Pain and power: The long road back from the drink
By the age of ten, Warren Towney had a moniker that was more prophecy than nickname. By adulthood, he was an alcoholic. By middle-age, the father of two was one more bottle away from rock bottom. At the age of 48, Warren reached out for a helping hand. He spoke with JEN COWLEY about his battle with the booze and his faith in a sober future.
FATE dealt Warren Towney the first of his life’s blows when he was an infant, handing him a childhood medical condition that meant his physical movements weren’t like those of other “normal” kids. Always a big lad, he moved awkwardly and with a faltering gait that knocked him off his feet with any but the most measured of movements. His condition made a grim challenge of even the most basic of sports which, in a small rural town where sport is not so much a hobby as a religion, made the youngster feel like he just didn’t measure up.
His propensity for falling over earned him a nickname that would follow him into adulthood like a millstone around his young neck. A self-fulfilling prophecy that set him on a collision course with heartbreak; a label he predictably grew into that would come to define him in more ways than one.
From the tender age of eight, young Warren Towney was known to everyone, even his teachers, as “Alco”.
••• WHEN I first met Warren Towney more than a decade ago, the friendly giant and I clicked immediately but I just couldn’t bring myself to use the nickname he’d had since he was a child, so I’ve called him “Waz” since day one.
We haven’t seen each other much in the past few years, and certainly not since he’s been sober – except in the superficial friend-sphere of social media – and I’m both nervous and curious as to whether we’ll feel that same click.
I needn’t have worried. His greeting is enthusiastic and as warm as the late summer morning and when we hug, it’s like being embraced by a block of flats. He’s still friendly and jovial, but his eyes have a bit more sparkle and there’s a gentleness, an earnestness to his demeanour that I don’t remember from the Waz that was.
The positive change comes from being sober for the past 14 months, thanks to a life-long slide to the absolute depths of desperate addiction, and a sliding doors moment that saved his life when it could so easily have taken it.
In any tale of redemption, it helps to know how the story started, so I ask him to tell me of his relationship with booze.
“Oh wow, mate. How long have you got?”
Warren grew up in a grog free house – his father was a shearer who had given up drinking as a young man – but in a community awash with the stuff. He was constantly surrounded by alcohol and because it was forbidden to him, he became curious.
“I’d hear all these people laughing and I’d think, wow, that sounds like fun, so I came to associate drinking with laughter and good times.”
When people gave him the nickname Alco because he “walked like a drunk” thanks to his medical condition, the youngster saw it as something to be proud of.
“I insisted people call me Alco – that became my identity by the time I was 10, and then I grew into it. I had the tag long before I caught the disease.”
He explains how the nickname made him feel accepted.
“I figured if I could live up to my nick-name, that’s something I could do well and that’s who I could really become. When I got that grog in me, that was my moment – that’s when I became someone. With the grog in
me, I felt acceptance, and funnily enough, it was the only thing that took away the physical symptoms of my condition. Talk about self-medicating,” he smiles. “But the drink also took all that fear, that anxiety, that shame away. I was the court jester and I was holding court.”
It’s not hard to read between the lines: his bravado was masking a world of hurt and when I comment to that effect, Warren starts to answer but bites his bottom lip to keep it from quivering.
“It hurts me even now to think what could have been in my life, and what I did to people along the way.
“But I’m grateful for my life because it’s brought me to where I am now.”
••• WHERE he is now is sober, thanks to a unique residential rehabilitation facility on the NSW Central Coast. Specifically established to help men beat their addictions, The Glen program is culturally based but, as Warren explains, isn’t just for Aboriginal men.
“I’ve never picked up a bottle that just said “for blackfellas only”.
“There’s a stereotype about blackfellas and alcohol – people won’t like me saying that, but it’s true – and if the program was just for Aboriginal men, that would be reinforcing that stereotype.”
At The Glen, the rehabilitation follows the AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) program of 12 steps and traditions which, he explains, is based on addressing the culture of alcoholism, not on any one culture or religion.
As he talks of his life’s experiences as a “working alcoholic”, the pain is still visible and raw, but Warren embraces that pain as part of his recovery.
“During my rehab, a bloke said to me that pain is a gift because without pain I wouldn’t be who I am today.”
As he consumed the booze, the guilt that came with his addiction in turn consumed him.
“It’s still there. I had such tunnel vision that family life meant nothing to me. That’s what the disease does to you. You just focus on the grog – everything, every action, every plan, it all revolved around grog.”
But while family took a back seat to the booze in Warren’s blurred vision of life, the only other constant has been his partner Leanne, who has ridden the highs and lows with him since he was 20.
A social drinker when they met, Leanne has been tee-total since the early ‘90s, having seen the wreckage grog can leave in its wake and didn’t want to double down for the family.
“She is a very, very strong woman because she stayed with me all the way through and she’s still with me today.”
