The Inside Job : The Nick Evans

Today is August 6th 2013. It is 12 years ago today since I had my last alcoholic drink. 12 years ago since I finally admitted defeat of my self will and gave up the ghost and asked something bigger than me for help.

I finally said; 'Ok god I'm fucked here. I can't go on doing it my way. I'm miserable. I'm desperate. Every time I run into a problem I drink. I cannot stop drinking on my own. My head is a mess. My life is in the toilet, My girlfriend doesn't want me. My job is fucked. I'm on my arse here. Help".

Yes that's right folks it got that bad that I went to AA. Lets face it you've got to be pretty desperate to go to that fucking place right? Church halls and full of weirdos 'sharing', hugging and no doubt preaching God. Oh god has it come to this I thought. This is the pits.

It's a cult full of cults (or words to that affect). Full of lilly livered do gooders too weak to handle things themselves. I'm better than this. I need professional help. Somebody qualified in a white coat with letters after their name. Surely AA is for the brainwashed masses?

The humiliation. The suffering. Who will see me? What will my friends think? Oh god it's officially the end of my life. No more fun. Just church halls, patterned jumpers and jammy dodgers. Kill me now. These are the thoughts that ran through my head. Presumably being arrested, pissing myself, passing out on Putney High Street in my Fulham FC match day uniform and countless grovelling apologies for bad behaviour weren't humiliating enough. But the thought of going to a 12 step recovery place which helps millions of people not die from a terminal addictive disease was. As you can see my thinking wasn't quite straight.

I was 28. Pushing 16 stone. Under my creaking belt I had notched Several arrests, 3 large scars, numerous blackouts, a head that said 'you're a piece of shit', self esteem on the floor, 3 written warnings at work, the nickname of 'besty' in the football club I worked, a girlfriend who couldn't bare to look at me let alone touch me, trousers covered in piss & still I turned up at the door of my 1st meeting and said "Go on then you fuckers. Heal me". My arrogant insane ego was nicely under control.

Only an alcoholic can look down on people from the gutter. Judging and moralising whilst your life is going down the khazi. I didn't think I was an alcoholic of course. I mean I didn't drink every day, was only 28 and still had a job, flat and girlfriend. (Sic - Job was about to go, flat was my girlfriends which I rarely contributed rent too and girlfriend was too nice/frightened to ask me to leave)

Alcoholics are people like my father right? Build up a family and then drink it all away, end up in the salvation army then street drunk for 26 years drinking Tenants Super on Shepherds Bush Green and end up dying of a hemorrhage all alone for 6 days in a state warden controlled flat at the age of 65. That's a proper alcoholic right?

Well yes right but also Wrong. From what I know now. Alcoholism is a diseases that is in us at birth. It is a terminal disease that without total abstinence effectively kills you subtly and slowly. It takes time, it is cunning and will wrap itself around all kinds of mad behaviour. You can get off at any stage, before it gets really bad or ride it all the way to the end but it will get you in the end. It won't be happy until it's robbed you, your family, your girlfriend of everything. Emotion, spirit, energy, money, self respect, self esteem. Everything.

It is like a juggernaut tearing everything in it's wake apart. The scary thing is most people don't even understand it or think of it as a disease. Instead they see it as people drinking too much or lack of control. Trust me it's not. 3 generations of Evans' have had it and it fucks up families, lives and acts as a ripple affecting everyone or thing in it's path.

Addiction is a sickness of the soul that must be filled with alcohol, drugs, food, sex, relationships, gambling. Anything to take away the 'head'. Most normal people of course have a range of emotions and bad days, years and problems. I'm not laying claim that addicts have it worse than others because we don't. It's just the destruction that's caused in trying to blot out these terrible feelings of inadequacy, low self esteem and ego.

