Twilight Zone II. Maelstrom of mayhem.

I remained in darkness for some time. Through being in hospital, I was now at least “in the system” which meant that I was parcelled around from B&B to hostel to therapeutic community and back again. These places were so dangerous, so frightening that I carried on drinking so once again, I could keep reality at bay.

There were moments of clarity when I wanted to get help. The trouble is the health and care services were so fragmented, there was never anyone around to respond when I was ready and time after time, the moment passed and I sunk back into the mire again.

No matter how good a service may or may not have been, there was little or no joined up working. I was too drunk for the mental health services, and too mad for the substance misuse services. I was still in very unsafe housing. This was time and time again the trigger for further decline in my health. The routine would be that I would drink until my body could take no more. I would for example have a fit in the street, or be found unconscious, and be taken to A&E. I would then be patched up medically and exited once more back out into oblivion. Of course, I was going to end up back there. No-one was helping me break the chain. It was a self-perpetuating Myth of Sisyphus and even if they could have held the rock for me for a while, it might have helped.

This could end up very repetitive, as it was repetitive. It was a macabre Groundhog Day that further drained me of any connection to humanity including inside myself. By this time I thought nothing of stealing to get what I needed. It was a means to an end.

Some snapshots that have stuck in my mind that will hopefully get over the impossibility of getting well under the circumstances I was in:

In a mental health hostel in North Kensington run by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, had a room in the basement.  In the middle of the night, a man climbed through my window. I had been drinking brandy so was not too bothered. He advised me not to worry, he was a drug dealer and was just doing his job which in this case was selling drugs to the residents in the hostel. I gave him a brandy. He told me his name. Then off he went up into the main part of the hostel where the particularly unwell people lived. At this point my public spiritedness took over and I went next door to where I knew there was an on call “waking night” social worker. She appeared at the door. I told her what was happening. Her response?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “I am only here for emergencies, don’t bother me with this”.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Also in that hostel, I was, as one does, minding my own business on the toilet. I suddenly found myself a foot lower than I had been. The floor had caved in. Once again, this was a hostel for people with Severe and Enduring Mental Health issues run by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Social Services Department.

After yet again being thrown out of a Therapeutic Community for continuing to drink, I found myself in the Homeless Persons’ Unit with all my belongings in a black bin bag.        I officially had a Social Worker. Information should have been available to the HPU due to my vulnerable state however, this Social Worker was conspicuous by her absence during this period. I was in a very dire “walking dead” state and yet, was packed off in a taxi to a room in what turned out to be an illegally converted property in Tottenham. At this time with such support that I had being in Kensington and Chelsea, and given the state of my mental and physical health, I might as well have been sent to Mars.                                                                                                                                                                                       There, I was so visibly vulnerable, I was preyed on by a highly suspicious character, an Iraqi, who was connected to the landlord and had a very nice flat in the otherwise derelict building. One day he dragged me into his flat and I was raped. I had a moment of clarity at this point. I remembered advice from the Foreign Office that I had been given in my old life about finding myself sexually assaulted in an Arabic-speaking country. There was a phrase they advised women to say which might give them some space to have a chance to escape. How I remembered it I will never know. It was Ramadan. I shamed him in front of Allah. He pulled away and I ran for the door having the presence of mind to grab some dodgy looking leaflets in Arabic on the way.

I ran to a phone box right outside White Hart Lane stadium and called the police. I was taken to the Rape Unit in Wood Green. It was remarked what an excellent witness I was. In truth, I did not care one iota about any of it. I relayed information like an automaton. I didn’t want it to happen to anyone else. In the end I didn’t press charges. I knew I would not withstand a trial and I knew they would make mincemeat of me in court. He was released and I had to go on living in the same building as him.  I was too dead inside to care.

