You could be a millionaire drinking the finest brandy, a teacher who keeps a bottle in the drawer, a bricklayer who only drinks in the pub because "only people who drink at home have a problem", a businessmen living on liquid lunches (and breakfast, tea and dinner...) or you could be the guy you see asleep on a bench nursing a two litre bottle of cider.
But it doesn't matter who you are or who you think you are because you share one thing in common with all of these people.
You have a drink problem.
This is the author's personal experience, it seeks neither sympathy, comment or approval...it just is how it is.
Being one of the eldest of my friends I had the privelage of joining in with the adult's conversation and inevitably somebody thought it would be a good idea to give 'the boy' a drink. Some sort of initiation thing? A right of passage? Who knows, all I do know is that I was drinking vodka and lemonade with 'The Men' and it felt good. It tasted good too and I enjoyed the feeling it gave me. I didn't get drunk, my mother would have had something to say to the dad's about that, but I was distinctly warm and happy.
I went to my first pub and bought a proper pint at the age of fifteen and drank ever since. I remember regularly sitting up in a park near where I lived with a few mates drinking strong cider until I was so drunk I could hardly walk and then going home and throwing up in the bathroom. Needless to say my mother was none too impressed.
I left home at eighteen and moved into a string of bedsits while I was studying for my engineering apprenticeship. Most, if not all, of my socialising centered around pubs and it was in a nightclub that I met my first real girlfriend who was to become my wife a few years later.
After buying my first house, settling into a good career with excellent prospects and getting married I calmed down a bit. And whilst I was always a social drinker I felt that I was in control of it. I had money, a beautiful house a couple of nice cars and was a success in my engineering career and on the promotional ladder. In fact I was living the middle-class suburban dream, not bad for a kid from a council estate and broken home.
At twenty-seven I moved into lower management with an international engineering company. Boozy business lunches became a daily occurrence and I would always drop in the pub on the way home for a few with the lads. By the age of thirty my wife was pregnant with our first child and we were living very comfortably. As far as I was concerned all was rosy and I wasn't really paying attention to the slow grip that alcohol was getting on me.
Then something quite shocking to me happened, my wife miscarried. I was there holding her hand at three in the morning as our hopes for the future disappeared, it was a harrowing experience and one I hope I never have to go through again. My wife dropped into depression and I coped the only way I knew how. I threw myself into the bottom of a bottle in an attempt to block out the misery around me. My work began to suffer.
The next year my wife became pregnant again, we were both elated but frightened at the same time, happily nine months later we had a beautiful, healthy baby boy in our arms and life seemed to be back on the up. But I hadn't accounted for the depth of my alcohol problem. By now it had taken a real grip of me and I found myself taking a drink when I woke up just to get 'straight' enough to go to work.
The stresses and strains that had occurred during our marriage finally proved too much for us both and eventually my wife decided to leave, taking my six month old son with her. Sadly instead of dealing with the problem in a positive way I took it as an excuse to drink more and more to the point where I was drinking a full bottle of whisky a day and wine and beer to send me into oblivion at night.
I lost my job shortly after my wife (now ex-wife) left and found myself alone in my lovely house that was up for sale as she had claimed half share of it and I couldn't afford to pay her off. But hey, I still had my credit cards so life consisted of waking up, getting to the off-licence and buying my alcohol, then going home and drinking myself into a stupor. Most mornings I woke up in my clothes, either on the sofa or the bathroom floor.
Old friends stopped calling (except for one very special man who I owe my life to) colleagues turned their backs, places I was known in became strangely quiet when I walked through the door and life became a cycle of drinking and collapsing. Most mornings I was sorry to even find myself awake. Eventually the house sale went through, I gave all of our furnishings and possessions to my ex so that at least my son wouldn't have to suffer. And while she set herself up in a lovely new home with my son I went back to live with my mother and stepfather in the same old village I had left some fourteen years before (continued on next page).....
