Unhappy Hour-a Story of Alcoholism and Survival

 

How much abuse can your body take? One man’s journey to the depths of alcohol addiction, and what it took for him to overcome it.

Friday, 17 march 2000. D-day and the sun was shining in Margate. My bedside clock said 5.15am and I was fully awake.

The night had passed like so many others in the last few months. The Anxiety of the day to come had crippled me. Addiction of the mind and body was slowly killing me. Hours had gone by with me tossing and turning, waiting for dawn. I must’ve fallen into a deep sleep at some stage though, and was awoken with the sounds of the neighbourhood coming to life. To say that I felt shit would be an understatement. My head, stomach and body in general seemed to be on their own mission, outside of my control. Experience had taught me to let the new day slowly sink in as I was in no state to do anything else. My history of Alcoholism left me with no choice.

Margate was in the middle of a hot and balmy summer and my body was covered in sweat. Nausea overwhelmed me and my vision blurred. Like everyone I had suffered illness in my lifetime, but this took the cake. How could one man feel so bad and yet still be alive? All I knew was that I had another day to get through as best as I could.

Closing my eyes it took a lot of mental strength to bring myself to face up to the reality of the position I had ended up in on this day. Today was the BIG day: a day which, according to everybody in my life, was going to end all this hassle. The only thing was, I wasn’t so convinced. Margate Private Hospital awaited me at 5pm and 12 hours was a long time for somebody like me.

Luckily relief was only an arm’s length away in the form of beer. An alkie always makes a plan. Rows and rows of empty beer bottles filled the space between my bed and the window, the evidence of weeks of drinking. There must have been 200 to 300 empty dops neatly lined up. Retreating to my bedroom was one of my actions to try and cover up the problem.

More importantly though, I always had access to the stuff at any time, day or night. Next to the bed were a few unopened ones which would see me through until I had to make my way to the office attached to my house. I reached over and grabbed a bottle and in a swift, practiced motion twisted off the top. Sitting up in the bed I put the beer to my lips and started to drink. It tasted like mother’s milk and two long gulps made short work of it. The effect was immediate. It had only been a couple of hours since my last drink, but even that short period of time had devastated my body. The very act of using alcohol seemed to relax both my body and troubled spirit. This was my own miracle cure. Not a popular choice, but bloody effective in my opinion.

Putting the empty bottle back on the floor I returned to my resting position on the bed. The booze surged through my entire body I closed my eyes and savoured the moment. The power of this damn stuff never failed to amaze me. A few minutes were all I needed to start to feel almost human again. The nausea and terrible weakness that had gripped me from the instant I awoke lessened and my mind responded with silent and grateful thanks. Breakfast for Alan with a capital B!

My room alone was enough to drive anybody to drink. I called it the Hole in Hell. The stench of human filth and stale beer was overwhelming. Who could blame Mary, my wife, for moving out. I spent my time alone on a double bed, King of a castle that nobody in their right mind would be caught in, made tolerable for me by a habit that had driven me here to start with. Was I bitter, angry, resentful? Not anymore. Those were questions for which I had no answers. Could I blame somebody or something for this? Probably. My mother, my wife, my boss, my neighbour. What the heck how about the guy in the bottle store? Now there was a good target. A few more drinks and maybe I’d storm in and punch his lights out. That made me smile.

Anyway, enough pondering and time for another beer. If I was going to make it to the hospital I had to get seriously tanked up. The second beer went down like the first, quickly and gratefully received. A few weeks earlier I would have got up after a couple of dops and gone through to the office. At least then I had access to cold beers from the fridge. Even an alcoholic is fussy and I drank warm ones only as a matter of convenience or desperation.

Unfortunately I now had to pace myself during the day as I was feeling extremely weak all the time. My business only opened at 8am and I had only 20 metres to stumble to work. I tried to stay out of the way in the bedroom until I ran out of liquor and was forced to replenish my supplies from the fridge.

For some reason the third beer of the day had lately taken on its own life and had become my ‘Head in the Toilet Bowl’ beer. My body had reached the end

Tags: Houra, Survival, Unhappy, Story, Alcoholism

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