Episode 7 - Recovery Jimmy

Cleaning out the Closet...one microgram at a time

Jimmy, 41, grew up in Eaglesham on the south-side of Glasgow, Scotland. Jim is a qualified photographer, and has lived and worked all over the U.K. - in part as an effort to escape himself and his alcoholism. He has now settled with his family on the Isle of Man where he is finding peace as a gardener.

Alcohol was everything to me - my best friend, my saviour, the thing I turned to and would ultimately favour over everything and everyone. It sounds bizarre but, looking back, that is what Alcohol became to me. That reward after a long hike or a long day at work. That enjoyable buzz, I turned to whenever something in my life became tough. The good thing was, it was always there, whenever I needed it, it was ready to open its comforting arms and welcome me back, no matter what I had done or said to others, and to me alcohol could do no wrong. That is what alcohol meant to me.

I was born in Glasgow in 1980 to a fairly middle-class family. Mum and dad split up when I was six. My brother used to annoy me and I guess it could be called bullying at times, but nothing that anyone else with an older sibling hasn’t experienced. No, my upbringing was fairly beige, boring and nothing to cause me enough pain and upset to drive me to the bottle. This was my choice, picking up at fourteen was the choice I made because, well let’s face it, it was big and clever and cool. Everyone was doing it! I was never going to become an alcoholic, they were old men in bars on their own.

The people I looked up to at this point in my life were either dead rock stars or living rock stars who had massive issues with drink and drugs, to me they were the tortured-soul-gang, and I felt I belonged. My teenage angst meant no one understood me, except these troubled souls. I wrote poems and smoked weed, I wrote stories and took acid. I was in a few failed bands, and drank to excess and partied with coke and ecstasy. It seemed to me that we were of a broken generation, Generation X, whatever we were, we had no hope. Friends of mine going to uni and college and making a future for themselves, why were they bothering? It was all a waste of time in my opinion. That is how I saw it, I failed at school and started doing jobs here and there, and waiting for the weekend. Making money and getting wasted on it, nothing to show for it. But I was having fun…

This went on and on, I did do some college and actually graduated in photography with distinction. Now I was a fully qualified tortured artist! I never thought I had a problem with alcohol, even when I would wake up on weekend mornings and reach for a bottle just to settle my shakes; I never saw this as an issue, I was fine. Jobs to me were about making more money to live, and living to me was going out, going to parties, having parties or simply staying home and getting wasted, booze, coke, MDMA, weed, acid. Anything really, but alcohol was always there, always my friend, I would get home from work and stop at the shop and buy 3 bottles of wine for a tenner and that would be me for the eve, not getting trashed, but pissed, every night, every week night and then the weekend would be a big one. When I say a big one, it would roll into Sunday night from Friday afternoon, and then work and drink and drink and drink.

I travelled far and wide, from Glasgow, to Aberdeen, to Cambridge, to Manchester, to the Isle of Man, to London, to York, to Leeds, to Hull and then finally to the Isle of Man. I have met some fantastic people on my journeys and I always thought I was a nomad and would eventually settle one day. What I was really doing was running, running from jobs, from relationships, from friendships but essentially, I was running from myself and my issues. My alcoholism, never wanting