Nick McGill speaks about struggling with alcohol addiction for nearly forty years and how 2019 is going to be his year
When I was offered the chance of a detox last year, I jumped at the opportunity and said I’d be there the next day. I’d been on the waiting list for three months and spent nearly four weeks on the ward completing a diazepam reduction programme. This was my third admission and I hope it’ll be my last. The first few days of treatment are torturous to say the least.
A few months earlier, while giving a blood sample during a routine GP appointment, my doctor casually said something like “well your 55 now Nick, I’d be surprised if you reach 60”. He said it in such a matter of fact way and I remember walking home physically trembling with shock. I decided I needed to do something so I got the ball rolling by asking my care manager to get me on the waiting list for another detox.
I’ve been drinking since I was a kid. My father was a hard drinker and a violent man who would beat me and my mum regularly, I never felt safe and I was always on edge, always looking over my shoulder wondering when the next blow would come.
There’s two things I’ve done in my life which involved being unusually courageous and brave, one of them was standing up to my father at the age of 18 and telling him that he will never hit me or my mum ever again or I’d kill him, the other was completing my last detox.
When I look back on my childhood it was completely dominated by alcohol. All my family drank to excess including my grandparents, mum and brother – alcohol was always available in my house and seeing people in a drunken stupor was normal. It’s therefore no surprise that my adult life turned out to be just the same.
During my working years I was somehow able to hold down a succession of jobs in various factories and warehouses. However, they all ended due to the effects of alcohol, either because I turned up drunk for a shift, arrived late or phoned in sick once too often.
The 2000s is when things came to a head and I found myself unemployed, and drinking more and more. I also began to have blackouts, or alcohol related seizures, as I now know them to be. I would collapse in the street and be carted off to hospital in the back of an ambulance, waking up in the morning having no recollection of what had happened...or what was happening. Scary.
It was around this time that my brother Jim passed away due to alcohol misuse and as you can imagine, I dealt with it the only way I knew how and I drank more and more, usually a mixture of lager, cider and vodka each and every day.
I remember when I was diagnosed with alcohol related brain damage (ARBD) and I was so angry with the worker who told me. “There’s nothing wrong with my brain,” I told her “and don’t you ever say that to me again. I might like a drink but it doesn’t mean I’ve got brain damage.” I would tell this to anyone who would listen.
As the years passed by, I began to accept my diagnosis and I started to engage with support from whichever direction it was offered. The community addiction team were good and I still have a firm relationship with the workers there. The NHS ARBD team also supported me and tried to encourage me to live a life of abstinence, reinforcing the fact that continued drinking will make the ARBD worse but with abstinence I had a chance of making some sort of recovery.
I’ve had two spells in supported accommodation services; Ardencraig in the Castlemilk area of Glasgow and Fullarton in the east-end. They served their purpose and I was, for the majority of the time able to live a life of abstinence with just the minor blip.
When I moved into my flat near the centre of Glasgow in December 2015, this coincided with the start of my support from Penumbra. I have a terrific relationship with all the staff but even with support seven days a week, I’ve relapsed now and again and things sometimes get chaotic, just like the old days.
I understand that I have a better quality of life without alcohol and with support. The recovery team support me with thing’s I’d never even think of, or be able to do alone, and I appreciate that 100%.
For example, my finances were a mess when I moved into my flat and I had no income or benefits in place. The team helped me with this but because I’d worked in the grocery industry for a number of years, I was also able to apply for further financial assistance from GroceryAid, a benevolent charity for people with employment experience in the grocery industry.
This assistance has allowed me to buy a TV, heater, bed, table and chairs as well as providing me with a small income with regular payments going towards heating and electricity costs.
Staff even helped me to apply and qualify for full council tax exemption due to my diagnosis and it’s these things that make a difference to me, I would never have known about stuff like this without Penumbra, I genuinely feel as if they understand my situation and can relate to how I feel.
I’ve been in my flat for three years now and I’ve maintained it to a really good standard. I’m on top of all my bills and it’s furnished and decorated to my liking which makes me feel safe and comfortable. I use my support for social activities but also for assistance with cooking, cleaning and shopping too, things which I might otherwise neglect.
Despite last year’s detox being successful at the time, I want to be honest and admit that I have relapsed many times. I often deny this due to a sense of shame and fear. Sometimes I feel that if I don’t admit to anyone that I’m drinking again, then no harm will be done.
This clearly can’t be right because when I’m drinking I don’t eat and can’t stomach taking my tablets, I have trouble sleeping, I fall and injure myself, I cancel my support and forget how to do simple things. After a binge, I generally feel terrible both physically and emotionally.
I’ve had two falls in the community recently. One resulted in a broken wrist when I fell in the city centre and the other one happened when I fell on the steps leading up to my flat. I injured my head on that occasion and both of these accidents resulted in trips to the hospital.
Lately, I’ve relapsed again after being abstinent for thirty-one days and of course I’m disappointed in myself but I’ll just have to start again. I’ve had periods of abstinence in the past so I know I can do it again. If I can better those thirty-one days, I’d consider that progress.
You know when you’re really hungover and you feel a bit dazed and lethargic and a bit fearful? Well that's how I feel when I’m sober; being sober for me is a scary place because for decades, my default position has been intoxication.
I know it won’t be easy but I’m determined to make 2019 the beginning of the rest of my life and not the end of it. 2019 is going to be ‘my year’ and I’m going to prove that doctor wrong!
Nick McGill was speaking to Dan Mushens, a recovery practitioner for Scottish mental health charity Penumbra and regular TFN blogger
