A lone nun sold hot dogs in the steps of Lima cathedral. Grubby hands grabbed as the crowd swayed backwards and forwards like a bunch of drunks in a packed pub on a Friday night. Intoxicated by religion or just hungry, they were certainly enthusiastic. Special Brew often conjured up bizarre images for me. It seemed I didn’t need it here. A month out of rehab and twelve hours in Peru, I was viewing this strange sight sober. My decision to come to South America looked like it was paying off already. After ten years of illusion and delusion, I had at last found somewhere that had a sober laugh at every street corner and a culture that made me think not drink. In a Swindon kitchen six months earlier with a knife wound beading claret on my wrist, planet earth seemed far away let alone the bizarre experiences of Peru’s capital. My attempted suicide opened the door to a confusing chain of events that saw me enter the dead end world of mental care. No one, least of all me, understood what was going on. Failed treatments, twenty-four hour drinking and a throat blocked with pills led me down a spiral staircase I fell at the foot of. Star studded clinics and Ketamine crushed closed wards soon became my territory. Sucked in by the system I was eventually spat out across the Atlantic to Cusco, high in the Andes and the place I chose to make home. Swapping continents may seem like escape, but distance from the life that crushed me and the drink I chose to use as a cage seemed like a good idea. Plenty of people have written plenty of words about their alcoholic experiences, whitewashed wards, beatings at the hands of their family, waking up on a bench in a pool of vomit. I only did the whitewashed wards, but my tale tells of how I stepped out of the baffling world of addiction into the confusing country of Peru. So it’s not a get well quick course of anecdotes for the problem drinker, nor is it a series of funny drinking stories. It’s not even a travelogue about the wonders of Latin America. It’s about how knocking back 32000 cans of Special Brew and bagfuls of pills changed my life, firstly for the worst, secondly for the better. I’m no expert on alcoholism or any other form of addiction and I didn’t find redemption in God or a ‘higher power’. But what I do know about is me, what I did, how I did it and how I came back from that blood dripping wrist to stand in awe opposite a crowd of Peruvians clamouring fast food from a holy habited convent girl. Knowing myself and my previous self I am sat here now in awe too, how did I get here? Below me the red roofs of the Inca capital stretch out beneath the Andes and I’m sipping Inca Kola, writing this and wondering why I’m alive and not dead like so many others who trod the same route to the off licence as I did. I am always a whisper away from going back to square one and that thought, coupled with my miraculous salvation, is blurring my view of Cusco. Whereas before, drink made the simplest thing shimmer in front of my eyes but smothered every feeling, emotion now wells up easily after my long and painful trek. No matter how beautiful that mad town down the mountain looks, I can see the black clouds of the past hovering over Machu Picchu, the place I dreamt about when the rain fell before. As therapy clawed and pored its way through my past the Inca city provided me with a target to aim for. I was always good at missing targets in my former life, this time around a new determination into a future. There was no abuse in my childhood for me to look back on and I married my childhood sweetheart. Life was steady, maybe too steady for me, almost certainly too boring for me. Trapped on all sides I disappeared into a seemingly endless spiral of drink, desperate to escape but not knowing how and doubting my survival chances. I was hell bent on self destruction and nearly achieved it, a unique rehab pointed the way, but the arrow pointed in no particular direction, that I had to choose myself. Six months locked away, followed by six weeks in South America, followed by the rest of my life, sounds simple, but the road was stony and I did most of it in bare feet. My alcoholic routine was, however, straightforward, its consequences were not. For a decade, each morning of my life started the same way. A dive to the bathroom, if I was lucky a wet retch, most often a painful dry one. Then a search for last nights hiding place, behind a book, in my golf bag, briefcase or stashed inside my computer printer. Over the years my storage methods became more and more sophisticated but with my brain cells evaporating, I more often than not forgot the previous night’s inventiveness. Once I had located it, my opening drink of the day stayed down for the first seven years, after that it gushed back up. What a waste. Then I would prepare breakfast, Bacardi and Orange Juice - a pint. This ‘health’ kick was even more painful, the pithy fruit clogging my throat as it surged back out, often bringing with it the handful of