I am 10 years sober - this is why

So, here’s the headline. I am 10 years sober. I’ve written and published this now because I don’t seem to be able not to AND because it might help someone. I wish I’d seen something like this 15 years ago. This isn’t an ‘I conquered, and now look at me’ story. It’s not a TedX pitch, or a movie plot. I haven’t achieved massive success or ostentatious financial gain.

I’m still here, which is miraculous. I think I’m meant to be here, I’m still not sure why, but in the meantime, while I figure that out, I’m useful and I’ve helped some people to make their lives better… maybe that is the purpose…

I think I want to tell this story, of this bit of my life, because people deal with ‘me’. I’m it, I am my brand, I’m what there is. I help people with their own existential meaning and gain clarity and honesty. To see things clearly and to put together a route to fulfilment. I help them find the size of steps they can cope with, and I help them place one foot in front of the other. I help people to listen to themselves.

When I do what I do, I focus on them. Only if it’s helpful do I talk about my journey and then I try not to include more than is necessary. It’s not about me. However, I think it is perhaps helpful to know that I have my own journey too and that it’s ongoing.

I’m what is officially called an alcoholic in recovery. What I actually am is a person who has beaten a severe genetic illness. My brain is wired up to react to and regulate emotional triggers (good and bad) by ingesting ethanol. I’ve over-ridden that, re-wired, re-routed those messages. To begin with, I used the 12-step programme and it’s still the bedrock. I went a lot further however and took myself off to university to study psychology – I’m still there. I hope to start my PhD this year.

‘Sounds easy, it wasn’t. It was a massive struggle in the first few years. I went through hell, but at least then I was going through hell rather than being stuck there. When your brain is assuring you that what you know is killing you is the only way you can function and feel at all calm; when the thought of being without what’s killing you is actually (and I do mean actually) terrifying, that’s hell.

I’ve agonized over what to write for ages. I don’t want to join the ‘I survived’ club and have people judge whether I might deserve admiration, sympathy, or perhaps scorn. It’s not a ‘great reveal’ for me, I’ve never made a secret of it. I also have not wanted this to define me. Staying sober however requires as much honesty as a person can muster and for me, that means contributing meaningfully to open debates. I have been given 10 years extra so far and I’ve tried to use that time for the general good. I will continue with that, with all my might. Perhaps it will explain why I question so much of the populist dogma posted here.

I’ve never been anonymous for two reasons. The first is that people who need help can find me and I’ve been able to help a good few of them. Step 12 says we should be available to help others. I know this means at AA meetings, but I don’t go to them. I did go to meetings regularly as part of the aftercare service offered by the rehab I went to. I have gone to meetings with people to support them in their recovery. However, as now a trained and qualified therapist, they’re not for me.

The other reason I’m not anonymous is why the hell should I be? Honesty is all-important in recovery so what’s anonymity got to do with that? Why should I be ashamed of beating a deadly illness? Cancer survivors aren’t, I’m not. This leads me to a statement:

No one who is of a sane mind does what alcoholics do. It is not self-inflicted it is insanity. No one asks for the illness of addiction. It is epigenetic which means genetic predisposition has been triggered by circumstances. It is not their fault. However, once they’ve been given the chance to fix it, what they do about that, is.

I’ll talk about the circumstances which triggered my own epigenetic response in a bit, but first, here’s what happened and how I stopped drinking.

First up, I did know that my world was collapsing, and I did ask for help. My sleeping patterns had turned upside down and I felt desolate and desperate. The advice I got from two GPs and a counsellor as my mental health disintegrated and my drinking replaced everything I’d lost, was useless. One told me that “as long you don’t drink as much as your Doctor, you don’t have a drinking problem” (she meant herself). Another gave me SSRIs and handed me over to someone whose Doctorate turned out to be in theology, rather than psychology – he was an extremely right-wing Christian with an extreme agenda. I am neither of those. The last one told me she didn’t think I had a problem. I was in rehab within weeks.

