Being a recovering alcoholic I was talking to another comrade in arms over the weekend about our final withdrawals that dawned our passage to sobriety. The realities of detoxing from this drug are extraordinarily bizarre and one feels for a period of time quite insane. It's good to remind oneself of the unique experience of this hideous process as a way of relapse prevention. Although I went through my experience over fourteen years ago it remains a vivid memory and one I will never forget.

It began when I woke up one morning with my parents, psychiatrist, psychiatrists assistant and my GP standing round the bed nodding at one another as much as to say 'Yup I think he's about ready'. I was lying in my own vomit and faeces following six days of suicidal drinking after my wife had left me in November 92. I had taken the Vodka upstairs to my bedroom as the trip downstairs was becoming impossible due to my black and blue legs that I believe was caused by wrenching muscle spasms due to unconscious fits. The night before I had vague recollections of trying to drink neat Vodka but it was too painful as I had been repeatedly retching and it was burning my throat. I shuffled into the bathroom where there was bath water from some days earlier which I used to dilute the spirit so as I could get it down. For those of you that haven't had severe withdrawal from alcohol, the fear is indescribable, psychologically one feels as though that every next second could be death and to get more alcohol down alleviates this for a while. Three days earlier I was having interesting hallucinations. My job involved a lot of work in the new London Docklands development, I remember waking one morning to see a red light flashing round the bedroom. On the common opposite our house there was the Canary Wharf Tower (Docklands site 7 to be precise) the red  aircraft warning light that sat at the very top of this building was strobing around the bedroom. The hallucination had plonked itself on the cricket pitch and looked most out of place. 'Oh I know what you are' I said to myself, one gets to know what's a hallucination and tends not to worry too much after a while. As I walked to the Off Licence to refuel I could feel the rumbling of the ground as it followed me to the door of the local seven eleven. As I asked for five bottles of Vodka the red light was again flashing illuminating the shopkeepers face every other second. Docklands sight 7 waited patiently for me to finish my purchase and we walked home together. All of these fragmented memories were flashing around my head as I was taken to hospital, I didn't know particularly why I was going to hospital that day, it seemed it was what everybody else around the bed were advising and I didn't have any processing power left in my brain to rationalise.

On arrival I was checked into the Psychiatric ward, I was still seeing double at this time and was in relatively good spirits although I knew that the worse was yet to come. I may have been quite mad but was not stupid enough to realise that I had to go through the D.T. barrier once more which I was dreading. I will never forget the doctor from the Third Reich who visited me before I was medicated. 'You know why you’re here!', 'Er yes I think its because I've been drinking too much', 'Right I'm going to ask you three questions, what's a hundred minus two?', 'Mmmm, about ninety something', I was never good at maths but that was an atrocious response. 'Who is the current Prime Minister?', 'I don't really know but he's pretty useless and he's always black and white on Spitting Image', 'Have another go', 'His wife's names Norma?'. We didn't even get to the third question before he exploded at me, 'I hope you can see what a mess your in, this is your fault, I'm giving you eighty milligrams of Diazepam', 'that seems an awful lot!' I replied. 'I'm not having you fitting all over my hospital, now get to bed!' he shouted.

I fell asleep for a while after looking at the cold November wind blowing some bare rose trees about in the wind. When I awoke it was dark and by the side of the bed was an old 1960's white ivory telephone in perfect detail, static, just in arms reach but with no physical signs of support. 'Oh shit here we go' I thought the ride to hell has started. Every time I closed my eyes disgusting distorted demonic faces would suddenly appear out of the blackness, my thoughts were putrid, macabre. At least they were keeping me from that feeling of imminent death, so I flip flopped between the faces and thoughts to open eyes staring at this ivory white telephone just floating by my bed. I had moments of sleep which I thought might have been a couple of hours but looking at the hospital ward clock they were just minutes. My heart was banging, my whole body was twitching. I remember taking one hand out of the bed and looking at it with amazement because it was shaking so much it looked as though I was waving, god this human body can take so much abuse, I was astounded. The ward was still and quiet until the white hallucinatory telephone started ringing, it made me jump, I thought about answering it but did not want to play to the illusion. Eventually I felt embarrassed and did not want my hallucination to wake the rest of the ward, I especially didn't want Dr Hitler to tell me off again so I lent over and picked it up. Suddenly I was not me as I've ever known me before, I was in a void, I had know physical form and although petrified I was being spoken to by a kind energy on my left hand side that settled me into a beautiful peace. A long way off there was a magnificent mother of pearl light with a tail leading off to what looked like infinity. The energy to my left asked me not to be worried, 'Well, you can keep going if you want but remember you still have a lot of work to do back there, and remember your children love you, its up to you', it was at this moment I had the feeling of turning in on myself and it felt like I was clawing with all my soul to get back to my body to which I succeeded. I opened my eyes to see my arms outstretched clutching and grabbing at thin air with a plethora of nurses around my bed and a trolley which was being wheeled away just out of my view. 'Well done' said one of the nurses and sat beside me on a chair, I felt as though my brain had come back to normal and had no more D.T. type experiences, the gothic demonic faces had gone and there were no feelings of imminent death any longer. The nurse watched over me all night, held my hand sometimes and gave me support. 

I will never ever forget that incident of what some call a near death experience, from that moment on I have never had any fear of death. Some I have told about this experience give their  explanation, 'Oh yeah that was just another part of your delirium tremens', 'Yeah all part of the hallucination'. I will never argue as for me it was an unquestionable truth, I know what happened that night which was quite a distinguishable feeling from a hallucination and an experience that I feel privileged to have encountered.