damage to my liver.

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