This time last Christmas I was in hospital, curled up under a blanket shuddering from the effects of alcohol detoxification, my mind swimming with the large doses of Valium administered to stop me having a seizure and/or going completely insane. By 11am the next day, Christmas Day itself, I was already very drunk again, with half a bottle of Scotch swilling around my brain. I would have had the whole bottle but someone else (mercifully in retrospect) had already done it themselves. This drunkenness prompted a wild and disturbing rollercoaster Christmas Day full of horrors that I can’t bring myself to write down here. About ten days later, I was back in hospital after a suicide bid, a pattern that was becoming frighteningly normal in my life. I was still about four months away from salvation, and still facing some of the most difficult experiences of my life. Homelessness, more suicide attempts, near death experiences, extreme violence, all that was to come.
Today, a year later, I’m sitting in a café with my son, sipping a coffee and feeling perfectly relaxed about the prospect of my first Christmas sober since I was a child. That I even survived this year is a testament not only to the will to survive that we all possess, but to the many people – friends, family, professionals and complete strangers – who did their all to help me. I remain as humbled, as astonished and as grateful for that help today, as I ever did. In fact that’s wrong: although it can sometimes be easy to forget in the tumble of every day events, my gratitude increases daily.
So here I am, we are, my son and me, having enjoyed a Lego-packed sleepover – the first time we’ve spent together overnight for over a year – looking forward to this and many other Christmases together. Free of alcohol, free of fear and free, finally after so long, to live.
Thank you to all of you who’ve followed these posts and who’ve supported me through this great journey from darkness into light. Even by the simple act of reading this now you’re helping more than you realise. For the people who helped me on the ground, literally dragged me into the ambulance in some cases, I don’t have the words to express my gratitude
So from me and my son Blake, we wish you all a lovely Christmas and a peaceful, happy New Year.
One day at a time.
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