From Cambridge University to Prison
Paul has just recently completed his alcohol Rehabilitation with us
My life journey has been somewhat different from the majority of people who come into the re-hab. I am 62 years old and was born in the North West. My father was a professional man and a well-known man in the town. I was one of four children and was brought up as a strict Roman Catholic. I went to a Jesuit day-school in Preston then on to Cambridge where I got a degree in English Literature.
My working life was spent in nursing; first as a RNMH in a hospital for severely mentally handicapped children and later as a RMN in a large psychiatric hospital. I went on to specialize in working with children and adolescents both for Social Services as Head of a Local Authority Children’s Home; then as a CPN at a Childrens/Adolescent’s mental Health Service.
On the face of it this doesn’t seem like the life-story of an alcoholic, but my drinking which had always been lurking in the background as a problem in my life, quite quickly turned into full-blown addiction when my marriage of fourteen years ended just before my 50th birthday.
It was not long after this that a drink-driving conviction and my admission to my superiors at work that I had a ‘drink problem’; led to me spending five weeks at a re-hab in Weston-Super-Mare. After a short period of sobriety my drinking resumed and an incident where I came to work reeking of alcohol one morning led to me having to take early retirement on health grounds; the other option being a disciplinary hearing and probably dismissal. I left work with a year’s salary and a monthly pension. This was in 2001 and my life from then on was entirely devoted to drinking.
I still had a lovely home but I had lost that and a great deal of money five years later. I had married again the year previously but unlike my first marriage this was to a woman who drank heavily. The relationship became volatile and I became a violent drunk in the marriage.
I was sentenced to six months in prison and at the age of fifty eight years. Since then I have served five separate sentences for domestic violence. My last sentence of four months was at HMP Lancaster Castle. I had attended an A.A. meeting in prison and the chairman of that meeting who also worked in the prison’s CARAT team took me under his wing and together with Gavin the head of the CARAT team arranged for me to be interviewed for a place at THOMAS. I arrived here on the 18th August so I have almost completed three months at the time of writing this.
This could have been the hardest one of my life; no amount of academic or professional qualifications can help a person to accept that they have a disease which will kill them if not arrested to surrender fully to the principles of the 12 Step programme A.A. or N.A. this has to come from the heart not the head and has to be a firm conviction that nothing else known to man can succeed where addiction is concerned.
I was also told by my sponsor at Lancaster Castle that putting down the drink was only part of the treatment and that I myself would have to be totally honest, willing to look at myself and change old patterns of thinking and behaviour: To completely open up about my feelings and emotions.
This is the hardest part of the programme for someone who was part of an elite group from 1969-71, who took lots of L.S.D. and who lived by the motto ‘do your own thing’. Humility and obedience to rules have never before been on my agenda and it is only through experience, skill and patience of the staff at THOMAS that I now can see how very lucky I have been to come here. I hope to complete my six-month stay here and then go on to second stage, where I will be supported In living independently in the community.
It may seem strange to some that I don’t already have the necessary skills to do this, but alcohol has taken away much of my former coping skills that without support I know I would not survive. The happy truth is, however that I will never have to be on my own again, because of all the recovering addicts who have come through THOMAS and remain working alongside the fellowship of the A.A. and N.A. to form a ‘recovery network’ here in Blackburn.
My hope now is to become part of that recovery network and to help other addicts and alcoholics, in the best way I can, with sobriety anything is possible in drink nothing is possible.
I feel I am an example of someone who has had a stable upbringing, a good education, a worthwhile career, a happy marriage, a lovely home and still lost all of this through drink. I still count myself fortunate though, because I have been given a chance to rebuild myself and my life, THOMAS gives people like myself hope for the future.