BY Anonymous in News | 28 APR 10

Cold Turkey

In collaboration with the KW in Berlin and Hotel Marienbad, the ‘Cold Turkey’ residency offers rehabilitation to curators, artists and critics. One resident shares their story

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BY Anonymous in News | 28 APR 10

‘Cold Turkey’ is a project by Benjamin Blanke and Claudia Kapp for the Hotel Marienbad, in collaboration with the KW in Berlin.

Author’s Disclaimer: Patients of programmes that treat drug and alcohol addiction do not necessarily write about their programmes fairly.

Day 1

I turned 41 two weeks ago. I am an alcoholic. I am also an art critic who earns little money so I applied to attend the detox programme organized by the Hotel Marienbad project at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin, which is aimed at writers, artists and curators. I live far from Berlin but the city still conjures images of the excesses I indulge in in my own city. However, I am now an hour from the hedonism I imagine, in a tree-lined clinic with a view of the sea, on which sailing boats move lyrically by.

Today was my first full day here. I am in a ward for alcoholics and people I believe to be anorexic: wan figures who shuttle to keep the drips attached to their body in sync with their movements. I will spend seven days here. There were no activities for me today so I could just acquaint myself with the surroundings. I am not the youngest patient but many are older and, regardless of age, I don’t see myself reflected in any person’s appearance or demeanour. Lunchtime reminded me of a scene from the hospital where my old Parkinson’s-ridden aunt lives: no-one speaks or interacts as they gulp food to keep their miserable bodies alive.

But I share a room with an artist also here on the Hotel Marienbad scheme. I knew his name – we have been Facebook ‘friends’ for some time. I once interviewed his ex-boyfriend.

I had hoped to also stop smoking here, and assumed smoking wasn’t allowed. But everyone smokes, including the doctors. As I didn’t bring many cigarettes I began to run out by 6:00pm. While walking through the nearby small forest I saw a sign with a big beer tankard and an arrow. I followed the arrow to find a small rustic-style bar. I didn’t panic, bought my cigarettes and left. Earlier in the day, a young nurse politely berated me and my roommate for walking down to the sea edge, saying that if we are seen leaving the bounds of the clinic she will get into trouble. As I am not paying, I resisted the urge to say, ‘Isn’t it your job to keep us in?’

Day 2

Since arriving I’ve been given a small amount of an off-white powder three times daily in order to reduce the anxiety that results from alcohol withdrawal. The name of this holistic drug is long and German; I cannot spell it. It is like bad cocaine in reverse – I would need to ingest a mile of it in order to feel any significant calming effect. However, the drug is holistic so the quantity is not particularly limited, but I’m too embarrassed to repeatedly request doses. I’m not allowed prescription drugs, though my alcoholic roommate is given valium nightly. We have different doctors; mine said that my risk of addiction to another drug is high.

I attended an art workshop this morning to play with clay. The scene did little to shake my perception that I am in an institution for people with diminishing mental health, or, perhaps more interestingly, miscreants or jailbirds. As an earnest young art therapist discussed a piece of fondled clay with a fellow patient I found myself finishing her sentences and elaborating on her advice about how to manipulate clay instinctively. When I began to manipulate the clay myself, I remembered an artist who creates sculptures by simply throwing lumps of plaster together. I did the same. Tomorrow the art therapist will discuss this work with me and set a further project based on her insights.

After the art session I took part in a Eurythmics workshop led by a smart woman who effortlessly assured us that this practice is useful for recovering addicts: ‘It’s about gaining control over your body, as an addict you didn’t have control’. We followed her body movements as she drew analogies with the German language.

Because hangovers and drunkeness don’t currently govern my day, time can sit still. But I have renewed interest to fill it. I have read eight chapters of a monograph on Asian art history in two days.

My doctor told me that the clinic will take a sonogram of my liver to check for any damage. The desire to stop drinking is typically well supported by signs of damage done. At 8pm every night a towel soaked in hot medicinal tea is pressed against my liver in order to absorb toxins.

