A better way

My name is Steve, and I’m an alcoholic.

I started drinking at 15. There was stuff happening in my life at the time that was hard to face, and drinking helped me cope.

I was born in Leeds in the UK in 1962. My dad left us when I was just seven. By the time I was 11, I was living in New Zealand with my mum, step-dad and sister. At school, I was trouble, getting into trouble for smoking and fighting. I even tried to drown a kid in a puddle once just because he had something I wanted.

As a kid, God didn’t feature in my life at all. I pretty much brought myself up because the person I admired the most, my dad, had gone.

By the time I was 15, the school was saying, ‘Please don’t come back next year.’ So I got a plastering apprenticeship. It wasn’t what I really wanted to do, but I had to find something.

Alcohol takes hold

I was working with two big Pacific Islander guys who worked hard and partied hard too. So here I was, at 15, working in Auckland and heading off to the pub to drink at the end of every day.

Around this time, people started to see a change in me. I was getting violent. Some of them suggested I should go to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and get some help. I was just 19 when I attended my first meeting. Whenever I went, I’d hear the same stories of people losing their jobs and their marriages, of going to jail, hurting women—that sort of thing. But that wasn’t me at 19.

I’m 50 years old now and I can say, ‘I’ve been to jail, I’ve been institutionalised, I’ve punched people over, I’ve punched women over.’ Alcohol took me to a place I didn’t want to go.

I was on this merry-go-round for 30 years. I wasn’t living—I was just existing. I could hold down a job, but my focus was really on where my next beer was coming from.

I didn’t marry, but I did have two long-term partners—for three years and then 13 years—fathering four kids. Today, I’d say ‘I’m a dad to four kids’, but when you’re an addict, I’d say you only really ‘fathered’ four kids. My kids are now aged from 22 down to 14.

I left my first partner when my son was 18 months old. By then, everything had already turned to custard for us. I wasn’t a good partner or a good father.

Denial of my addiction was definitely behind all this misery. My head wouldn’t let me accept that I was an alcoholic. People would tell me I was an alcoholic, and I’d say, ‘Yeah, I know.’ But it was just another label. It didn’t change anything for me.

When things were falling apart with my second partner, I saw going on an alcohol rehab programme as a way to get out of the relationship but still have a chance of keeping my three kids. I figured that taking part in rehab would show I was getting my life together.

When I was three months dry—I won’t say ‘sober’, I was just ‘dry’—I came to The Salvation Army Bridge Programme to try to get on top of my drinking. That was around nine years ago.

I completed the programme and set myself up in the community. Because things were going pretty well, I decided I wanted to bring my kids to Wellington, where I was living. That old ‘instant gratification’ thing kicked in. When I wanted something, I wanted it straight away. Plus my ego would take over and get in the way of my thinking straight.

Realistically, I was barely able to be responsible for myself, let alone my kids. So it might have been reasonable to look at having my kids with me in three years, but I wanted them in three months.

Instant gratification is just part of the merry-go-round of alcoholism. You want it now, and if you don’t get it now; well, you have a drink. And that’s what I did.

In free fall

I went back to Masterton and hooked up with some old mates. I ended up working in a vineyard as a chef, which probably seems a pretty dumb thing for a recovering alcoholic. With all of this abundance of grog, my life just plummeted. It was like I was in free fall without a parachute for the next four years.

I’d had three or four ‘rock bottoms’ in my life over the years, but they were nothing compared to this one. At the end of it, I was only spending my money on alcohol. I wasn’t eating. I’d even moved my bed into the lounge just so it was closer to the toilet.

My life was watching TV, drinking and sleeping. It was just a dark hole.

I was living life like this for months, until I couldn’t cope anymore. I couldn’t ask anyone for help because I’d totally isolated myself. My kids certainly didn’t look up to me.

I decided it was time to go.

So I bought a box of beer, took a rope out to a chook pen in the back yard and hooked the rope up. Then I went inside and had a couple more beers, and went back out to the yard to have another look. I did that a couple more times. Then I brought a chair out.

I was balancing on the chair with the rope around my neck when I heard this voice clearly say to me, ‘Steve, there’s a better way.’ It wasn’t an audible voice but it was a clear thought that came into my head through all the turmoil and chaos.

At that moment, I felt like I was being picked up and carried. I didn’t really name this as God at the time, but it was a moment of absolute clarity. And today, I know for sure it was God who saved me.

That was September the 7th, 2010.

The desire to live

I woke up on September the 8th and I’d somehow got myself back from the Wairarapa to Masterton, where my kids were staying with their grandmother. She took me to a Christian counsellor who helped me understand what was happening in my life.

That day, the desire to die was replaced by the desire to live. The desire to drink was also gone. That was God.

I went back to The Salvation Army and did the rehab programme again for eight weeks over Christmas 2010 and into 2011. This time I had a different attitude. I had the willingness to change and I was determined to go to any lengths to beat my addiction. But I couldn’t have done it without God’s help.

I learnt about the emotional side of addiction. I had a great counsellor who’d been an alcoholic, so he’d walked the same path. He helped me learn about my fears and to face them—which is part of the 12 Steps of AA.

After I finished the programme, God said to me, ‘Go to AA meetings.’ So I did. I’d been attending AA for about 12 months when the buzz of excitement about these meetings suddenly went away. I still try to get to three meetings a week and I really value AA—it’s about humbling myself and not letting my ego take over again—but it was like God was planting an unease that was pushing me to do something else, as well as AA.

One day, I was outside The Salvation Army church in Newtown (Wellington South Corps) and God said, ‘Go in.’ I went in and saw Captains Ralph and Nicky Hargest, the officers there, and they offered to pray with me. I hadn’t met them before, although I had seen them around. I’d really just wanted to talk, but as they were praying, I heard God telling me, ‘You’ve got to step up now.’

Quite soon after, I woke up one night and felt I needed to confess my sins to God. I got this real strong urge to kneel and pray. I told God all the things I was sorry for in my life and prayed, ‘God, forgive me.’ Right then, this incredible sensation went straight through me. It was the best drug ever! And I still get that feeling today. It’s not just a one-time thing—God is with me all the time.

I’ve become part of the church at The Salvation Army—I’ve totally immersed myself in it. I’ve taken over leadership of the men’s fellowship group, joined the music team, and help at Recovery Church on Thursday nights. I became an adherent member of The Salvation Army mid-way through 2012. I’m also sponsoring three guys at AA.

I’ve had blessing after blessing since I started following God. This year, coming back from holiday in Whakatane, I got a call from my son. He asked if we could meet up in Taupo. While we were talking, I realised I could help him with his drug and alcohol addiction, so I’ve helped set my son on his own recovery journey.

I’ve been two years’ sober now and I’d hate to see anyone take the path I took—to get to the point I did. Because once addiction gets you, it doesn’t want to let you go.

For me, I’ve come to church and God has told me he wants to use me to help people. He’s making me to be the person he wanted me to be right from the start.

The disciples that followed Jesus had been living their lives one way for 30 years. They didn’t know any different, but then they started following Jesus. And that’s just like me. I’m experiencing the strength and hope that comes from God. And I’d recommend it to anyone!

By Steve Robinson (abridged from War Cry, 23 March 2013, p 5-7)