WEEKEND COLUMNISTS Do you keep phone numbers? I meticulously store contact details for everyone I meet, however random, and make notes of what they do and where I met them. My other modus operandi when meeting people is always to try to be as polite and helpful as possible (within reason).
Hence, I found myself giving up an hour or so earlier this year to cast an eye over the business strategy of a small enterprise. On meeting the people behind the business, I discovered that it was a rehabilitation clinic, and one of the people presenting to me was a very impressive addiction counsellor, and herself a recovering alcoholic.
And that is where I sat up and took notice, because I have a close relative who is alcohol-dependent. It is not Mr M or any of the cost centres, but it is someone very dear to me. Those of you who have someone in their family who is alcohol- or drug-dependent will know how emotionally scarring this is. You love them, you want to help, you try to help, but they are living in another world. In their world, they are not addicts; they believe that they could give up at any time. They always have an excuse. Something is always just around the corner that will fix their problems – if only they could meet the right person/get the right job/have the right amount of money, everything would be fine. Nothing and no one ever prepared me for the self-delusion of the alcoholic. Every time they say they are going to get help, your hopes rise; and invariably they end up being crushed again.
When Cost Centre #1 was about 14 or so, his school sensibly invited Elizabeth Burton-Phillips to address his year group. I have never met Burton-Phillips, and I have not heard her speak, but her words that day had a powerful effect on me. She had twin boys in 1976; despite having a very privileged start in life, they became drug-dependent. The day that Burton-Phillips spoke to CC#1’s year she handed them each an envelope and told them not to open it until she instructed them to. Eventually, after hearing of how her two boys had come to be drug addicts, and what it had done to their lives and their family’s lives, she let them open the envelope. It contained the death certificate of one of her sons.
The other son sought treatment and is in recovery. (I am learning the language of addiction – just as with cancer you are never “cured”, you are “in remission”, so with addiction, you are never “recovered”, you are “in recovery” even if you have been clean for many years.) Burton-Phillips has written a book about her experience, titled Mum, Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid? It reinforces the message that I have had to learn the hard way, namely that sometimes, in order to help your loved ones, you have to sever your links with them. That is, at least until they genuinely want to help themselves. And it is very tough.
So that is what I eventually did – cut myself off, emotionally and financially. I just hoped that one day, when the bottom had been reached and there was nowhere left to go, my loved one would see that seeking help – serious, professional help – was a necessity.
I know this is a column that usually seeks to entertain, and there is not much amusing about having an alcoholic in the family. But I wanted to stress the importance of keeping telephone numbers. Because the day did come, just last week, when I got a call about my relative from the emergency department of a hospital. When I telephoned the young addiction counsellor who had so impressed me months before, not only was she in the vicinity of the hospital, she dropped everything and went to help. And now she has achieved what we all have tried to for so long – to help the person concerned to cut through the self-delusion and seek real help. Not entertaining this week, I am afraid, but still hopeful.
