You wouldn't believe the problems I've had with the stuff. A combination of genetics and culture bestowed upon me an Irish inclination towards inebriation coupled with a misspent youth growing up in Southern Africa where you were a bit of a wuss if you couldn't down 10 beers and then drive home. Relocating to the UK should have been the perfect opportunity to deal with it; if anything it got worse. I drank like a maniac, incessantly pouring it in, and became increasingly dissipated, washed up on the tide of life in a small English town populated by eccentrics and other refugees from reality. I convinced myself that writing was my salvation and then found I couldn't write unless I'd had a few drinks to unlock the treasure chest of memories. Then darker stuff began to surface; walking into a burning village and finding a blood trail that led into the trees; children who had been disfigured by Renamo with faces twisted into permanent snarls betrayed by their pleading eyes as they proffered limbless stumps; a friend walking into a minefield that replayed over and over again in my head. Terrible things.
I started to drink more, and was sometimes too drunk to hold a pen; frequently I couldn't even hold a conversation - people wandering within range got fragments of an endless, increasingly slurred rant. People were very kind, and very confused by it; why did someone with so much potential, still so young, choose to destroy themselves in this way? I was becoming an embarrassment in such a small town, so I moved to a nearby city. Some of you may have seen me - I was the one sitting on the bench by the market, or slumped in the doorway on Prince of Wales road watching the clubbers vomit up their kebabs. I'd be alright for a few days, stay off the stuff, but the tension would build and build, culminating in one explosive binge that could go on for days. I went 4 days without food, my sister sent me £10 to keep me from starving and I went and drank it. I lost count of the places I got barred from. I ended up in the gutter.
But I could still write. Whatever punishments I was meteing out to my beleagered brain, the bloody thing kept ticking along. I was attacked one night and got kicked in the head so hard some of my teeth came out - I was saved by the owner of a Pizza place who came running into the road brandishing a knife and scared off my assailants. I lost the sight of my left eye for a few days but was all the while keeping up a commentary in my head, utterly detached from proceedings - this is not me, this is not my life, I've ended up in the wrong scene by mistake.
By this time I knew it was the alcohol that was doing it - it may seem extraordinary, but it was hard to admit it to myself, and there were many reasons I was as screwed up as I was. I went to my GP and asked for help. He gave me a phone number which I lost. I knocked on the door of a police station one night wanting to be taken into custody so I couldn't go and drink any more, and the (incredibly patient) duty sergeant told me to go home and sleep it off. I rang the Samaritans, and one of them must have given me a phone number I didn't lose, because I woke up on the floor of my flat, a dropped bottle of wine on the floor, with the phone off the hook and a number scrawled next to it. I dialled it without knowing what I was doing, and got through to Alcoholics Anonymous.
The meeting was in one of those churches that inhabit the industrial wastelands of so many British cities. An elderly priest was just opening up as I arrived, going round and switching on dim energy saving bulbs. "Ah, you're here for the meeting", he said. "Do come in." I was such a basket case of raw emotion I had to go outside again and lit a cigarette to calm down. A figure emerged from the shadows. "You're first time here? he asked in a strong Northern Irish accent. I nodded. "You'll be fine", he said. "You've done the right thing by coming along." I had the shakes as I'd been off the drink for 48 hours and it was starting to get bad. I sat there dripping with sweat as people took turns to read out of a large book. Everythign they said, every line that they read, was like a bomb going off. "That's me", I kept thinking. "They are talking about me." It was such a relief to hear these strangers describe things that I felt each day and which shut me off from the rest of society. They were of all ages, from an 18-year-old through to a very elegant lady in her seventies, and all had different stories, some unbelievably harrowing, others quite mundane, but we all had the same thing in common - we were all alcoholics.
I left that evening trying to get to grips with the truth of what they all said, and which I knew to be true; I could never drink again. I knew that if I did, I would be straight back in the gutter and face the long, agonising crawl back to sobriety again. It's like playing chess against yourself - you are always trying to convince yourself why you should have another drink. But you can't. It's not an option. One drink is too many and a thousand wouldn't be enough. I wished I could drink like normal people, but I can't, and that's all there is to it.
My last drink was on August 2nd 2000. I've been doing alright - I'll never go back to it. Today we had a staff party in the local pub, and I found it pretty heavy going; it's probably what prompted this confession, which is the first time I've tried to describe what happened to me. It was difficult in the pub, and a few people asked me what was wrong, but I got through it. I'll ride it out.