I should have taken another bottle with me for the journey. If the Jamacian bloke hadn’t taken the M25 we could have spun the journey out a bit longer and I would have had more time to get more whisky down me. Maybe I’ve got time to sneak out and find a shop and just have a little top up. I walked over to the gate to see if I can get out.
“Hey, Darren”. I turned around it was the grinning idiot.
“Hey”
“The doctor will be here soon, we suggest you wait in the canteen”.
Thank God! I needed no further encouragement. I go inside. The canteen is packed. Feeding time at the zoo. Something good must be about to happen. There is an air of suppressed excitement. The strangers have a collective nervous energy and it cracked and buzzed. They’re all looking at a door in the left of the room. We wait.
Minutes tick by slowly. I can feel the insidious subsidence of the booze and feel the beginning of the fear building up in my stomach. More minutes passed. I make a mental note to speak to the manager as the clock seemed to be malfunctioning. It’s not moving at the normal speed. I can’t prove it cos they’d taken my phone off me and I don’t have a watch but I can clearly see the minutes in here were longer than regular minutes.
We wait. Some of the strangers are talking quietly. A small group of them were even laughing and joking. Freaks! Maybe they were too far gone to realise what’s going on.
I sink back into myself and wait. Everything is so bright. Artificial light and white furniture. A memory of an old film comes into my head - One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. In the scene the doctor arrived and a bell goes off in the nut house and a nurse announces, “Medication time” in a sing-song voice. I remember it well as it was sampled in a dance track I used to like. The irony of my situation doesn’t go unnoticed.
This is torture, the waiting. I can feel my head going. I can’t remember the last time I was straight but I’m sure I didn’t like it much. If I don’t get some drugs soon I’m going to go crazy. Already I can feel the grasping greedy fingers of clarity trying to drag me back into that place I don’t want to go. I flit between complete disassociation with where I am and the deeply uncomfortable sense of being alone in a strange new world. I look up and everything comes rushing into focus. Buzzing from the tube lighting, the door to the kitchen smashes open violently. A phone screams murderously from reception. Blood pounds round my head, Molecules of air crash violently into the skin on my face. The voices of the strangers get louder and faster and harsher and more insistent, Acrid bile churns my stomach into sickly mush. My hands are tingling, heart racing, this is real. It’s happening. Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck!!! I must get out. Now. I have nothing. They’ve taken my money, my keys, my phone. I had to get out. How did I let this happen? Was I fucking stupid. Where was I. Somewhere near Watford I think. I should have paid more attention. I should have google mapped it. Is it near a station? Is it in London. There must be a shop nearby. Do I know anyone nearby I can go too, to cadge some money off? I’m hyper-ventilating. Fuck I need a drink NOW. What was I thinking off? I berate myself for my carelessness. Moment of clarity my arse, it was a moment of madness. If I wasn’t so stupid I could be sat at home in my lovely cool kitchen with a big glass of whisky, not in this nut house.
Fear propels me out of the chair and into the manager’s office. I wasn’t there I was somewhere else. I hear myself clearly though -
“Where is this fucking doctor!!!” …” I’m fucking dying here. Is this some kind of game to you? You getting some kind of kick out this you sick fuck”
The grinning idiot looks back at me with his big stupid cow eyes.
“Calm down Darren, he’s on his way. Do you want to do some breathing exercises”?
“Breathing exercises…no I fucking don’t I want some drugs or a drink, preferably a fucking drink and I want it now. You can stick your breathing exercises up your arse”
“Maybe some yoga….”
A wave of comprehension smashes into me. This is all a massive con, a big trick. They’re not interested in me or my problems. They weren’t here to help. This was all a façade, like the fake western towns in the old film sets, all front. This was the governments way of punishing me for a lifetime of addiction and alcohol abuse. This fucker is a government agent. His job is to drive me mad so I top myself and he can tick another box in his spreadsheet. The numbers are going down sir, good work…I could feel the beginning of the rage. I don’t want it but I can’t stop it. It’s as physical as it is mental and when it happens it’s like being possessed and when it goes it leaves me violated, naked, mentally raped. Not now, please, not now. I can’t take it at the moment. I know it will kill me.
“The doctor is here now, you can go in…”
Phew! The rage is stopped in its tracks. Calm returns. Maybe he isn’t a complete dickhead after all. Thank you. Finally! Thank God!!
