E.C ET SUNDAY TIMES - 26 JUIN 1999
ROCK THERAPY
By Dave Hillman
The brochures for Antigua tell the tale of its 365 beaches - one for each day of the year - and its glorious weather . It is the illusion of paradise the majority of the visitors to the island wish to see ; the only time they travel beyond the beachside hotels is usually during the taxi drive to or from the airport . When Judy Martin returned to her home in Antigua seven years ago, as a fully qualified social worker, she was determined to see - and face - the reality .
"Here in the Caribbean the culture uses alcohol more freely," she explains. "When I returned to Antigua I began seeing a rise in the crime rate that was astronomical . I could see how it was directly related to the drug trade, because Antigua had become a transshipment area for cocaine . We already had problems with our drinkers, and now we were adding to it, with younger kids getting involved with drugs ."
Antigua is a relatively small island with a population of just under 65,000 - the size of a medium-sized British town . Its crime rate remains one of the lowest in the Caribbean : the troubles of its sister nations Jamaica and Barbados have not affected the predominant friendliness of its people . Yet Judy Martin discovered rising levels of domestic violence . Nearly half of the homes of Antigua - 41 % - are occupied by single mothers, and the teenage pregnancy rate runs at 21 % . "It illustrates how men have so much power and authority," Martin explains . "Women are being forced to do whatever the men want, because they need their support . It leads to a lot of domestic violence."
As part of her work, she got to know the drunks at Kennedy's and the crackheads in Gray's Farm .
"There's a phrase that goes around which is based on a macho attitude that people who can't hold their booze are not good drinkers, they're fall-down drinkers," she explains."Down at Kennedy's they say people move out of the rum shop onto the sidewalk and from the sidewalk into the gutter . It's inevitable .
"In the drugs area, marijuana is the acceptable drug here . But it's just the doorway into the rest . And here crack is as cheap as marijuana . So far we haven't seen heroin but, as sure as the sun will shine tomorrow, it's coming . We know it." Martin is conducting her own personal study of crime, its causes and effects, and believes that "Somewhere in the region of 95% of the crime in Antigua is drug or alcohol-related ."
With little spent on social services and welfare, addiction - be it alcohol or drug - is at the bottom end of Antigua's budgetary considerations . Traditionally, addiction is treated as a mental disease, with fall-down drunks who become a nuisance being confirmed for a few weeks in the local mental hospital to dry out .
Dr. Albertine Mathurin Jurgensen works at the Antugua Mental Hospital, in St. John's ."Addiction is the number-one mental health problem in Antigua," she says ."It is both crack cocaine and alcohol ." She believes one-third of the patients in the island's general hospital are suffering from direct alcoholism or the complications of addiction . She adds : "About 70% of all emergency calls we get are to do with alcoholism or drugs ."
The new clinic offered a new approach - one in which there was no mental health stigma . Jurgensen explains : "It's why Crossroads came along and offered a different way, we who are involved in dealing with the problems were so thankful . For too long, people in Antigua have been saying there's nothing we can do about the drink and drug problems . The clinic at Crossroads is showing them differently ."
With one-third of the places at Crossroads pre-assigned, free, to Antiguans, more than 25 locals have already been through treatment . Judy Martin, who is an outreach worker for Crossroads, identifying potential patients, says : "It was a joy to get proper long-term solutions for some of these people . But in doing so we quickly realised the need for a halfway house for those people who we have been through the programme, otherwise they would leave Crossroads and return to the homes where they had grown up drinking .
When Eric Clapton first sought treatment in 1982 he went to the Hazelden Foundation clinic in Center City, Minnesota, at the time the primary centre for rehab in the world . He would later relapse into a alcoholic haze for a time before finally kicking the habit in 1987 .
He explains the transformation: "You know, when I got sober, one of the things was, I got into treatment for a while and then I relapsed . When I went back, I knew I had to surrender to this programme that they talk about, the 12-step programme, or die . When I did surrender, one of the things I had to acknowledge was that being a musician was really of little consequence - it was totally incidental to all of this . I could no longer hang onto that as an identity . It really didn't matter very much, it was the icing on the cake . The most important thing in my life was that I stay sober and that in doing so I set an example, just by being there, and that I hand that onto somebody . I've always thought that the greatest thing about being sober is that I am able to be responsible to help somebody . "This is as important as leaving any kind of musical legacy . You know, I know I touch people with music and I know that in some cases it may have been to the point of saving somebody's life, maybe . But there's nothing quite like what happens between one alcoholic and another - that's somehow a deeper thing ."