However, that did not last long. We were raided by Home Office officials in the middle of the night. They were after the lovely Ismail, a Turkish Kurd who had been tortured. I would hear him screaming in the night. He was represented by the Victims of Torture charity. He trusted me. He wouldn’t come to the door unless I helped him so I found myself the go between, in the corridor in my PJs, between him and the Home Office. He eventually agreed to go with them. I took the opportunity to fill the Home Office people in on some details. I told them Ismail appeared genuine and they should contact the Victims of Torture charity. I told them that it was not him they should be after but the other guy. I told them he was living under an assumed name and then told them his real name. There was a reaction. Then I gave them the Islamic Fundamentalist leaflets that I had grabbed. All I know is, the next day, he was gone.

I am amazed at how survival instinct occasionally stepped in and I showed strength that I absolutely had no idea I had.

To counter balance this horror, there were lighter moments too:

In the Social Services Hostel, I managed extended periods of stability. Three of us were in a basement flat – a Malaysian woman with very severe OCD, and a traumatised Ethiopian girl Tutu. I loved Tutu. She had no idea at all how to live in the UK. Everything was so mysterious to her it was actually rather lovely. On 5th November, she thought a revolution was happening because of all the fireworks going off. I noticed she was stockpiling blocks of butter. It turned out she was putting it on her hair. She was incredibly polite and I got to know all her Ethiopian friends. I helped her with her English and she would cook me VERY hot Ethiopian stew and watch me eat it while blasting out Ethiopian jazz from her CD player. I ate all of it despite it making me feel like my head was on fire. Tutu was actually showing me that against all the odds, I could still be useful to another human being. I could still merit my place on the planet.

There were other angels along the way. In one B&B where I was particularly isolated, a local GP brought me a food parcel which he had paid for himself. The refugee I mentioned above would appear at my door with plates of Turkish food. He had nothing but he was giving all he could to me.

There had to be a breakthrough and thank God it did come. It came in the form of a Junior Doctor, a Senior House Officer, from University College Hospital. I had been scraped off the street yet again and somehow ended up coming through their A&E. I am pretty sure I was being very obnoxious to him.

First, he described me perfectly accurately as a “Maelstrom of Mayhem”. I recall replying, once again showing the extent to which I took refuge, even then, in intellect “That’s wonderfully alliterative”. And then, crucially, he said

“You should try AA as it’s a spiritual programme”. 

He also gave me the details of a substance misuse drop in service in Earls Court.

I most likely told him where he could stick it, but actually he, without either of us knowing it had planted a seed. I wish I could meet him again. He saved my life that day and does not know it.

A couple of weeks later, I was tottering towards the Off Licence from my room in a B&B just off Kensington High Street. I was hanging on lampposts as the nerve damage had affected my mobility. I knew at the end of the row of lampposts was a source of vodka so I was a woman with a mission. It was around 9am on a Saturday morning. I got as far as St Bartholomew’s Church and there on the fence was hanging a dark blue sign with AA on it.

I diverted from my mission, and tottered down the stairs.

This was my very first AA meeting. I am hazy on the details. I know I thought they were all a bit odd. I knew that the “Chair”, ie the speaker telling his story, was a film director and I was shocked that he swore a lot. They paused at one point and asked if there were any newcomers present. Dutiful to the last, I thought that meant I HAD to speak. I followed what the others had done and said

Hello, I am Alison and I am an alcoholic.

At this moment there was a slight lightening of the load weighing me down. It was nothing spectacular but I felt something lift. I now know that that something was Hope. Hope had been absent from my life for a very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the people who remembers me from that first meeting is a nurse. She has since told me she doubted that I would make it. She honestly believed I might well not be alive by the time of the next meeting.

I had, it seems, found what I needed only just in time. That week, I turned up at the drop-in service which the junior doctor had told me about. Before long, I was on my way to detox at a private hospital in Marylebone and they sent a taxi to collect such belongings I had. They told me I would never have to live in a dangerous place like that again.

There was a huge ladder to climb but at least I could now see the ladder.