In my head, I dance lightly through the corridors of the centre and pirouette gracefully into the doctor’s room. I sit down and look at the doctor. A small fat Indian man with a morally dubious face.
“So, Darren, tell me about yourself”.
“OK, what exactly do you need to know?”
“Why don’t we start with how you perceive yourself”. Jesus, here we go. How about we skip that part and get down to brass tacks. You just turn right around and grab that prescription pad and start fucking writing as quickly as you can?
“Er ok what do you want to know”, I say. Play the game I tell myself, all good things to those who wait.
“What is the nature of your addiction, how does this manifest itself”. Eh? What the fuck are you on. I drink as much as I can, as often as I can until I am as fucked as I can get. Is that what you mean? Calm down. This is how it is. Just play the game.
“Er I guess it manifests itself in what some might consider to be an excessive use of alcohol”
“And what would you consider to be excessive?”, he asks
What do I say? I don’t consider anything excessive. Tell him the truth? Play it down? No don’t play it down, I need drugs. If I say to little he wont give me enough. But if I tell him the truth it will go on my record. Shit. Catch 22.
The truth, or rather the need for drugs wins out. “3 litres of scotch”. I fess up.
“A week?” he asks
A week? A fucking week? What does he think I am, a fucking part-timer?
“A day”
“A day?”
He blanches visibly and then composes himself. I sense this isn’t entirely new to him but he seems equally perplexed.
“OK, let me take some readings”
Blood pressure, very high. Please stand on the scales. OK, weight, not good, very high BMI. Exercise routine? OK let’s get back to that one. Any other medical conditions, mental or physical. Do you smoke. Allergies? Right OK. How do you feel in yourself? Yada yada yada…
He makes some musing noises and enters data into a computer. Don’t grab him by the neck and strangle the sloth like fucking prick. He’s just doing his job. Don’t scream at him to hurry the fuck up. He won’t like that. It’s a game, there are rules. Be patient. You are the patient. Oh very clever head. Thanks for that one.
“Now I need to take a photograph”
“Fine”
” OK based on the data, and given your consumption we will have to put you on the maximum dose of Librium we are legally allowed,”. He continued to talk for another few minutes but I stopped listening. He tried to explain to me what Librium was. There was no need. I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of drugs and their effects on the human body. It’s a specialist interest of mine. I consider myself an expert researcher on the subject. I’ve passed the theory and the practical. I like to get my hands dirty. He continues to ramble on about recovery and the like. It was just noise, the objective had been achieved, I could relax. Maximum does. Yes sir, that is the answer I wanted. You played a blinder Darren. I give myself a pat on the back. Maximum dose is always a good thing. Half measures avail us nothing. At last someone is taking me seriously. There was some mention about it being a reduction program but that was a problem for another day. Today was a maximum dose day.
Back out to the canteen, a line of shuffling humanity leads up to the door in the side of the room which now has a red light above it. I join it eagerly. At last my time comes, I walk in respectfully like a monk might enter a sacred site. It’s a small room, a storeroom. A woman with a friendly warm face smiles at me. She seems genuine and says hello. Next to her is the psychopath. I ignore him, he reciprocates.
In front of her on the table is a large file with my photograph and name on it. I avoid looking at the photograph but acknowledge that it is me in some way. Next to this are boxes and bottles of pills. She counts out some pills from one box and put them in a small paper pill cup. She opens another bottle and puts more pills in, then another. seeing the tablets pile up in the little cup sends a warm glow through me. A feeling of serenity and peace descends. It’s going to be OK. She hands me the cup of pills and a small plastic cup of water. I swallow them with ease and gratitude.
I leave and head up to my room
What a fucking day…
I open my suitcase. It had been searched and anything useful taken. I had some shirts and jeans and pants. I should put them in the wardrobe. That’s what normal people do. I can’t be arsed. I close the suitcase. I look out the window. It’s sunny outside. It’s a stark contrast to my mood. Inside its far from fucking sunny. I don’t know what to do but I’m not thinking right now and not thinking is as good as it gets so I’m trying to not to do anything to knock that off-balance.
If I do think, I know what’s waiting. I’m a child closing my eyes and believing that as long as they are closed, whoever or whatever it is w
aiting for me, cannot find me. I’m blind.