But when you pick up and use that substance to change the way you feel because you don't like you. Then it sets off the phenomenon of craving and you cannot stop. It's the same for me in drinking, muffins, sex, relationships, pornography, smoking, diet coke, DVD box sets. Give me something I like and I will cane the fuck out of it until I can't do it anymore. The addict inside me is never satisfied. It is an illness of more and more and more. Rarely is it abated. One is too many and a thousands' not enough as the saying goes.

In my experience only a spiritual awakening of sorts can abate it and that goes for families affected by it too. It is after all a family illness. Do you think a partner of 5, 10 or 20 years is unaffected? Tried to change them? Understand them? Threatened them? No of course not - it's their problem as much as the addicts. But will they see it that way? Of course not the denial in them is as strong as the addicts though they usually don't think so. it is a disease that spreads far and wide.

My 1st ever comedy gig was in the Angel, North London 12 years ago. It was a Sunday. I had done a comedy course for 12 weeks and this was our graduation night. A 5 min gig to an assorted crowd. I had been drinking on and off for 5 months. Making guest appearances to meetings but not seriously wanting to do the programme or get a 'sponsor'. Fuck that, that's for real alcoholics I thought. I just need to settle down my drinking and get my head sorted'. Little did I know you must stop the drinking, attend AA and then the head gets sorted. NEVER the other way round.

Anyway I smoked 116 cigarettes that day, was petrified. Was put on 12th (last) and spent the night pacing. I was due to go on when I had a huge panic attack and thought everyone else was funnier than Eddie Izzard and Frankie Boyle on helium. I'm shit I'm going to bomb, I thought.

There was a girl called Marie. A Yorkshire lass. Tiny. She was standing in the hallway holding a large glass of wine.

I said to her, "I can't go on Marie I'm going to be shit",

She said "Don't be silly you'll be fine, have some of this" and thrust the glass in my face.

Now I had been off the booze for a week and was going through my Am I? Am I not? phase. I knew booze was the problem but I couldn't get my head around being an alcoholic (after all the yard stick I had was my Father. The daddy of all alcoholics who made Ollie Reed, George Best and Richard Burton look like teenagers) - I was trying not to drink.

"I can't drink it", I replied to Marie.

"Why not?" she said

"Because I'm an alcoholic" I replied,

"Fuck off" she hissed "Get it down your neck"

So I did. In one. Then I said to her "Get me a quadruple vodka" (which kind of proves the point)

Wolfed that down as well. Did my rather shoddy 5 minute gig whilst shaking like a dog with Parkinson's taking a shit. Then it was over to the pub for the after show where I drank 6 pints of Lowenbrau.

I had a strange sensation in that pub. I wasn't getting drunk and realised that I had been using booze for years to mask my fear, the fact I hated myself, didn't think I matched up and was useless. I realised that when the booze wore off I would still be like this, as I had been like that all my life and the booze wasn't the answer. It was weird. I had the feeling that booze was pointless. The problem wasn't the booze it was me and if I drank I would never fix the problem. I felt I didn't need it.

I got home. My girlfriend was barely speaking to me, in fact she left for a few days and went AWOL. I was sober but not going to AA and I was frantic. She was nowhere to be seen and after 3 days my head was fucked. I wanted to drink so badly. To get smashed. Annihilated. Check out. The head was on fire and I couldn't handle it. Pacing around, chain smoking. 'Holy Fuck, what do I do?'

It was at this moment I realised it was either give in to my head, do it solo and go back to drinking or pick up the phone to a guy in AA who had given me his number and say I need help. I chose the latter was in a meeting that night and haven't picked up a drink since. I gave myself over that night even though I didn't realise it at the time. I needed something else to replace the booze and treat my head which was shouting 'Drink, drink, drink'.

Don't get me wrong I fucking hated AA. Mine is not I went to a meeting, stopped drinking and lived happily ever after story. I Didn't want to be there but there was something about the old school blokes who were many years sober who had probably spilt more than I had drunk, They had something, were talking about real stuff yet were sober, attended AA and seemed to have the devil about them, laughed, didn't take themselves too seriously, were proper blokes & sober.