Tomorrow I will begin Schema Therapy. Schemas relate to unmet emotional needs that lead to dysfunctional behaviour in adulthood. ‘Don’t we all have unmet emotional needs?’, my roommate remarked.

Day 3

My art therapist advised that I make a bowl of layered circles, further to discussing the spontaneous forms I made yesterday. The art room is full of layered circular bowls. However, the patient next to me was modelling a rounded shape that curiously reminded me of the symbolic mountains you see on cosmological maps. I wondered why the therapist would advise positive shapes for one patient and negative shapes for another. The German–English language divide can be a problem. She said to me something about constructing boundaries, which I didn’t quite understand. But, of course, the outcome is hardly the point.

I have had no withdrawal symptoms since I arrived. The last three days have been the first time in approximately five years that I haven’t drunk alcohol, and I’ve been drinking since I was 15. On my first day here, my doctor reassured me that the clinic stocks anti-epilepsy drugs, ‘just in case’. Christ.

I don’t crave alcohol to any great degree, though I do want it. In a therapy session this afternoon I listed the advantages and disadvantages of alcohol use and abstinence. I could think of no disadvantages for abstinence other than the threat of drinking again. An amusing disadvantage to alcohol abuse is forgetting the faces of those you have seduced when they greet you sometime later with a large smile. I will be out in Berlin this coming Saturday night for the Berlin Gallery Weekend. Surely a perfect scenario for testing me.

Further to my therapy session I completed three questionnaires that aim to determine self-image. The questions seem designed to establish that you over-compensate for hating yourself and it’s your parents’ fault. For example, ‘Do you find yourself clinging to people you are close to because you are afraid they’ll leave you?’ But I know nothing of therapy and my answers have yet to be processed.

My sense of aggression has decreased with sobriety. My sense of anxiety hasn’t. Another question was ‘Do you feel the worst-case scenario will always happen, in the case of your career and/or health?’ Yes.

Day 4

Yesterday I asked my doctor to define addiction. Today I was given the information: an addict is someone who has difficulty controlling how much they use or how long they use, and continues to use in spite of negative consequences. Furthermore, among the levels of addiction, the ‘non-functioning’ addict is rare; those of us who hold down jobs and relationships to varying degrees are far more common.

For me to now find profundity in the obvious or the intellectually slight says much about the casualness with which I have viewed my own alcohol addiction to date, in spite of the fact I travelled to another continent for treatment. I never really thought about the terms and consequences of addiction, I just didn’t want to drink so much. Now I feel less cynical about my experiences in this clinic. Also, I take horrible comfort in other information my doctor gave me: alcohol is associated with 40-50% of traffic fatalities, 86% of murders and 23% of completed suicides…

The Eurythmics sessions continue to compel my greatest interest. Today we incorporated a thin bronze stick with an uneven surface in our movements. Your toes and fingers move along it, like playing an instrument, and you roll it down your arms and hands and artfully throw it back and forth with the other participants. The process is akin to self-massage and the result is a great sense of physical relaxation. Though the comments that the instructor sometimes interjects – ‘Heroin addicts and anorexics cannot feel their own bodies!’ – make my skin crawl.

Another statistic I have mulled over all day is the claim that 10% of any population is addicted to drugs or alcohol. I know one person who doesn’t drink alcohol or take drugs. I know one person who drinks in absolute moderation. Everyone else I know drinks to excess, uses drugs when available and, moreover, their personalities alter as a consequence. This 10% statistic surely only addresses those who self-identify as addicts.

I am morphing into the puritan I never thought I would be.

Day 5

A woman in my art class is modelling a portrait bust of Hitler. Presumably her alcoholism/anorexia/heroin-addiction is rooted in collective guilt or else she is a neo-Nazi. I felt like complaining. There are sensitive creatures about.