That’s good. I’m in a very strange place in more ways than one. I’m in a room in a building in a town and a place I don’t know. I don’t have a phone or a computer. The thing I also don’t have that I really really want is something I don’t even want to think of not having because thinking about not having it is the thing that will bring it all crashing down. It’s the string keeping the wrapping on Pandora’s box in place. I’m getting to close even thinking about not thinking about the thing I don’t want to think about.
Sit down, do something, wait for the drugs to kick in.
I sit on the bed. It’s not very firm and It’s a single bed. I haven’t slept in a single bed since I was a kid. The room is empty and quiet and dark and cool. I pull the curtains closed anyway. I’m where I feel most content: on my own. The day has been difficult. The immediate future isn’t looking too rosy either. I’m in limbo.
I need to continue on the ‘not thinking’ route. I peruse my not-thinking strategies. I have options. Different strategies that I’ve perfected over years to not thinki. Or I think I have. The truth is I haven’t. The truth is I delude myself into thinking I’m not thinking. I use any means necessary, drink, drugs, books, people, anything that will stop that incessant fucking voice in my head. I’ll even recite lyrics from songs over and over again to kill the thoughts. I hate my head. I hate me. I hate being me. I fucking loathe every minute I’m awake and conscious. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to fix that and not be in this state.
It’s not always been this bad but only by degrees. As a kid I used to read fantasy books to the point of obsession. I had to believe in it. I had t
o believe there was magic in this world because the version of the world I lived it was shit. It wasn’t shit in a dramatic way. In fact the dreariness and banality of it was one of the many aspects I hated. To anyone else it was a great life. I had amazing parents, a sister I loved. I even had a few mates. We had a nice house. We didn’t go hungry. There was no abuse, no social workers calling. Mum and Dad were married. On the outside it was peachy creamy. The problem wasn’t out there it was in me. And in me, everything turned to shit. I recall a series of books I used to read and re-read. In the books, there was magic. By focusing your will to a tipping point of force and visualising every essence of the thought, you could, by using
the word, bring that which is in your head into being. It made perfect sense to me. I used to practice it again and again. Each time it didn’t work, I berated myself. The problem wasn’t the instructions, it was me. My will wasn’t strong enough. Sad piece of shit that I am, it’s always me that’s the problem. And my punishment was to continue as I was. No magic for me. I don’t deserve it.
The consciousness is the problem. I’m stuck now. They’ve taken everything. I need a fucking drink, badly. Like every drink I previously thought I needed was nothing, just preparation for this moment. This one drink that I now seriously really need. The ultimate drink. Even thinking of it makes kicks of a physical reaction. T
he shaking intensifies. It’s like my organs are all nodding violently in agreement. inside. I can smell it. As much as I try to I can’t resist. I start the tape rolling. I’m still in the room in body but as the tape in my head plays, I’m strolling down the road to the shop.
It’s not far. I could probably get there and back before anyone notices. It’s a small convenience store and post office. The shopkeeper is desperately trying everything to make some money. Poor bastard and he’s probably working 14 hours a day and gets no time with his wife or kids. 14 days every day stood behind the counter selling fags and booze to wankers like me.
It’s packed with crap that regular people seem to think is important, the aisles are narrow to accommodate this collection of trivia. At the bottom is a counter with a tired looking old man stood in front of the cigarette display. Next to the fags is my part of the shop, the important bit. My church. The spirit shelves. The holy fucking spirits. My Gods, I have many. I’m fortunate, not like those Christian idiots, I have many Gods to choose from. These shelves are full of them. Hundreds in fact, all waiting patiently behind the old man. Pick me, pick me. I scan the display, vodka – not my thing but does the trick. Not off the cards yet – price is a factor still so check the price of the bottle of Glens – eleven ninety nine. OK not bad but only 37.5 percent proof and probably pure fucking ethanol. I know the gangsters use that brand as their standard black maket poison. Rum, OK bit sweet but again it’s in the top 30% percentile so still in the game. Whisky, ah this is my bit. I read the labels, High Commissioner, McKendricks, White&McKay, Highland Stag my kind of whisky. All 40%, all under 12 quid a bottle. I can relax. I’m not going to have to pay over the odds for some expensive crap. Next row it’s the more socially acceptable shite – Grants, Teachers, Bells. Same shit as the cheap stuff but in nicer bottles. I scan further. There’s the more expensive stuff, Jameson’s, Jack Daniels, Chivas. Too pricey for me. They are a pay day treat if I’m not too skint. Below this is the premium malts. Waste o
f fucking money. Nice earthy aromas, with a touch of charcoal. Sight hints of heather on a cool Scottish breeze. Fuck off. If it’s in your mouth long enough to detect that shit you’re not drinking properly. Next decision, size and relative cost. I look at the litre bottles are any on special offer. Mmmnn 1 litre of High Commissioner is fifteen quid. That’s three quid more than the 75c bottle so that’s an extra 25cl for 3 quid. So by that maths the 75cl bottle nine quid if it was based on three times the difference in the litre bottle. Yep that’s the one. Decision made I make the request. As usual the shop keeper goes for the 75cl bottle. “No, no….not that one the bigger one”. Fucking retard. What part of “litre” doesn’t he understand. He picks up my one litre God with disinterest and sticks him in front of me with no reverence or respect. Heathen! “20 Superkings too”. He gets the cigarettes. Job don
e. Groceries purchased. Phew… I leave the shop. I’m a fucking star. Hunter gatherer and I’ve gathered my bounty. Now to drag it back to the cave to devour my prize
Am back in the fucking room. Fuck off head. Don’t stop there. This isn’t the good bit.