Despite my head I stayed. I bitched, moaned, shouted, judged, criticised, disrupted, had a huge 'FUCK OFF' on my forehead, I Was angry, So angry I became known as Angry Nick. But I kept sober. I kept going to fuck loads of meetings as despite my head I knew my way didn't work and so began what has been 12 years of slow reduction in my defiance, rebellion and anger.

I grew to love it. All it' imperfections. It's sickos and dicko's, weirdos, freaks and geeks, its magnificent kind souls, its generosity of spirit, it's incredible sound and practical yet deeply spiritual ideals.

I grew to love the people who shared for 15 minutes, even though I wanted to stab them in the eyes, (and ended up sharing for 20 myself) the Chelsea treatment centre lovies who talked of 'boundaries' and 'inner child' that made me want to throw up, the mentally ill who spoke more sense than the know it alls. I grew to love it all. AA, the pub with no beer. The bottom line was it was a more attractive proposition than what I had. So I stayed and have been going back ever since.

I got it totally wrong. It is not a cult. It is not lilly livered or for the weak. It is for the incredibly courageous who make the choice to deal with the hard yards of alcoholism and not drink and try to change one day at a time. It is not church or full of do gooders. We are not saints.

At heart alkies are slippery bastards and that's what I love about it. I love that a load of self important, egotistical, intolerant, arrogant ego maniacs (like me) with an inferiority complex all sit and listen to each other and govern the most democratic meetings I've ever seen. We live by a set of principals and traditions that holds the fellowship together. Left to our own devices us alkies always know best & we would tear it apart without traditions. Steps keep the alcoholic sober and traditions keep AA sober.

It is phenomenal. It is humble. It is spiritual. It literally saves millions of lives (and livers) and it is proper fucking ace!

I know there are many who knock it & good luck to them but I know if you are an alcoholic, then a 12 step abstinence based programme is the only thing that works in my experience. You arrive broken and defeated full of self will, ego and pride and slowly (very slowly) over a period of time can recover and live a reasonably normal ish life (as long as the real world doesn't discover how much of a lunatic you really are) with fear, worry, anxiety and rage all manageable.

Don't get me wrong. I'm by no means healed, fixed or recovered. It is a daily battle and it takes a long time to shed old behaviours, thought patterns and addictive personality traits that stay with you like a faithful old dog. Some are hard to shift. I fuck up regularly. Hurt people. Make bad decisions based on self. It's a long haul. Layers of the onion reveal more aspects of the disease. Then after a period of time you find that alcohol is just the tip of the iceberg and a symptom of alcoholism. It is a disease in the person not the bottle and it takes a long time to break it down. You are never fixed but the defective traits get smaller, or easier to spot and head off at the pass.

You have to experience the pain of getting things wrong, running on self will then changing before you can even begin to change on a deep level.

I feel I'm only just embarking on that process now, after 12 years. My next ambition. Emotional sobriety not just physical. Fuck knows how long that will take though I'm up for the journey.

I fear I'm being too open here. To honest. It is after all an anonymous programme and I've blown mine all over the shop. perhaps it will come back to haunt me. Perhaps it will work against me. Perhaps people in the fellowship will disagree with me doing it. Perhaps people will think I'm a loudmouth and know it all preacher.

What I do know is they say 'to thine own self be true' and this feels right. It feels good. It feels like me.

So to sum up - what's better. Drinking or Sobriety? Well I'll let you be the judge of that - you vote;

Here's me when I was drinking;

And here's me in sobriety;

Which one wins?

Thanks to all that have helped over the past 12 years. Here's to lost loved ones both in recovery and through the disease.

If alcohol is costing you more than money and you want to seek help with your drinking visit www.aa.org

** The views discussed in this blog do not represent AA or any other 12 step fellowship, they are my own and should be treated accordingly. I do not speak for AA or any other organisation **

PS - Here's a little video I did to pay my respects to sobriety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLzhK2x3vb0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUJaFzQu9gPlAntWn6Frz2Ng

The Nick Evans