His big shoulders heave with emotion as he talks of his family.
“The people I loved the most were the people I hurt the most. I hurt them in so many ways.”
On the grog, this giant was anything but gentle.
“I was totally different. It was all fun and games and up for a laugh, but I could turn on a dime. You only had to look at me sideways and I could snap.
“I’m so ashamed of what I did to them. When you lose the love and trust of your family, that’s really when you bottom out.”
He talks a little more about the view from the lowest point, saying that it finally came when his family stopped talking to him and were happy to see him out of the house.
“I couch surfed, couldn’t get stable accommodation and that becomes a wheel you can’t get off because you’re surrounded by others who are the same. You’re existing every day just to cope, and you turn to the bottle to help you cope – around and around it goes.
“Leanne would still come and find me to check on me – she never lost that love but she knew she couldn’t help me – she knew I needed help but that she couldn’t do it for me.”
I ask Warren what was his drink of choice, and he laughs gently at the naivete of the question – there’s no such thing as choice for a drunk, apparently.
“I’d drink anything I could get my hands on. I wasn’t drinking for the taste of it, I was drinking for the effect.”
That effect led him eventually and perhaps inevitably to thoughts of suicide and to the day in 2019 when he landed at rock bottom with an almost lethal thud.
“It was Christmas Day. I was walking around Dubbo on my own. I had no-one. If you’ve ever walked around town on Christmas Day, it’s a lonely place.
“So I sat in the park and watched families spending time together, kids running around having fun. I looked at them and said to myself, “You had all that. This was your life and now look at you. It’s Christmas Day and you’ve got no-one.”
Overcome with despair, Warren went back to the shelter he was currently calling home and took down the rope he’d been using as a clothesline.
“I undid it and was holding it in my hands and thinking about what I could do.
“Then I got my phone and I scrolled through...”
Call it a Christmas miracle, call it a sliding doors moment, but mercifully the name of a particular friend came on the screen, and Warren pressed “dial”.
That one, well-placed call saved his life.
Within a week, Warren walked through the gates of The Glen.
Physically getting sober wasn’t the hard part, he says.
“It was the emotional side. You don’t hit rock bottom until you realise the wreckage you’ve left. When you’re drinking, you’re tenfoot-tall and bullet proof. Grog makes you very selfish.
“But The Glen helped me work through the emotional side of addiction. It’s really raw stuff, it goes right to the bone.”
Part of that deep emotional dive was to see things through the young Warren’s eyes, and to imagine what that youngster might say to his older self.
“That’s what made me realise what was at the heart of my drinking, and unless you can address the emotional side of it, you can never truly get better.”
Part of the program is to transition out into the real world, he says, explaining that it’s not just about giving up the grog then going back to your life, or what’s left of it.
“The residential program is three months, then if you’re going okay, you can apply for a transition and that can last as long as you want. That assists with finding employment and hooks you up with support services to give you the best chance.”
The measure of success, he explains is not just whether or not you’ve had a drink, but whether you’re mentally prepared to return to society.
I ask him about Alco, and whether he misses his old identity: If you’re not Alco, who are you?
“I’m not sure, but I know that now I’m living my life as the Warren Towney I was always supposed to be. All my life I lived as a bloke named Alco and he’ll be part of me forever, because without him, I wouldn’t be where I am and who I am now. Alco was part of how I came to be Warren Towney.
“People still call me that name and it doesn’t worry me because it’s a reminder of where I’ve been and how far I’ve come.
“I heard a great story in the AA share one day. A bloke said “I’ve never been to gaol, but I’ve been a prisoner in my own head and my cell-mate was that little bloke on my shoulder telling me what to do.”
With what he calls his “higher power” firmly on his side, Warren is looking towards a future free from the demon drink, but it’s a pathway he takes step by step, one day at a time.
“I don’t have a desire anymore, but times do get tough and that’s when I reach into my book and I say my serenity prayer, I ring my sponsor. Funnily enough, my sponsor is a bloke I used to drink with. We’ve gone from sharing a bottle together to boiling the billy together.
“I’ve probably got a thousand more drinks in me, but I’ll never have another recovery.”
We’ve been talking for nearly three hours by the time we finally realise our second coffees are stone cold. There’s still so much to talk about, but we wrap up with a question of his advice to others:
“I’m living proof that you can’t survive alone. And if there’s anyone reading this who needs help, or has someone they love who needs help, I’d say to you: Don’t be ashamed. Don’t be too proud. Ask someone to help. And don’t leave it too late. Don’t leave it until the s*** really hits the fan.”
Need help for yourself or someone you love? You’re not alone – reach out?
• aa.org.au
• 1300 222 222
• www.theglencentre.org.au
• Lifeline: 131114
` I insisted people call me Alco – that became my identity by the time I was 10, and then I grew into it. I had the tag long before I caught the disease... a – Warren Towney