I re focus…the tape continues
I’m back at home. The bottle is on the kitchen counter. It’s a beautiful sight a new unopened bottle of whisky. The seal is on the cap, unbroken. Pure, untouched. A virgin bottle. I get a perverse kick out of watching it for a few minutes. I really fucking need it inside me not sat there in the bottle but I get a deep sense of satisfactions just seeing it there. It’s the same moment I remember from younger days, sitting with a needle loaded with the contents of a methadone ampule or pure diamorphine poised, gently pricking my skin. Savouring the moment. Balanced between two worlds. The pain and the pleasure. Accepting the pain, understanding it and revelling in it knowing its about to be over. Bang, slam, from fear to ecstasy in the blink of an eye….a shortcut to oblivion. Faster. More economical than whisky but with a shorter shelf-life.
I twist the cap and the seal breaks. I hear the rough scrape of the metal cap untwisting. I’m pouring it into a glass. Glug, glug, not a timid measure, not a small glass. A third of it goes in. It doesn’t look as much as I’d like and the
bottle looks emptier than it should be for the amount in the glass. Ah well that’s a problem for a different time. Stay in the moment. Now it’s OK, I’ve got a big fuck-off glass of whisky and it smells beautiful.
I take a swig. It burns as it races down to my stomach. There’s a satisfying clinical alcoholic taste. The taste moves up to my nose. Weird how the senses all align. But my head is still racing. It’s been a long fucking time since a mere glass of whisky could shut that fucker up. But that’s OK. I have more and off I pop. Glass number two. Same measure. Shit the bottle is half empty. That’s not good. Ah well maybe this one will do the trick.
It does. It’s amazing the difference 10 minutes and a half bottle of whisky can make. I have a vague sense of sadness that it takes that much just to get rolling but I know from experience that there is no proportionality in terms of times and volume. I’ll drink more, but it will be slower so the next half will last an hour maybe. So do I get the next one now or wait till later. It’s not an ‘if question it’s definitely a ‘when’ one. Why didn’t I get two anyway? Because it looks bad buying two bottles from the same shop and I couldn’t be arsed going to a second shop because I needed the first one quick. That’s the reason. Why do I even ask the fucking question. I’m feeling a bit spritely, a bit -proactive as the wankers at work might say so I head out for bottle number two.
Knock, knock..
”Darren?”
Waahhh. What the fuck! I’m back in the room. There is someone outside. Who is it? What do they want? Should I pretend I’m not here? How do I feel? Have the benzo’s kicked-in yet? No I’m still edgy as fuck. My hands are still shaking and twitching and my liver is like a Mexican fucking jumping bean. Damn. What if they don’t work? What if they have grossly under-estimated what I need. I shouldn’t have trusted that doctor. He looked dodgy I should trust my instincts more. Cunt!
“Darren?”, the voice and the knock. This time more insistent.
“Hello”
“I’m coming in”
“OK”
Door opens. A really pretty young blonde woman walks in. Fucking hell what is she doing here is my first thought. She looks completely out of place. Clean, calm, unpolluted. Totally out of place.
“Hi I’m Samantha, I’m a therapeutic assistant”.
“Right”
“How are you feeling? Have you unpacked yet?”
