Alistair Alcohol and Me ©
By Michael Casey
I’ve just watched Alistair Campbell’s Panorama piece on Alcohol. I found it too understated. He should have actually shown people covered in their own pee and sick, bleeding too. Yes there was a little of that, but it was too cold, a programme an Oxford Don would have given
Wednesday May 23rd 1979 it was 3pm I’d only just got out of bed, I’d been on night shift, I worked for a Market Research Company, we deal with Alcohol sales. Quick Quick screamed Mrs Madden, she was our lodger from the house next door, so I tucked my shirt in and ran next door. It was Andy, her husband and loveable alcohol. He was on his back and gurgling. So I tried a bit of CPR, I realised quickly tah an ambulance was needed. I ran up the entry and banged on Mr Dixon’s door, he had a phone we did not, nobody did in our area at that time. Quick get an ambulance I shouted to Mr Dixon, I frightened him a little. His son was a policeman, yes, all those Evening All jokes, but it was an ambulance we needed.
The ambulance arrived and I had to open up the doors so they could come through the house. They tried the black bulb with face mask attached but it was too late, too much booze and 3 previous heart attacks now was the death chime for Andy, the loveable drunk from the catholic club down the road. I helped put Andy on the chair and he was taken away by the ambulance lady and a man. My brother came home from school while all this was happening, then I looked down the road and I could see my mother coming up the road with her leather shopping bags full of food for us the 5000 her large family. So they had missed it, I had had to deal with it. It was then I cried, you don’t cry while its going on you are too busy, throwing the furniture out the way so you can try and do CPR with Andy lying flat. But it had been to no avail.
Our other lodgers were nearly all Born Again Alcoholic, so I’d say to Alistair Campbell, tell it as it is, squalor with a Capital S. Get up, go to work, go to pub, go to bedsit, get up, go to work, go to pub, home to bedsit etc etc, occasionally have a wash. I can tell many tales of alcoholism, I’ve seen it at close hand, as you can imagine none of us Caseys ever became drinkers. I think I used to average 24pints, no not a week, but maybe in a year. So what do I say about alcohol, yes enjoy it, Jesus’s first miracle was water into wine after all. Don’t be a Puritan, enjoy a beer or two, but also remember me a half asleep 20year old having to do CPR after getting up after a night shift.
If one person, just one person reading this has 2nd thoughts about alcohol and/or any other addiction then Andy’s death won’t have been in vain.
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