Tehran, 1975
A little blonde boy steps out of a limousine into the heat and bustle of the city’s Grand Bazaar. He is accompanied by a beautiful blonde woman, his mother, and an older Persian woman in a black Gucci dress. They are approached by a beggar who clambers towards them using blocks in his hands, because his legs have been so badly crippled. The Persian woman spits on the beggar and kicks him and he scrams away quickly screeching in protest.
Florida, 1977
On a small farm outside Tampa a boy dressed as a cowboy holds a plastic Winchester rifle and sits astride a pony. As it begins to walk forward, the boy realises that a clothes line is going to catch him by the neck. The pony keeps walking and the boy, unable to stop it, is pulled off the horse and hits the ground with a thump.
Cambridge, 2000
An infuriated local magazine editor bangs his fist on his desk and shouts to his amused deputy, ‘I am always right about everything’. He stops, they look at each other, and both burst out laughing.
Mumbai, 2013
A suited marketing executive steps out of his air-conditioned hotel limo into the searing heat of a Bombay afternoon. He says something to the driver who nods, then he puts on a pair of modestly expensive sunglasses and heads for a nearby office, where they are always pleased to see ‘Mr Nick’.
London, 2014
A forty-something man walks into Heathrow airport with a little blonde boy in his arms and a beautiful woman at his side. They have some time to sit in an airport lounge and have a few drinks and send some more goodbye texts, before their flight leaves for Australia.
Gold Coast, 2019
A man in his late forties, dishevelled and heavily bearded, lies in a bush-covered ditch by the beach. It starts to rain, at first steadily and then heavily. Clutching only a bottle of wine and his mobile phone, the man moves to a nearby public toilet to escape the rain. He locks himself in, sits on the floor and turns his phone on.
And so the page turns.
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I set this out as a kind of sketch of a life gone somehow wrong. Whilst it’s nothing less than a miracle that the protagonist of these scenes is now safely enclosed in an addiction rehabilitation centre, it also completes a picture that doesn’t entirely encompass a happy ending – or at least not yet. One thing I have learned in these past few years, is that life can come at you fast and from previously unseen angles. And just when you thought things were slowing down a bit as well.
All this came up because of one of the therapy sessions we have here. In this particular session, the counsellor engaged me in something called ‘State-Enhanced Exploration and Learning’, or SEEL, which is a process bearing some resemblance to hypnosis. I’ve tried hypnotherapy before to help me stop drinking and, whilst it didn’t stop me in the long-term, it did have the effect of reducing my anxiety considerably and thus reducing the risk of relapsing into drinking as a way of calming down. It placed a missing piece into the puzzle of addiction.
Whilst SEEL isn’t hypnotherapy, there’s an altered state of consciousness that goes on, which had a surprising effect on me. I was guided into ‘the SEEL’ by a counsellor who asked me to imagine five steps in front of me and to slowly descend them, one by one. I soon found the person slowly taking these steps was me as little boy, at a place called Marsh Court, once a private school in deepest Hampshire and before that a hunting lodge for the amusements of Edward VII and others. I lived there for a spell with my mum, who was the matron. We had quarters in this beautiful building, designed by Edward Lutyens and there I was again, walking down stone steps, running along grassy pathways into the woods and, when it came to leave the SEEL, waving excitedly goodbye to myself. This was the year before we moved to Tehran and I found myself stepping out of a big car, very nearly into the arms of a waiting beggar.
Anyhow, I emerged from this transpersonal process, surprised to find myself in tears. At one point in the SEEL the little blonde boy running along the grassy pathways of Marsh Court blended into the form of my own son Blake, another little blonde boy bursting with life and playfulness and hope. I remembered that he, my son, was my stated reason for doing this; for being at rehab in the first place. For not killing myself when the thoughts occurred. For writing this now. For wanting to live and rediscover at least some of the wonder that I felt in all the scenes pictured above except the last. A wonder that I feel every time I see him, hear his voice, or hold him in my arms.
Sure as the day is long, alcohol and addiction will rob you of that wonder, some of it never to return. My job now, really my only goal, is to stay well and share what’s left with the child I have and the child and man I used to be.
One day at a time.
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