By Luke Voogt
When Mary* stabbed her husband in a drunken blackout in 1982, it ended her drinking for good.
“I’m very lucky that I didn’t kill him,” the 78-year-old said.
The Bellarine woman joined two other recovered addicts calling for affordable rehabilitation in Geelong.
In the mid-’80s she was a national manager of large retail organisation and “daily drunk” who was “containing” her life.
“All of a sudden… alcohol turned on me when I wasn’t looking and I became very violent.”
Mary lasted six months in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) before succumbing again. Eighteen months later she stabbed her then-husband in the shoulder.
She returned to AA and after 12 months of sobriety attempted suicide “stone cold sober”.
But when she entered an intensive private rehab in Melbourne she found out “who I was”. She now helps released prisoners.
“I’ve had a life beyond my wildest dreams and I want to give it back,” the great grandmother said.
Mary said many rehabs in Geelong from her “early days of sobriety” were “gone”.
Ocean Grove’s Crystal*, 41, saved herself by entering a Melbourne rehab clinic four years ago.
She had lost nearly every job she had but was still holding onto her partner and her life. Serious assault charges when she was younger didn’t stop her binge drinking.
“That’s the insanity of the disease, I guess,” she said.
But a month after she started taking ice she decided she “didn’t want to die”.
For Crystal only abstinence worked, not controlled drinking or harm minimisation.
“Those things don’t work if you’re a true alcoholic or addict,” she said.
A counsellor at the centre, another former alcoholic, “broke” her when she “badly needed it”. She now has an 18-month-old daughter and another child on the way with her partner in October.
“I’ve been brought back to life,” she said.
Crystal sponsors Carol* who has been sober for two years.
The Highton woman first went to a private clinic 2003 and had been sober for eight years after drinking to cope with medical issues.
Another medical issue four years ago sent her back to where she “was and worse”.
“I would pull into my driveway having consumed a bottle of wine before I got to my front door,” the 52-year-old said.
“I would be unconscious on the couch by 8pm every single night.
“Every single counsellor” at the clinic, many former alcoholics themselves, “cut her down in flames”.
“I needed that – I was so arrogant.” Carol has re-immersed herself in AA as an organiser and reconnected with her daughter.
“I was not emotionally present during key moments of her teenage years and I’ll never forget that.”
*The Indy has changed the names of interviewees to protect their identities.