On 3rd April 2012 I was taken to hospital after (I think) blacking out and falling down the slope of my drive. I had trained in Aikido, so I knew how to roll, but I rolled over bricks and smashed my left collar bone (in 3 places). Once there, according to my bloods, I was almost dead. In fact, the staff thought there must be another person with my name because I was sitting up chatting with people. I needed two blood transfusions and 48 hours of intravenous iron. From there I was taken to a very expensive private rehab.

I spent the first 10 days in rehab in a wheelchair. My brain had kept my body functioning up to that point, but it seemed to take this opportunity to give up. I was told I was an alcoholic by professional people who were all addicts of some kind, all of them having been through a similar journey to me and all of them out the other side. I was amongst people all on the same recovery journey. I had been in total denial up until then. It really is incredible because I was buggered physically and mentally but that’s what the illness can do to you. Once I’d seen the truth for the first time, I grabbed the chance and clung on for dear life, literally.

I had to live, my wife needed me, and I owed her. I still owe her, and do you know what, love really is the greatest force of all. She saved me by acting on the one chance she had to get me into rehab. I know that finally, handing over my addiction-driven stubbornness to professionals was actually a huge relief to her. The illness makes active addicts extremely cunning. Their entire existence revolves around ensuring there is enough of what they need available and any and every trick in the book, and a few more besides, is used. ‘Ordinary’ caring people don’t stand a chance. My heart goes out to any family and friends of an active alcoholic, the denial is contagious. 2nd April 2022 was wife’s 10 years sober too. She’s not an alcoholic. We agreed to stop drinking the day before I was carted off in an ambulance. She did, but apparently, I carried on for one more day, but I don’t remember it. She stopped drinking to support me. See what I mean!

So how did I end up in such a state? That’s easy, I was already genetically primed, and I came from a drinking culture professionally and geographically. That was all fine, I drank too much but not alcoholically. Then I emigrated to New Zealand. BOOM!

We are New Zealand citizens now and honestly couldn’t be happier about that. I wouldn’t be anywhere else. However, I certainly didn’t have a clue what I was walking into, and I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known. I had inadvertently gone from being a medium, but significant sized fish in a very large UK lake, to a pond skater, frozen out on a very small frozen New Zealand pond.

Let’s just say I was recruited into a role from the UK which didn’t match its billing, at all. I was worked into the ground and then had to watch other people claim credit and reward for what I’d done. It wasn’t the first time, but this time was very different. The GFC hit I hadn’t appreciated what a small, closed place corporate New Zealand is. I had an impressive track record and brought valuable skills, knowledge, and experience that was years ahead of anything New Zealand had. I was told, repeatedly, to my face and actually in writing, that I was a Pom and “we look after our own”. MAN, that was a shock. That’s what started my slide into a very dark place and threw open the genetic switches that led to my alcoholism. I was 41 when I came to New Zealand and got tossed on the middle-aged scrap heap at 42. I was alone, with no network, no friends, in a hostile place.

The longer it went on, the worse it got. I came up against the tyranny of HR people and their bloody “computer programmes”. Of course, like everyone else in my situation, I decided I was a consultant. However, I got precious little work (also the norm) and the increasingly snide interviewers I encountered seemed to delight in sneering at me. I had lost connection with my big shiny corporate badges and ‘career progression’ and I had no ‘mates’. I was a known industry figure in the UK. I’d left a role that n NZ $dollar terms was paying over $30,000 pm. Now I was no one.

Down the slide I went and even when I asked for help it was crap. As the rest of my world and all my self-worth became a distant memory, my illness took over. This by the way is called the social model of addiction. I know of 6 models because I studied addictions as a specialty and was given two special post-grad awards as top student by Auckland University.

So anyway, the real rock bottom, the one that I hit bloody hard and thankfully found people to help me bounce off it rather than just remaining splattered began on 3rd April 2012. I began the journey back to sanity. I set off after a career change to study psychology. I wanted to figure out what the hell happened, and I wanted help other people.

Great right? Weeeell, its New Zealand isn’t it… I'll say again, I love living here... now, but it can be exasperating.