pills I’d taken too. Another Special Brew calmed the tremors, the one after that got me fit to drive. If I risked a third can, there was always time for more and by then brief happiness shone through my permanent depression. By now time was moving on and I had to get to work so I went to the car and got out with the mints and cough candy, my shield against awkward workplace questions. If I puked up again in the car, as I often did, I had to restart the camouflaging, more mouthwash, more aftershave and a lunchtime visit to the dry cleaners with my yellow stained suit. Auto pilot took me where I had to go, the car’s occasional weaving from kerb to kerb the only give away, that a loaded alcoholic was in charge of the vehicle. Passing the local infants school I slowed, no matter how much alcohol was on board I still realised the consequences of one false move with the lollipop lady. Then I would arrive at work and sit in the gents for fifteen minutes, the Bacardi making my head spin, the Special Brew heating my face. A silent dive into my office followed, along with the hope that there would be no human contact for an hour or so whilst I attempted to compose myself. Getting the work done was always problematic, phone calls were especially difficult, the fug in my head making me forget I’d made or received them. What I could figure out I repeated, duplicating work, duplicating days, the same slog, the same slug of booze, the same spinning, day on day on day. By lunchtime my quivers had come back and it was off home to stabilise them. I tried to only drink Special Brew, masked by a garlic and onion sandwich and more sweets. On rare occasions some red wine made its way in too but that just loaded up my depression and argumentative side, I avoided it, it drew attention to me. I wanted to be invisible.

HIGHWOOD HOUSE

I slouched into Highwood House, immediately spotting the swirling pattern of the threadbare carpet, unmistakeably from a pub. This disorientated me even more than I was already and I was still thinking about it when I was directed to my first port of call. The kitchen was long, thin and full of well used equipment and stained stainless steel work-surfaces. The task I had been set was to make myself a sandwich. With two silent housemates preparing something or other in their own world I attempted to do something for myself for the first time in months. Then I realised I was in a kitchen with a knife again. After drowning in black and choking on happy pills in Sandalwood Court for six weeks I didn’t know that there was a darker shade waiting for me here. The rules at Highwood were simple, at least they seemed to be to me, they were all shit. The locked mental ward I had come from didn’t seem to need rules; it was taken for granted that you couldn’t do anything without a pill or a nurse by your side. But at this deceptive house with its vomit yellow walls and homely chintz curtains, the iron fist slammed the do’s and don’ts on the table as soon the first sandwich had started to make its way down. No phone calls or letters for two weeks No visits for a month No trips outside the grounds for a month After a month the other housemates will vote on whether you are allowed out or not Visits will also be decided by a housemates vote No mobile phones £10.00 spending per week maximum, including tobacco purchases Immediate inclusion in the daily work rota. The white coats seemed very attractive in comparison to this. At least I was given my own room before being ushered into the nightly discussion session. I didn’t like the highly charged atmosphere much as the first subject was broached. It seemed that two of the housemates were being accused of having a relationship, another no-no under the house rules. The two accused had an air of confrontational arrogance that was successfully winding up the inquisitors dotted around the room. Jack, a Doc Marten booted feminist type was taking none of the abuse she was getting without shovelling double back into the face of whoever was nearest. Finn, her dishevelled maybe lover said little but his look of superiority said it all really. He had an air of ‘I’ve got it all and no matter how hard you squeeze you won’t get it out of me’. Once the recriminations against them had died down a little, the action turned to a little chap with a receding hairline and noticeable nose. He was being quizzed as to whether he knew about the ‘relationship’ and whether he was in league with them, protecting them against the rest of the house. He vociferously and ferociously defended himself and I took an immediate liking to him as he wheeled his detractors in and then let the line go again with quick wit and humour. Without realising it, my turn was fast approaching. My maiden speech to the house was a rambling digest of where I had come from and why, I actually thought I was getting away with it quite well. I hadn’t bargained on the barb like questions that darted my way when I thought I had finished. Soon