roy's story

ROY’S STORY

(David Kerr talked to Roy in the ward at Basildon Hospital Mental Health unit, and drafted the story. I visited him 3 times myself, and between the three of us we have patched this story together. Roy has limited reading and writing skills)



I’m an alcoholic. I suffer from severe depression. I am on a Section Three in Basildon Hospital. I have spent a lot of time in hospitals and detox units. They could keep me here for up to 6months, but I hope to leave earlier. Since I have been here, nobody has talked to me about my alcoholism. Mike from the Basildon Self-Help Depression Group visits me on Fridays now and we talk about recovery from alcoholism. Mike has been sober for 26 years, he’s an alcoholic like me, and I also have been going to the depression group that Mike now runs here on Thursday mornings in the hospital. David Kerr, another patient who was recently moved to Runwell Hospital after a flare-up with the ward staff, also goes to Mike’s groups when he’s out of hospital, and he suggested Depression group to me. Mike says there is an AA meeting in the hospital on Friday evenings, but the ward staff have never told me about it.
It is totally boring here. There is nothing to do at all. We have to sit in the ward and watch TV. Recently I met a girl here, and when I get out she is going to help me stay off the booze. Mike told me yesterday that support is wonderful, but he says I must get sober for myself too. I haven’t drank for six weeks since I’ve been here. It’s when I get out it’s going to be hard.

I’m a cockney labourer, but I haven’t worked for over two years, I am 46 years old. Father of Louise aged 17. Up till now I’ve lived with my parents who are in their sixties, but there is a lot of trouble there and I am looking for a place of my own when I get out.

My life story is that I had measles at 2, a double ruptured hernia at three, and I was seriously hurt when a metal bar fell from a conker tree, and hit me a full blow on the side of the head causing brain damage. I think I was always depressed as a child, my parents were always shouting at each other and fighting in front of me. My dad used his belt on me, always the buckle. At school I had trouble, I used to write in different colours from the rest of the class, and I chucked all the sand out of the sand pit and everyone laughed, and I used to try an look up the teachers’ skirts with fascinated curiosity, and we used to put spiders in the girls bags. I left school with no qualifications, and used to get into a lot of fights. I preferred one or two good mates to gangs.

My first job was on a building site in Deptford, and ten I was plumber’s mate for the Greater London Council. At the first job I fell off a roof, but my mates saved me. At first my drinking helped my shyness with girls, but once I fell down a manhole and broke my wrist. Again my mates rescued me. My hobbies were swimming, boxing and artwork. I drove and my favourite car was the Cortina Mark 4. I built myself up with weights as I was always in fights, though not a starter of fights. Once I was beat up real bad by a gang and went after them one by one later. I didn’t really like the violence, but it seemed I had to do it. I ended up sentenced to a year in Wandsworth Prison for malicious wounding. I had the job of picking flowers outside and kept my nose clean, got on well with fellow inmates and got out after 6 months.
I drank heavily again and was often violent and hurt people.
Drink was my entertainment, and I went to the doctor about depression after a girl split with me, and the pills worked sometimes, and I also took sleeping tablets. I was with the mother of my child for about a year, it was a torrid relationship. I took purple hearts for the sexual highs. At fifteen I had fallen in love with a girl of fourteen. I’ve been in love 5 times and engaged once, as well as various drunken encounters.
As my drinking and depressions worsened, I took to drinking at home, my parents’ house. They made me drink mostly in the outhouse or garden. I wanted to avoid trouble and fights by staying out of pubs. I did this for years, and after one hospitalisation I stopped drinking and smoking for three years and just isolated totally home. The depressions took me over, I was like a cabbage.
Later I resumed drinking at home. Sometimes I had visions of the Virgin Mary, protecting me, even being jealous about me thinking of other women. I have been in dreadful trouble many times but always feel as if I am protected and looked after by her.

I’ve had enough of the depressions and terrible drinking, and I realise my body and mind are damaged by alcohol, I get terrible pains in my arm sometimes.
I don’t hate people as much these days, and I realise I have a chance to get sober and have some kind of a life. I’ve had a lot of fun, but the bad times will get worse unless I change.

Mike says Alcoholics Anonymous might work for me, as it did for him, but right now I am working on depression with Mike, and looking around for other people to help. I am frightened of what may happen if I reach for the drink when they send me out of here, as has so often happened in the past.

Now I’ve met others from the group I don’t feel so alone.

Roy April2007