HOMOVISION REHAB with THE SWARMITE: SUCCESS!

Success – like poverty – is relative. In 1994 after living in Spain I returned to the UK, ill once again and found myself in a homeless hostel. Someone sent me a postcard that said POVERTY IS RELATIVE with a cartoon sketch of a woman screaming aloud that she was so broke “she couldn’t afford a decent moisturiser”. This put me in a place of gratitude. Joan Rivers once sat in the back of a Rolls for an interview and was asked whether she liked success. Her response was equally memorable. Yes, she said. I love success, I deserve success and I have to pinch myself every time I get in my Rolls, but then I remember when I was doing “toilets”. Aghast – I thought Joan was coming clean on cottaging but she went on to say all the “toilets” she had started out in, the yucky dressing rooms, the abusive audiences who didn’t wanna see a woman comedian, the six people who turned up, all contributed to her present success. By saying present she indicated that she could go right back to where she started, if humility was not a constant companion.

I can clearly remember a lost weekend, when I refused to open the curtains. A weekend when I was at the end of my tether, the last weekend of an intensive 3 month drug trial of human interferon every other day, with a dose so huge it blew your socks off. The Doctors got it wrong and eventually concluded it was the “smallest” dose the body could tolerate over a long period of time, not the other way round. Everyone died on the trial except me. I had cirrhosis and hadn’t had a drink for 14 months – what a success! But during that lost weekend I self harmed with alcohol at the 11th hour. A common ploy during my life then, to give up before the miracle. I remember the clink of ice in the tumbler, the gush of scotch from the Bells bottle and splash of coke (the real thing) followed by the rise of bubbles to my mouth. It was a glorious reunion.

In Sondheim’s Sweeny Todd, Benjamin Barker was given his shaving blades by Mrs Lovett after years of storage. Barker gloated, glistened and touched the blades slowly, lovingly and with intent for use as he thrust his arm up high shouting “AT LAST! – my arm is complete again!” This is how I felt guzzling down the contents of that tumbler. Before ice had melted the tumbler was topped up and it was only by the third tincture did I realise that I had fucked it. For the next 2 days I stayed in a darkened room, not washing, eating or seeing the light of day, only the gleam of glass whiskey bottles and wasted family size coke containers tossed aside like an old worn glove.

That weekend was exactly 27 years ago. On the Monday I got myself together somehow to get to The Royal Free Hospital for my last injection October 26 1982 and on the same day I gave up cigarettes, sugar in my tea & coffee, all mood altering drugs, illegal & legal (including Valium, that I had been on for 17 years) plus alcohol. Like Amy, I never went to Rehab but I did seek 12 Step Programme help and continue to do so and I have remained free of all the above since that sombre October morning. It took me ages to see myself as a success, years in fact. But now like Joan, I can go right back to the ” Toilets ” if I take my eye off the ball. It has been a wonderful gay life, drug and alcohol free for 27 years but one false move will fuck it up. I am humbled by this prospect.

Success for me now is more to do with peace of mind rather than emotional or material attachments and I have learnt that so called mistakes are part of the plan to understand that we are never in control of our lives the way that we think. Humility is essential to get our lives in perspective, to provoke gratitude and grace. Though I love designer labels  (success symbols) a GUCCI Belt will only hold my trousers up. Nothing more. My esteem is now based on who I am instead of what I hold, who I mix with and what star hotel I choose. Many gayers think that once they get the best body, life will change, when in fact what changes is that the body you thought was good enough in May will be flawed by October. Remember getting all those toys you wanted for Christmas (temporary success) by March they were discarded while other demands for toys came along. This is a fact of ego life, what we hold dear becomes wallpaper, a normality of position – ask anyone in a coupling.

If you want to reduce chem usage or give up certain drugs my experience may help but I can’t do it for you or change you view of what success is if you continue to hang on to the past. Completion of the past while loving yourself more in the present is the only route to continued happiness I know. More blogs and info on different non-gay themes are available at http://www.theswarmite.com, http://www.twitter.com/mygaytherapist or join my HOMOVISION REHAB Fan Page on Facebook.