Addiction doesn’t only affect the sufferers
This week, the news has been dominated by tales of a TV star being packed off to rehab for the second time in a year, after being charged with drink-driving. Ant Mcpartlin, the member of Ant and Dec who always stands on the left, has hospitalised a three-yearold girl after losing control of his Mini and crashing into two vehicles in south-west London while over the limit. Thankfully, the child is OK. The nation’s media – reeling at the thought of an Antless Ant and Dec – less so.
Pages and pages have been given over to this sorry saga. People who like to make a point of the fact that they don’t watch Saturday Night Takeaway or I’m a Celebrity – you know the people, the ones who like everybody to know how clever and highbrow they are – wonder why anyone cares. As if people haven’t cared about this stuff since the first caveman clubbed another caveman over the head after too much nibbling on a dodgy plant.
Why do people care? People care because, even if they are worth 62p rather than the estimated £62million in Mcpartlin’s bank account, something resonates with them. The thing that resonates with them is the amazing capacity humans have to screw up. We are all of us fallible – it’s just that some of us are more so than others.
I have never got behind the wheel of a car while under the influence, but I have been stupid enough to disappear for 24 hours while drunk, leaving my husband to worry what state his child’s mother would return in, if she returned at all. It’s only since going through treatment myself, last autumn, that I have realised how much addiction affects all of us, even if we are not directly suffering ourselves. It affects us as family members and as friends, but it also affects us as taxpayers coughing up cash to pay for the endless incarceration of people whose criminal behaviour is the direct result of a disease that can be treated if it isn’t ignored – whether through shame, stigma or ignorance. For the sake of NHS funding, we should be prepared to have a serious conversation about addiction, rather than simply dismissing it as the weak-willed behaviour of people who should know better.
I do not know Ant Mcpartlin but I have, over the last six or so months in recovery, learnt quite a lot about addiction. I hope that over the next six or so months I will learn even more. My name is Bryony, and I am an alcoholic and addict. These are some of the key things I have discovered about my illness in the last half a year:
If you struggle to understand the mindset of an addict, don’t worry. I struggle to understand the mindset of someone who can have just one drink, just as I struggle to comprehend what it must be like to have 20/20 vision. But I accept that these people exist. You don’t have to be the same as someone to be supportive of them. If it was as simple as putting down a drink, treatment facilities would not exist. Believe me – nobody wants to end up in rehab.
This week I read the work of a newspaper columnist who thought that most people used drink and drugs because “they really bloody enjoy doing so”. It’s true. I really bloody enjoyed getting trollied and taking cocaine at first, because it was often the only time I felt normal during an adolescence and early adulthood dominated by a voice in my head that told me I was dying, or that my family were. Here’s the thing: most addicts are trying to change the way they feel, however foolish that might seem to you. I didn’t really bloody enjoy using drink and drugs for the last 10 years – but I couldn’t stop using drink and drugs. I was, you know, addicted.
Not all addicts live on a park bench and look scruffy – some addicts look like semi-respectable journalists and TV presenters. For the “luckier” addict, their park bench is their sofa. Similarly, not all addicts wake up and drink 24/7. The definition of an addict is someone who is powerless over their substance of choice. I wish I’d known this a decade ago, before I unwittingly subjected my husband and daughter to my illness.
Addicts do bad things. But that does not make them bad people. An addict in recovery can be one of the kindest, most compassionate humans on the planet. I sometimes struggle to believe the stories told me by the friends I met in treatment. Their tales of selfish, destructive behaviour simply don’t tally with the open-minded and supportive people I have been lucky enough to get sober with.
If you or someone you know needs help, I would suggest contacting Alcoholics Anonymous (0800 9177 650). And remember there is hope, however bleak things might seem.