“Yes”, I lied
“OK, well I’m afraid you can’t stay up here by yourself. I’ll take you down to the lounge to meet your friends”. Friends? What fucking friends. The other fuck-ups in this place are not my mates. I don’t want to know them. I don’t care about them. I don’t like them. I don’t fucking care. I don’t want to get involved. Leave me alone you prissy fucking slag.
“It’s OK, I just need a minute to clear my head”
“I’m sorry but we don’t think it’s good for you to be by yourself”.
Oh don’t “we”? And who the fuck is ‘we’. The royal fucking “we”. Think you’re special do you. Or is this the collective ‘we’. “We”, the state, “We”, the man, the big fucking swinging dick that likes to fuck you at every opportunity . I don’t like collective nouns when used by indivduals. I can imagine the fucking guards at Auswich were big fans of the collective noun. It absolved them of any kind of personal responsibility. Like this smug bitch. Yep ‘smug bitch’. In the space of 20 seconds she had gone from being a blonde innocent young woman into the bodily representatio
n of the totalitarian regime. That’s how it was for me. From zero to one-hundred in one second. No increments, no shades of grey. Pure binary. You were with me or against me and this bitch was not with me. Zero or One.
“Right OK, fine. I’m coming”. I dragged my twitching, sweaty bulk of the bed and walked towards her in the doorway. Time to meet the other fuck-ups I guess. This will be fun. They didn’t even give me time for the Librium to kick-in. This is so unfair. The effects of the last bottle of whisky seem to be a long distant memory. And I’m supposed to go and fucking socialise with a bunch of fucking strangers in my state? I can’t do it. I really can’t do it.
“Sorry, I’m not feeling well”
Yes. Bingo!!! A plan. Thanks head. I thought for a minute I would be leaving and going downstairs but as I reached the doorway, I passed the small bathroom and the plan pounced on me. It wasn’t formed but I saw the toilet through the semi-open doorway and it hit me.
“I really need the toilet. My bowels are going crazy”
A look of disgust briefly flickered across her perfect little porcelain face. She recovers quickly and sticks a fake smile back on her smug mug. She was young and I doubted she wanted to get into a discussion with a dishevelled old bastard like me about bowel movements. I was right.
“Ok. I’ll wait outside”.
Yes! Perfect. I went into the bathroom and
closed the door. I would have locked it but noticed there wasn’t a lock. Bastards. What about privacy? I sat on the toilet.
I have a stomach full of little pills that haven’t kicked-in yet, but they are in me. My enzymes are meeting them like doormen at a posh hotel. Hello Librium, welcome to Darren’s body. Please come here and take a seat whilst we process you. Step this way. This is the processing suite. Here you will be dissolved and broken down into your core functioning components.
Soon they will be working their way through my blood stream, dispersing and unleashing their chemical magic. Librium, a benzo-diazepam, a class of drug that I am familiar with, like, and as with most, have abused extensively in the past. Benzos as they are affectionately known. The perfect come-down drug for any occasion, I love drugs. I always have. I love anything that can stop that those incessant voices in my head. Even a bullet wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome. I’d put a bottle of scotch or a nice strong chemical in first and second place, but a bullet would still sit comfortably in position number three. I remember once reading an interview by Hunter S.Thompson where he said something that I identified with immediately and has always stuck with me - “I would feel rather trapped in this life if I couldn’t commit suicide at any time”. That’s always given me comfort. He was lucky, he lived in the US where they have a plentiful arsenal of weaponry. I have a secret, never-to-be-spoke
n wish that I had been born in America where guns are easier to come by. I always wanted a gun. Not to be a cowboy or to shoot people, but for me. A little present/threat to my mad head. A security blanket – a get out jail free card. Just knowing I could do it quickly and easily would have helped me a lot. Us poor bastards in this country have to rely on pills or trains or big buildings. Its not fair.
The thought passes. I’m still waiting. This is something I know well. I’m well versed in this. Waiting for the effects of drugs to take a hold.
Am I….aren’t I?
Is it working?
I don’t feel anything, shit what if it doesn’t work?
I can feel it…no I can’t
Or can I?
Oh yes it is…ahh yes that’s it… this is it
It’s not enough
Maybe I need more…
But now I’m sat in the toilet in a small room in a rehab clinic with a pretty young blonde girl waiting outside the door to frog-march me downstairs into a room full of fucking strangers, wondering if I wait long enough, the drugs will be able to provide me with some security against this strange new world.