Today my doctor asked me if I had ever received a hepatitis B vaccination. The conversation proceeded as follows:

‘Yes. No. I remember, I asked my doctor for it before I emigrated 10 years ago, but he wouldn’t give it to me because hepatitis B is not prevalent in the country where I now live.’

(Doctor smiles)

‘Why?’

‘The constellation of your blood isn’t typical for an alcoholic.’

‘That’s a sign of hepatitis B?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t want to panic you.’

‘Are you testing my blood for hepatitis?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. Is it spread through saliva?’

‘No. Only blood and sperm.’

‘Like HIV?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I practice safe sex. Can you catch it orally?’

‘No.’

‘Yes you can. I remember reading about it years ago.’

‘Maybe you can.’

‘When will my blood tests be finished?’

‘They might be finished now.’

‘Will you tell me when they are?’

‘Yes.’

I went outside to the smoking area, where two well-dressed anorexics and a hunky Turkish bloke were hovering. Patients here don’t like to converse in English, so I didn’t bother trying to. I stood, puffing, and tried to remember my last sexual encounter. But it was all a blur.

Chronic hepatitis B will produce jaundice, and even your eyeballs will turn yellow. You can be bed-ridden for up to four weeks and eating and drinking is painful. I remembered my employment contract only allows for 14 days of sick leave, annually. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I returned indoors. The doctor walked towards me, smiling. ‘You don’t have hepatitis, and your blood tests show you are vaccinated against A and B. Maybe you received these vaccinations in childhood.’ I touched his hairy arm in gratitude.

Tonight is my second to last night here. I find it difficult to sleep, for the first time since I arrived.

Day 6

The content of my night-dreams has changed in the last couple of nights. For as long as I can remember, but that’s not so long, my dreams are always anxiety-ridden: first-person views of myself falling, slipping or precariously balancing. I always wake before the conclusion.

Now I dream distorted memories. I visit places that are familiar by dint of being populated by people I knew years ago but I haven’t met since. The scenes are not from my past but the contexts are: an art school, a peculiar-looking village, crowds, artists, a magazine office. There is discussion in my dreams but I cannot remember what was said. People look at me, rather than the usual scenarios of me looking out into space.

I was given a sonogram this morning. It is incredibly weird and disconcerting to see your internal organs relayed live on a TV screen. While the doctor wore a steely expression, I couldn’t stop myself from interpreting any minor movement on her face as a sign she’d just noticed something terrible occurring in my abdomen; Black ‘holes’ floated continuously across the screen.

I received the results later: my liver has minor scars exclusively because of alcohol abuse.

Today I had brief meetings with two doctors to say goodbye. I will leave early tomorrow morning. One told me that only 2% of post-detox alcoholics return to drinking alcohol in a moderate or well-managed way. He told me not to try. I can phone the clinic any time I feel I will slip back into alcohol abuse. I will attend AA meetings when I return home. The holistic drugs I have been taking are anthroposophic, and I can buy more before I leave Berlin.

I couldn’t imagine wanting to stay here longer, but I don’t really want to leave. For most of all the days I have been here I sit by a floor-to-ceiling window doing what I usually do, but sober: writing, sending emails, watching YouTube, and thinking. In fact, I think this is the first time I have written anything for publication without being drunk. Certainly this was a rare week that I answered stressful emails without calling anyone a c**t. Alcoholics persuade themselves they cannot function without alcohol, cannot work properly, cannot enjoy food, cannot sleep etc. I have written more this week than I usually do; because of my increased energy I have also discovered I can work on 2-3 different writing projects in one day. Before it was only ever one.

Guilt is sweeping over me. Guilt about the care given, concern shown and money spent. The doctors gave me a letter describing my treatment and declaring a history of drug and alcohol abuse. I think if I was in my birth country the doctor would have just slapped me and called me a weak c**t.

I am not frightened about leaving this clinic. I don’t think I’ll drink again. I know I don’t need to and, mostly, I don’t want to.

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