Allen's Story

By November 1999 I was a Bank Manager and an alcoholic and drug addict. This in itself was no mean achievement; I’d been working towards it since 1984 when, at the age of 14, I began abusing solvents. From the solvents I moved onto (in order) alcohol, cannabis, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, crack, pain killers and sleeping pills. When I met Alistair my daily cocktail was costing more than £200 a day and, according to a medically trained friend I confided in, enough to kill a person without the tolerance I’d developed. Yes, surprisingly, I held down a responsible job despite my chronic dependency.

I knew some serious changes where needed when, one day, I realised that I had made the decision to buy more drugs rather than food. Each day when I woke up I regretted it. This sounds melodramatic even to me but, I wanted to die.

The N.H.S. let me down badly; I spent six months on a waiting list only to have my appointment cancelled with one week to go. Then I met Alistair and things really started to happen.

There are two people who saved my life; one is the friend who encouraged me to go against my family’s wishes by going into a clinic. The other is Alistair, who has helped me to pull all the pieces of my fragmented life and personality back together.

In my first session, he told me “One day all these things that you’re ashamed of will be your greatest strengths.” I won’t repeat my exact answer but I think it conveyed my disbelief quite well. Well, now, Alistair has been proven right, yet again. I’ll come to that later.

There’s something about Alistair, which I can’t quite put my finger on. The nearest I can come to it would be to say that he is so utterly human. And, by being so human, he taught me about accepting my own humanity; my own flawed and imperfect humanity.

Having been abused as a child I found (and still do to a lesser degree) it very, very hard to trust myself or anyone else. Alistair not only accepted that, but used it as a part of my recovery. Within the first few sessions with Alistair though, I couldn’t help but trust him. I think it was the sheer human-ness of the person sat with me; not just in the room with me but truly WITH me in every possible way. Everything I brought to him became a strength; no matter how destructive it had been prior to meeting him.

Over the past years I’ve been given a lot of labels; alcoholic, drug-addict, chronic depressive, complex P.T.S.D. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), clinically paranoid and actively suicidal. Alistair has steadfastly stuck to one label – Allen. To him I’ve always been Allen (or Big A, as he calls me) who has problems or difficulties that he can help me to overcome.

He has helped me to rebuild myself from all the parts I had deliberately kept separate. Some people reading this might understand when I say I only allowed people to see a part of me but NEVER to see all of me. I only felt “safe” that way. With Alistair’s help that has changed; I now have the freedom to be me and not be ashamed of it. I’ve taken all the parts of my insanity or ‘unwholeness’ and put them together to make a whole person.

The first thing I gained from Alistair was how to have the gift of choice. To some people that might be a given. It wasn’t to me but now, finally, I have it.

Please do not put Alistair on a pedestal – That’s a pretty precarious position for anyone to be in. As he might say “There’s one trouble with tests; If you test yourself hard enough you’ll eventually fail.” Alistair isn’t a god by any means; he’s human. But he’s SO human he’ll get through to you, very quickly, in his own undeniable way.

So now, six years on, what’s changed? I’m still ‘clean and sober’ which I would never have believed possible. That doesn’t really surprise me though; I’ve achieved so many things I’d previously thought impossible. And I’m a Drug therapist, having worked in Prison with Drug Addicted offenders, and working in the community helping addicts find recovery, – the good old “rags to riches” story. How could I not try to do it?
Alistair is not just a fantastic therapist and an amazing human being but a wonderful teacher or, as I prefer to describe him, a Guru. When you meet someone like Alistair, change is inevitable. You may not know what form it will take or when it will happen but it will. The hardest thing would be to try to stop it.

I only have one regret in all my time that I’ve known Alistair; not trusting him 100% from the very beginning, but that was my story. Who knows how different yours will be?

Allen Quine - Addiction Therapist, UK