10 January 2008 Written by Phil Fox Print This Post  Email This Post

I am a drug addict and an alcoholic. Theatre saved my life.
I started using drugs when I was about 15 - 16. Like most people I played around with blow and got into speed, Acid and mushrooms. Alcohol played a big part in my drug use. I was self-obsessed and lacked confidence. I felt less than anyone and didn’t feel I could fit in anywhere. My problem, although I couldn’t see it at the time, was me. I blamed most people for the way I felt and acted but really I had no one to blame but me. No one forced a needle into my arm or a drink down my throat or powder up my nose. I had grown up with alcoholics, so inevitably I hurt inside. But the choice to use drugs and drink to numb that pain was mine. No one else’s.

At 16 I was doing a theatre course at a sixth form college in Chiswick. I loved theatre. It was my salvation. Then at the beginning of my second year, what seemed like a mountain of personal problems engulfed me and I tried to commit suicide and very nearly succeeded. I never finished the course. I felt too ashamed to go back after the suicide attempt. The drugs that I was using to manage my feelings were only making whatever I was feeling worse. They contributed to the sense of hopelessness that led to the attempt on my life. One of three actually. I was admitted into a psychiatric hospital, which in a way is just what I needed. I was 17 heavily into puff, downers, acid, alcohol and speed. I was in hospital for about 9 months. After which my drug use really took off.

In the hospital I let go of the idea of going into theatre. It was probably the right thing to do. I wasn’t to apply for drama school until 5 years later when I got into what is now known as Manchester Met University School of Theatre. Those 5 years kind of shaped me. My drug use got worse - yes, I nearly killed myself on several more occasions (accidentally this time), but I kind of knew there was something inside me that was adding up these experiences. My identity was lost but one thing that I held onto was that I was an artist. I didn’t know what kind of artist, but it gave me a centre, a meaning to the insanity of my drug use. It seemed I had a little bit more than my friends who had nothing. By now I was into smack and well out of control. That’s the funny thing with drug addiction, you really believe that you can control your usage of drugs but actually your whole life is governed by them: getting out of bed, who you hang out with, crimes you commit, the hurt you cause others, the chaos. My experiences as a drug addict gave me a kind of identity. But underneath that was a seriously fucked up guy. I was held together by my drug taking. Yet the more I used the more I thought I was falling apart. Without them I thought I would disappear.

Then I had a vision. Theatre came back into my life. I started getting some help, and out of this I had a vision. A powerful energy poured through my veins - an extraordinary feeling that I had to get involved in drama, full time, and before anything else. So there I was, a hopeless junky, hardly able to talk to anyone, thinking of getting involved in theatre as a professional. Mad really, but I did it. I got myself into drama school. I got through it by the skin of my teeth. When I came out I promptly lost my first professional acting job though my active drug addiction. This was the last straw. While I was in drama school, although using, my addiction was at an ebb. It didn’t fill every waking hour. Drama was a substitute, a safe place for me to take time out from the heroin attacks. My dependency on smack was still growing and taking me over but I had a focus. I was contained and to an extent healed. I had invested so much of myself in theatre work that loosing it was tantamount to loosing everything for me. So my first professional job was gone and it seemed like theatre was over for me. At the same time I’d had enough of drug taking. I’d hit rock bottom. I was emotionally, physically and, even spiritually, finished.

Why have I given you this potted history of my drug and alcohol addiction? I guess because it is so intrinsic to my life and art. For me it goes together.

I managed to put down the drugs and drink. I started working as an actor. It didn’t get me to the places I wanted to go – international superstardom (sic). It led me at first to a few theatre/art centre tours with small touring companies, fringe, TIE, some community theatre a little bit of telly, loads of unemployment etc, etc. I never really felt I got anywhere. One thing though I stayed clean. Through a couple of contacts, I started to do a little bit of drama work in drug and alcohol treatment centres and prisons. The people there, addicts like myself, would come up to me afterwards and ask if there was anything more they could do to get involved in drama. And then it occurred to me: why not create a theatre company that produced work with people affected by drug/alcohol addiction and open these issues up to the general public? It was there. What all my struggle had been about. I’d found a missing piece of the jigsaw that was me.

Thus, Outside Edge Theatre Company came into being. I can’t pretend it’s been easy. And I don’t think I could convince you that it is, with funding as one of the major stumbling blocks. Yet we’ve been in operation since 1999. Doing two, sometimes three tours a year. Tours to drug and alcohol treatment centres where our work focuses on getting off of drugs/alcohol, understanding the effect that substance misuse has on families, violence, prostitution etc. We did a residency once in a prison, working with a group of lifers. This may all be chips of the old block to you but for me I was shocked to hear that most of the guys we worked with had killed someone when they were off their heads on coke or alcohol. Working with these guys, getting them to create theatre that they performed to the rest of the inmates showed me how this stuff works. They were articulating concepts and ideas that the other prisoners listened to. And it was all around their drug and alcohol experiences - experiences that had led them into prison in the first place.

But now, Outside Edge is entering a new phase. Despite the fears of funding cuts (although we have never had any revenue funding so I’m not sure how this will affect us) we’re trying to develop work that engages more with the general public. So in addition to our work with and for people affected by substance misuse we’re expanding our work into public theatres. To this end, we will be producing in March a new piece of writing that tries, amongst other things, to humanise the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson. The piece is called My Name’s Bill. Love it or hate it Alcoholics Anonymous has saved thousands of lives and after 70 years, membership is still growing. Bill Wilson is seen by many as a giant of the 20th century, almost a saint to many of his supporters. I would say Bill was an ordinary man with a lot of problems. Yet there is something in his message that has stood the test of time. Most of the solutions to substance misuse treatment paid for out of tax payers money don’t seem to be working. Yet what Bill W brought us and by extension, Alcoholics Anonymous, does. There’s something in it. I want to know what it is. It could be relevant to all of us – alcoholic, drug addict or non-alcoholic or drug addict. There is a little known fact about Bill Wilson, he loved to act. Like I said, theatre saved my life. It may have the power to save a few other lives at that.

My Name’s Bill will be presented at The Barons Court Theatre
28a Comeragh Road Fulham London W14 12th – 30th March 2008 at 7.30 Tube: Barons Court Box Office: 020 8932 4747 Tickets: £12

Notes

- Front page photo: Image from the Outside Edge Theatre Workshop for ‘Lost for Words’.
- Article inset 1st photo: Actors Martin Hobbs as Spoons and Toni Brown as Jodie in the Outside Edge Theatre production ‘Out Of The Shadows’.
- Article inset 2nd photo: Image from the Outside Edge Theatre development of the production ‘Border Crossings’.
- Article inset 3rd photo: Audience Members - ‘Lost for Words’.