‘lnsanity of alcohol’

Press, 18 March 1983, Page 18

‘lnsanity of alcohol’

In just five days last spring, Lawrie and his drinking mates somehow got through no fewer than five and a half boxes of brandy. It was the first time he had touched drink in a year, and he hopes it will be the last. He remembers nothing about those five days. They are a complete black-out. he says. But he can remember coming to in his room at the boarding house, and deciding in a drunken stupor to plaV a prank bn one of the men downstairs. “I shoved some rolled-up newspaper under his door, lit it, and yelled out to call the police because the place was on fire,” Lawrie recalls. “I went back to my room to have another brandy, and the next thing I knew, there were cops everywhere. They came to see me, I said ‘Sure I did it,’ and I was taken away to the police station. “That sobered me up quickly. I’ve never been incarcerated before. Never been in trouble with the police. And when I appeared in court the next day, the magistrate told me I was a menace to society and sent me to Stewart Villa at Sunnyside, where I was locked up.” “That’s the stupid insanity of alcohol. Doing something like that, like setting fire to a place, is complete anathema to my nature and to my way of living. People who knew me well just couldn’t believe I had done it.” Lawrie, aged 52, is a tall, gaunt, well-spoken man who was once a school teacher specialising in teaching deaf children. Through periodic drinking binges, he lost his job and his family. A resident at Huntsbury Home almost since it began six months ago, . Lawrie is regarded with respect and trust by the other residents — he is their confidant, their spokesman, and their unofficial supervisor. “For years I thought I was just a heavy drinker. I didn’t know anything about alcoholism, and didn’t want to know,” he says. He was getting through a bottle and a half of brandy a day. Sometimes in desperation, he would give it up, to try to keep his marriage together. Then, at 4 a.m. one day, a few years ago, he was found wandering around Edgeware in his dressing gown and pyjamas. “I’d had a complete black-out. I was a long way from home, and had no idea how I got there,” he says. Lawrie ended up in Kennedy detoxification unit and then at Mahu Villa, where he stayed for three months. “But it didn’t work. I didn’t accept that I was an alcoholic. I didn’t believe it. I simply regained my physical and mental health, ready for another good drinking session,” he says. He went up to the North Island, and got another teaching job there, but he kept on drinking. One day, he recalls, the then Minister of Education (Mr Taiboys) came to visit the school. Lawrie

had been drinking. “I told him that if he thought he could run the school better than me, he could have it, and walked out. That was the end of my teaching career.” He was actually asked by the Education Board to go back. But his “alcoholic pride” wouldn't let him, he says. Alcoholic pride, he explains, is the false and stubborn pride that just about every “alkie” feels at some time.

Since he walked out on teaching five or six years ago, Lawrie has had a couple of “respectable” desk jobs, which he managed to hold down for a couple of years, during his periodic drinking bouts. Then, last summer, he took a job working on the Milford Track. In April, when the track closed and there was no more work, he came back to Christchurch to see his 91-year-old mother and tu see if he could get another job.'He did not succeed.

“I stayed out of trouble for a while, as long as I stayed off the drink. But I got depressed when I couldn’t find a job after a few months and so I went on that bender,” he says.

He was assessed at Stewart Villa, he found out later, as “a chronic alcoholic with brain damage.”

“I was bankrupt — financially, socially, spiritually, and physically. I was dehumanised. No wonder they thought I was brain damaged,” he says.

“Luckily, Dawn Williams knew me from my previous visits to Kennedy, and so she was prepared to take me here, sight unseen.” • He has been at Huntsbury Home for six months now, and had his first taste of freedom at Christmas, when he was given leave to look after someone’s house while they were away on holiday. ; “There was plenty of liquor around the house. There was even a wine cellar, but it didn’t worry me. I didn’t touch a drop,” he says.. Booze has been available on a few other occasions, too, but Lawrie says he has been able to stay off it. He looks forward to being able to get a job and work in town again, although he fears that his age and background will make it difficult for him. .

In the meantime, he is happy to stay on at Huntsbury Home. ■

“I was one of the first in hero. The place was a mess, and we were all sick. It would have been easy for us all to sit there and do nothing, because the task seemed to be hopeless — there was just so much to do,” he recalls. ! “But since then, we’ve all done our bit, and the place has got character. It’s got soul. We’ve alj got a stake in it, and it has giveri us all a sense of personal satisfac; tion, starting from scratch and doing it up like this. ; “But while we were drinking, we couldn’t give a damn about anyone but ourselves.” '