"The philosophy comes down to the fact that no matter who you are, this disease will kill you or bond you with another sufferer . And one of the things I had to acknowledge, second time around, when I went back into treatment, was that being a musician was not going to save my life . In fact it could destroy me, because if it meant that in order to write a song, I needed to drink, then perhaps being a musician was not such a great idea . So I slung that away, I got rid of that and I thought 'What am I ? What am I, really ?' And, on the record, I'm an alcoholic and that's where my identity is ."
And I'm breaking my anonymity now . I've done it before and it doesn't matter, because it illustrates something that's very important, which is that it's the most important thing about my existence . My life and wellbeing resides in my acknowledgement of that fact . Music is great fun and I love doing it, I love making music and sharing it, but it's not as important ."
Central to Clapton's involvement at Crossroads is his work with others suffering from substance abuse, be it alcohol or drugs . It was a role he first began almost six years ago at the Roehampton Priory Hospital in south London, where he was having therapy and had become good friends with Chris Ball, the manager of the hospital's addiction treatment programme . Slowly, over the next three years, Clapton began turning up almost daily at the Priory, and started talking to those who felt either too isolated or frightened to emerge into group therapy meetings on their own . It even reached a level where Ball insisted Clapton receive a salary for his work . "I really enjoyed doing that work," says Clapton . "I loved attending group therapy sessions in the morning . I thought it was so creative, pure theatre . As a comparison with me playing on stage, it is equal in terms of creativity, equal in terms of spontaneity, and it's equal in terms of emotional energy, especially with people that are fresh into treatment . And people that come into treatment do so at great risk to themselves . They're letting go of all their value systems, and they're admitting to the fact that they've made a huge mistake or that their life is in ruins ."
"To come to that place takes incredible courage - to walk into a place and say, 'For the last 10 years I've been f**cked up.' The courage that it takes to do that is beyond measure . So to work with people like that, who are incredibly vulnerable and who have that desire and willingness to do something with their lives, is actually greater than working on stage . Much greater, because it's very, very real ."
Perversely, one of the dilemmas for Clapton and the clinicians at the Priory involved the musician's own fame . Would his celebrity status overwhelm the very people he was trying to help ? "We weighted up the pros and cons of that, and we'd talk about it on a daily basis . For instance, if we had someone come into treatment who was from my world, from the business of music, we would go and talk about if it would be beneficial for me to be in this group or see him, or if it would be beneficial for me to stay away . We'd weight it up on an individual basis, because sometimes it would be overwhelming and other times it would be distracting, and other times it would be really enlightening because I could say, "Well, you know, I had all that money and a great career and records in the charts, and I still wanted to kill myself ."
"So I'd know where they're coming from, and people sometimes think that because you've got money and success, that you don't have those problems, you don't have personality disorders, that you don't have depression . Well, I had all that stuff and I still wanted to die most nights . And for me to be able to tell that to somebody, I know from the expression on their faces they find it hard to believe, and it's a very, very reassuring thing to hear ."
At the time Clapton stopped drinking and taking drugs, he also considered ending his connection to the Carribean . Chris Ball suggested that instead of bitching about the problems, he ought to do something about them . The theory was sound, although the practicalities of it were to prove less than sensible .
Five years ago, Clapton joined forces with the then owners of the Roehampton Priory, who wanted to open a number of treatment clinics around the world . But the relationship between rock star and giant American business conglomerate proved turbulent, ending with the US firm selling out, leaving Clapton unsure of what to do next, having already spent around £4m . By then, he had met Anne Vance, who was working in London as a consultant for the European Association for the Treatment of Addiction (EATA), devising innovative new programmes and standards for inpatient treatment and care . Vance, who had a wealth of experience in addiction, had worked in India, Mexico and Scandinavia and had been an administrator at the Betty Ford Clinic in California . She too had her vision of how a treatment clinic should be run . "I'd picked up on the commonality about addiction, wherever it was, and wether it was an alcoholic or drug addict," she says . "I could see they feel the sense of shame and shared the same insecurities and remorsefulness about their disease and what they had done ."