I was sat in front of an aerial picture of Clifton Suspension Bridge expanding on my favourite theme – suicide. It seemed that this lot could smell my thoughts of knotted sheets or pill cabinets and were having none of it. They seemed compassionate and genuine and when I had finished my stint I felt a glow of friendship that I never got on the mental ward. I sloped off to my room only to be intercepted by one of the support workers. ‘In the circumstances Michael, we think you would be better off sharing, I’ll show you to your new room’, my impassioned monologue on killing myself had served only to deprive me of my much needed solitude and throw me in with a complete stranger again. ‘I’m Dave’ said a big eyed, swarthy chap in a friendly but nervy way. After about an hour of silence he spoke again. ‘Look, I don’t really like to say this because you’re new here, but all that talk of suicide has made me really uncomfortable, you see my brother killed himself last Christmas’ I could see tears welling up in his eyes and vowed not to say another word during my time at Highwood House. My worries and confusion meant nothing during the night as raging toothache took over until the orange glow of dawn through gold polyester curtains told me it was time to get up. I went straight to the notice-board and saw that I had been assigned laundry duty, a relatively cushy start by all accounts. To the left of the rota, hanging dog eared from a drawing pin was another sheet of paper. This piece of A4 was destined to haunt me throughout my stay at Highwood and certainly set my first morning off to a bad start. Designed I’m sure to be motivational, a photocopy of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ was just what I didn’t need in my state. I could feel the words being engraved inside me ready to attack me from within at some point in the future. Nothing at Highwood seemed to be by accident and Kipling’s words did all they could to intimidate me, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a man anyway.‘If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Blah, blah, blahThen you’ll be a man my son’ Getting to the last line was a struggle in itself given that for me at the moment everything was not only ‘If’ but also ‘Why’, ‘What’ and ‘How’. Of course, silence was far from the agenda that had been lined up for me. After a rudimentary lesson in how to use a twin tub washing machine it was time for my first morning session. I was told that every day I would have to keep an honest and accurate diary that reflected my thoughts and general mental health. I would then have to read this to the other housemates the next day. In one month I would be expected to present a ‘warts and all’ life story that included how I had ended up where I was. Both of these tasks would also include a grilling from the other residents, which judging by the look of them would be by far the worst bit. To a ‘Daily Mail’ reader this would have been evidence of the existence of ‘the dregs of society’. A heavily tattooed young guy with an expression like a bulldog and a fierce East end accent sat opposite me. An astonishingly thin and haggard forty something woman was by my side and the little chap with the nose was sat twitching at my left. There were eight of us in all and most of the session was taken up by them introducing themselves to me and me to them. If I hadn’t felt so sorry for myself, their brief stories of how they ended up at Highwood House would have made me weep. I soon realised that this was a heavy duty rehab and that the bullshit I spun at the Priory stood absolutely no chance of working here. Anna a particularly vicious looking heroin addict gave me an early taste of what the next six months were going to be like. She relentlessly questioned me with the why’s and how’s of my drinking and effortlessly provoked a line of cold sweat that snaked down my back as she interrogated. Thankfully the session had an end and we broke up for tea and biscuits. It was a bit like a very strange tea party until someone put the stereo on and loud trance music changed the mood. The little bloke with the nose sidled up to me and we started to talk in a more relaxed way. His name was Paul, he was Irish and full of contempt for many of the other residents. He asked if I was still feeling suicidal and I said that I didn’t feel too good. He invited me to join him on the swings in the garden which were left over from Highwood’s days as a home for disabled children. I was soon revealing to Paul that the previous night the swings were fixed in my head as being the perfect height to lob a sheet over and hang myself. He didn’t look surprised but he did seem genuinely interested. Months later I realised that the next two hours of talking crap were his way of getting me off the subject of suicide for a while. The crap we talked did uncover a shared sense of humour, particularly for the ridiculous and there looked to be plenty of that at Highwood. Having laughed for