My full academic name is now Paul Anthony King BHSc (Hons), BSc, GCertBHSc, MNZPsS – I have recently completed an MSc (psychology) by thesis, and all being well I begin my PhD this year. I am a member of the peer-nominated and highly prestigious New Zealand Psychological Society and an associate member of the American Psychological Association. (I’m also a qualified and licensed financial adviser).

So, here’s where New Zealand, crying out as it is for more mental health professionals, does its thing again.

Even if I do get awarded the MSc grade I need and go on to become Dr. King with a PhD in psychology, I will not be able to register as a psychologist! I can’t even register as a counsellor because my psychology honours degree (in counselling psychology), doesn’t have ‘counselling’ in the official name of the degree. I can call myself a therapist, so I do.

There are registered psychologists in New Zealand that don’t have a therapeutic psychology background, they are Industrial/ Organisational psychologists and only have graduate degrees. They got registered before the rules changed and they’re allowed to keep their registration. I have pointed out this obvious to the powers that be and they have thanked me for my interest…

On the plus side, the positive, I am an adviser (financial), coach, consultant, mentor, counsellor, and therapist. I help people. Not nearly as many as I’d like but I persevere. I’m also a musician and a painter. I am particularly good at unpacking and carefully re-packing situations for people and businesses. I get them unstuck. I have mentored dozens of SMEs and have helped many more people and families as a financial coach for an EAP provider. I have provided coaching for students on the Massey University MBA, EMBA, and MALP degrees. I also have a small number of private clients as a financial adviser in my own right.

That all sounds great but I’m massively under-used and to be honest, unfulfilled, and dissatisfied but I'm working on it. I'm always working on it :-). However, New Zealand and I suspect most of the world actually, works on two bases: You have to have a shiny badge, an ‘I used to work, or currently work’ here badge and, you have to have mates. I have neither that fit the New Zealand requirements – which is one reason why I’m working so hard on my academic qualifications. I’m no quitter though and I’ve been relentless in trying to unearth and develop opportunities. Unfortunately, because I have neither the right badges nor mates, I’ve been duped, lied to, and ghosted more times than it’s healthy for me to dwell on. I mean, a lot! I’ve been promised, told to my face and in writing, that I’ve had consultancy work, partnerships, that agreements would be signed that have just disappeared, signed agreements have been cancelled and agency work has been over-promised or never materialised.

But still, I don’t drink. I don’t react that way anymore and I haven’t for the last 10 years. I will not ever again. I know I’m supposed to say ‘one day at a time’ but it’s actually not like that and it’s got easier all the time to the point that I have to remind myself that it used to be a thing.

I should have died 10 years ago. I nearly did, seriously, as in, in a hospital with senior people looking very concerned and preparing us for the worst… nearly died. However, because of my bloody-minded stubbornness, my determination to find out what had happened and how to deal with it, and the support of my wife, I didn’t. I repaired, much to the amazement of said medical people and actually the medical staff at the rehab place who’d nicknamed me “the walking dead”.

I do sometimes feel sorry for myself. It can get me down. However, I also see other people in jobs that are killing them, and I pray they don’t have the crap genes I have. Financially, we’re doing fine. It’s been a blessing. This is not an ‘I got better and the magic faerie sprinkled success dust all over me’ story. It’s the truth about me and my situation which is like the curate’s egg!

The epigenetic response I had was to self-medicate alcoholically. I still have the remnants of this which are thankfully intermittent usually mild, and manageable. These are general, agoraphobic, and social anxiety and depression. Most of the time I’m above the waterline, but not all and there are things I can no longer do, like being in a situation from which I cannot easily ‘escape’ (seated concerts, long presentations, public transport are examples). I also can’t easily eat in social situations. There are times, and I know they’re coming, where I can’t see the beauty in things, I can’t ‘see’ an amazing landscape as anything more than 2-dimensional shapes and the colours lose their impact. Performing and painting help with all this and, knowing it doesn’t last.

Most importantly though, I don’t drink and I’m useful.