Clapton and Vance began to talk together of their shared vision . "We agreed on not making a profit from someane's illness," Vance adds . Initially she was sceptical of Clapton : "I wasn't sure about him, because a number of times at the Betty Ford centre we'd had a number of rock stars say they wanted to get involved and help . I wanted to know if he was another flash in the pan . I was genuinely surprised and pleased that this man was so honest, and he came across saying what he wanted to do and achieve, and it was so obviously from the heart ."
The two found a way to open Crossroads and to make it pay for itself at the same time as helping local people in Antigua and throughout the Caribbean . They worked out that by attracting people for treatment from America, Britain and Europe and charging them $9000 for a month's treatment - about a third of the price of comparable centres - there would also be enough income to provide a third of the 36 beds without charge to locals .
Vance says : "There was always a suspicion, fuelled by media reports, that this was going to be a place for the rich and the famous, that we would be solely serving people from the US and UK and that we would only be paying lip service to local Antiguans . But we have already started outreach work into the community here : we've met with local doctors, nurses and mental health staff and they are now referring people to us ."
The pull-out of the American company two years ago presented Clapton with a dilemma : "I had to make the decision to stick my neck out in total ignorance and carry on, just flying by the seat of my pants, or do I bail ? And if I bailed, I knew I wouldn't have been able to come back here, because the community had been made all kinds of promises about what we were going to do ."
His decision to carry on would also, ultimately, end his relationship with Roger Forrester, the man who had been his manager for a quarter of a century and steered him through the worst times of alcohol and drug abuse . "My manager saw me getting more and more involved in this and began to feel more alienated . As a result our relationship was probably destroyed by this . In the end we split company because our philosophies had grown so different . It was very tough for him to hear me say that this was more important than my career, because he'd obviously been very involved in making my career work . So for him that was quite a slap in the face ." The prospect of going it alone terrified Clapton . "If you want to know my first initial feeling, it was absolute fear . I knew it could become a bottomless pit, and it still looks like a bottomless pit, because we still have to pout money into it and we're still needing clients ."
"But one of the things I learnt about being in recovery was, I need to feel good about myself, I need to be able to go to bed and sleep, I need to be able to eat and to have some respect for myself . And I would not have been able to have that if I'd walked away from this . I would have held onto all of my money but I wouldn't have felt right about myself . I'm prepared to go down in flames with this, because my heart is in it . I could be wrong but I believe this is right . And the other thing was, I kept saying to myself, just like they keep saying in the programme, it's one day at a time . If we at Crossroads get one person sober, it'll have been worth every penny, because you can't put a value on a human life ."
Three days ago, Clapton auctioned 100 of his guitars at Christie's in New York to raise money for the clinic . After the sale and a New York concert - set for this Wednesday at MSG - he intends to take a quiet back seat at Crossroads . Again there's an honest appraisal of his own weaknesses : "I have to be consciously aware that I am just a small cog in the wheel, bacause I have an ego which can run away with itself . And if this place becomes dependent on my identity and is attached too much to my personality, what happens if I go out and drink ? This place will suffer along with me; it will prove, for one thing, that it doesn't work, because people will say 'It can't work, because he's drunk again.' What is more important is for the community to survive - that's more important than any one individual ." He admits he could lose his entire fortune on Crossroads . Does it bother him ? "Yeah, of course it bothers me . But what would break me more is if I went out and drank on it . That would kill me . No matter what happens, if I stay sober and we lose it all, the money, then we start again . If I'm sober, I can do that ."
Donations to support the Crossroads Centre in Antigua can be sent to :
Crossroads Centre, Willoughby Bay, PO Box W219, Woods Centre, Antigua, West
Indies .
For information regarding admission to the facility, tel :
0800-783 96 31 or 01275 - 847 187 .
STT : Eddy Pollet fr your contribution in this work.
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