This is part of a series called “The Bottled Scream” A Disease of Self – Understanding Addiction and Recovery. To go back to the introduction click here.

Addiction & Treatment

I didn’t like the people in the treatment centre much. Well the first people I had met there anyway. I went there and spoke to two women, one who was in recovery, a heroin addict and the other a normie, non addict, earthling. It showed. They were so impressed with my jaundice that they insisted on looking at it outside in the daylight, parading me, like some freak, around in the front of the treatment centre. It was humiliating. Not as humiliating as when the posse of Chinese students starting shouting and gesturing towards me on the way home. Just as they had done when I went to the Pathology lab in the University Hospital to get my blood tested and my fatty liver checked out.

Luckily I had already been given the gift of desperation and had no choice but to suck these things up. They hurt and upset me but they were the least of my problems. I took to walking down the back lanes to avoid any more such scenes. Three weeks I walked these furtive furroughs, until my jaundice started fading. It was under doctor orders that I did, he suggested the daylight would help lighten my skin. He seemed unconcerned that this was difficult while still suffering from psychosis.

I was to start treatment the following week. It was called pretreatment. I would be interviewed by a counsellor and would have a few weeks in pre group treatment before joining ten other peope in group therapy. I was fast tracked into the treatment program as I had shown commitment by going to AA meetings and plus I was an emergency case. Although, I am not too sure this emergency case would have gotten me into treatment if I hadn’t gone to AA first of all. This showed commitment to recovery supposedly. I am not sure the severity of my addiction would have gotten me in and I may have died then. But that was a parallel route that I was not forced to take.

I was first interviewed by one of the Treatment centre’s counsellors to get some background information. He was late for the appointment. I remember damning him in my mind for being late! For me! Didn’t he know who I was! A jaundiced, half blind, half dead, pscyhotic alcoholic! I couldn’t bear it, him being late. How dare he!? I had things to do! Although I can’t recall now what these things were. My impatience, intolerance and ignorance of the reasons he was late were extreme. I wondered if I had always been this emotionally immature. This emotionally overreactive, surely not? Was I like this as a young man? I didn’t think so. It was bad enough being constantly on the verge of relapse and death without having to contend with the fact I had gone strangely mad?

I consoled myself it was the legacy of the psychosis, the thought of which made me fell like vomiting. The liquid swimming around my brain had subsided somewhat but hadn’t retreated completely. I still felt a lot worse than dead. Looking back on the past I had held a number of responsible jobs and had lots of friends. I had been very different to this! Once upon a time, I had been very different to this. What the hell had happened to me? Without my express permission too. It must have worsened over the years and decades of drinking and taking drugs and I hadn’t noticed? Maybe they had gotten worse as the result of decades of taking drugs and drinking?

I did have many mental health problems in that time and perhaps these had been stage posts on the road to this complete decline. I also felt like a freak – I was so jaundiced I looked like an ad for Ready Break! I was very conspicious and every minute waiting heightened this distress. I was full of self pity and self loathing, shame ate into my soul. What was the point of this, I would be dead soon enough, wouldn’t I? What were the chances of someone like me, this far gone, ever having any length of sobriety? The longest I ever managed was when I was in mid twenties and that 6 months was supported by an addiction to Buddhist meditation. The only other period was 14 months earlier when I managed two weeks of stark raving sober. Walking miles and miles everyday to stay sober. Coming to think of it, I was really mad then too. Not this mad, however. I had never been this mad! How was I going stay sober while really mental?

The counsellor eventually  arrived. He said he was sorry for the wait. I muttered to myself that he better be. Didn’t he know who I was? Given he had just met me, no. He had no doubt heard of me. That really jaundiced, mad guy! I had no doubt been the talk of the recovery world. You know, the half blind, half dead guy! Him! My paranoia was still on the ceiling even after a week or so of sobriety. Maybe the paranoia had progressed alongside my general madness over the decades. This was alarming as I had always been paranoid even when relatively sane. I had always thought it was better to be paranoid just in case. Especially growing up in Northern Ireland.

I was led up to his office. I felt like the Elephant man. I felt like the elephant in the room too. The guy who was about to die but no one mentioned it. It was obvious wasn’t it? They could hardly turn me away, I was another statistic on their books. Another client seen. Ticked on the list. Maybe they had to take the odd no hoper, last gasper. I wasn’t going to make it, I knew that and he probably realised that too. “Sorry again”, he said, “I was dealing with a potential suicide”. Whatever!

After finally getting is act together he sat down opposite me. He didn’t really look at me, the first time he did, he said, “You probably don’t have another recovery in you Shay” he said, conforming my suspicions, for once my paranoia was spot on. Shay was my name in Dublin, when it wasn’t Seamas or Seamie in Belfast, or Seamus to my parents and people of Derry. Seamus is Irish for James, pronounced Shimmus in Derry, which I was rarely ever known as given people in Britian struggled with pronuncing it properly so Shay was easier all round. James, however, is written on my birth certificate. I liked he knew what was my my preferred name. I felt he was addressing me now.

Like most alcoholics I have been a chameleon all my life, shapeshifting to fit in to any situation or group of people, guard against being rejected. It helped in a Protestant area when a Catholic. I liked Shay as it reminded me of good times as a 16 year old courting a lass from Dublin. It was me away from the troubles and Derry and the North of Ireland and my family. It was me without that baggage, the new me. The counsellor puntuated this reverie.

“Okay?”

I nodded tersely. It was as bad as my crazy head had thought, and that wasn’t good. He told me that I wasn’t alcoholic. My my eyes lit up in a mixture of hope and surprise, inwardly applauding myself for my diagnosis of simply drinking on a tough childhood!

“Really?”

“No, you are a chronic alcoholic!”

 I deflated at this and felt very embarrassed at falling for line again, this twice in a week. I was way beyond alcoholic he insisted. Alcoholic was barely visible now in the rear view mirror, it was so long ago.

“Only dead alcoholic people are more alcoholic than you!”

And some of them weren’t? This was it, no more goes. A once in a lifetime opportunity. Get this recovery thing right or I would either be dead or in a mental health institution with permanent brain damage. I was close to this already. He knew that too. Most people did.

I was booked into pregroup which would last for a couple of weeks until a place in group therapy came up. I attended pre group the next day and the week after. It was assessing our motivation to change. I still tried to convince anyone who would listen that I drank because of my tough childhood in Northern Ireland. Most nodded in some sympathy. One person said he had once heard a guy for Belfast say that growing up in Northern Ireland didn’t cause his alcoholism, it just didn’t help it any. I thought about this and disagreed with him and the other guy from Belfast. Northern Ireland caused my drinking I was convinced. The Counsellor looked at me again. “So what about all the people you grew up, are they all alcoholic too?”

“Not all”, I said back.

“See!”, he replied, happy to have scored a point. Made a breakthrough!

“Nah, the rest are drug addicts!”