Without these fellowships I would take drugs. Because, even now, the condition persists. Drugs and alcohol are not my problem, reality is my problem, drugs and alcohol are my solution.
Peter Hitchens is a vocal adversary of mine on this matter. He sees this condition as a matter of choice and the culprits as criminals who should go to prison. I know how he feels. I bet I have to deal with a lot more drug addicts than he does, let’s face it. I share my brain with one, and I can tell you firsthand, they are total fucking wankers. Where I differ from Peter is in my belief that if you regard alcoholics and drug addicts not as bad people but as sick people then we can help them to get better. By we, I mean other people who have the same problem but have found a way to live drug-and-alcohol-free lives. Guided by principles and traditions a programme has been founded that has worked miracles in millions of lives. Not just the alcoholics and addicts themselves but their families, their friends and of course society as a whole.
Even as I spin this beautifully dreaded web, I am reaching for my phone. I call someone: not a doctor or a sage, not a mystic or a physician, just a bloke like me, another alcoholic, who I know knows how I feel. The phone rings and I half hope he’ll just let it ring out. It’s 4am in London. He’s asleep, he can’t hear the phone, he won’t pick up. I indicate left, heading to Santa Monica. The ringing stops, then the dry mouthed nocturnal mumble: “Hello. You all right mate?”
He picks up.
And for another day, thank God, I don’t have to.
While the manifestations of our addictions might be different, we shared the same basic problem: not wanting to miss out – the next role, the next job, and the next high. So, we run – from something or to something. As is often the case, people with addictions are always chasing the wind.
But with the running, with all these vapor-grasping marathons come a tremendous amount of pain, and with this pain, comes an even more enormous desire to numb it all away: more jobs, more work, more heroin, more porn, more money, more food – you choose the drug.
Trauma leads to hiding, which leads to brilliance, which leads to more hiding, which leads to success, which leads to even more hiding.
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