the first time in months, I went back to my room considerably more comfortable with life. Dave wasn’t there so I whipped out my mobile and rang Sally, when I was searched on the way in they didn’t take the phone so even though it was against the rules I thought I’d give it a go. After a stony couple of minutes explaining what life was like inside a rehab, the door opened and Anna looked at me gabbling away and launched into a tirade about rule breaking, this was just what my slightly more comfortable self needed. I was marched to the office where I handed my phone in, suddenly two weeks until my first visit and six months until I could leave both seemed like eternity. The dramatic removal of my access to the outside world got me thinking again. I felt trapped, just as I did when the benefits of drink ran out but the physical dependence made stopping impossible. I asked to see a support worker and Dan, a calm, tanned Californian took me into the office. Behind him on the wall were entry dates and proposed exit dates for all of the residents. Bottom of the league was my name – Michael Scott 23rd September 1999 leaving May 23rd 2000. This made me feel even worse. ‘I want to leave’ I said, not caring what the response would be. ‘OK, where would you go? Back to your drinking? You said last night that you couldn’t drink again, give this a chance’ ‘But it won’t work and I’m just going to get more and more depressed’ ‘You have been here a day and I am sure that given more time you will start to see why you are here, why don’t you try another 24 hours and we’ll talk again tomorrow?’ These was my first experience of the classic Highwood persuasion tactic, set a target sufficiently near in the future and kill off any potential objections. I sloped off to my room and waited what the afternoon session had to offer. Once outside, Lynne the tall, toothy support worker, handed me a spade, a piece of paper and a pen and directed me along with the others to a piece of the garden by the budgie cage. ‘Today, we are going to bury ‘can’t’’ This sounded disturbingly like the fun and games at the Priory, which I could pick out just over the hedge behind the budgies. I duly listed the ten things ‘I can’t do’ and buried the piece of paper, everyone else did the same thankfully with the same air of derision as me, maybe I did have something in common with this lot after all. Unfortunately the word ’can’t’ triggered off a reaction in me and I was straight into a whirlwind of self doubt. Leigh, the house manager, caught me in the middle of a full on sobbing session in the empty Meeting Room and asked me what was wrong. ‘I can’t cook and when I’ve finished doing the laundry I’ll be put on the cooking rota and I can’t cook and everyone will hate me’ She obviously met this sort of idiot before, I had only recently emerged from under my stone of alcohol and responsibility was a skill I had yet to acquire. ‘Don’t worry, try your best and people will appreciate it, no-one here is a professional cook and they won’t expect you to be’ She still rejected my request to stay on the laundry for another week, but I did feel slightly reassured by her sympathetic attitude which contrasted with her hard features and brusque manner.

Prostitutes

Highwood House had a seemingly ideal position of isolation on a hill overlooking Bristol. In reality the hidden nature of the location caused as many problems as it solved. Our temporary home was situated at the end of a country lane less than two miles from the edge of the St. Pauls district and its notorious drug problems. Highwood and its large, dark car park was a magnet for dealers and hookers, both of course inextricably linked. We were experts in this because some of their number shared the house with us. Frequently the entrance to the rehab was littered with drug paraphernalia and condoms. As we progressed with our rejection of our chosen addiction, this daily sight was becoming more difficult to put up with. As Paul and I had the nearest rooms we decided to take action. We recruited the other housemates and initiated Whore Watch. With the lights off in our rooms and breaking the house curfew we waited for the first car to pull up outside my window. Sure enough just before midnight our first victims chugged into the car park. We let them get on with it for a while and then made our move, out of my secret back door. Our motives were to discourage these unwelcome visitors and our methods made sure that the message was clear. Johnny, being the loudest, was elected to make the confrontation. The hooker was still doing her Woody Woodpecker impression as the not so delicate hand of Bristol started walloping on the window. The client shrivelled and the prostitute left one mouthful to give Johnny another. Burning rubber in a completely different way to how he had anticipated, the customer hit the accelerator and they were gone. With round one to us, we went to bed hoping that she slunk back to Bristol and told all her mates.