Ray Baker

Oddly, 'perhaps' my experience in the field of addiction. treatment and recovery began as a child growing up in a highly dysfunctional family with alcohol seemingly being the route cause. I say seemingly because through the eyes of a child and needing everything to be either black or white to make sense of it, alcohol abuse appeared to be the cause of all our problems. Much later in life I was to learn of some facts relating to my mother's childhood which put things in a more realistic light regarding my parents relationship and their subsequent alcohol and prescription drug addictions.

Despite the overall negative experience of this upbringing, it was alcohol I turned to at an early age (13) to change the way I felt - which in the main was 'frightened'. I believe I was drinking alcoholically right from the very start, although there was an element of control to begin with.

In 1996 I decided to do something about what was by now a deeply entrenched addiction to alcohol, and was fortunate to secure a place in a residential addiction treatment centre. My struggle with addiction did not end there as it so often doesn't, but it did provide me with the foundation upon which my recovery has taken place and continues.

It is my firm belief that recovery from addiction will only take place once the (individual) contributory factors have been identified and worked on. Self-esteem ranks highly in my case, as I believe it does for many other people. Many years of addictive behaviour resulting in neglect of my responsibilities, family and personal needs, all but completely destroyed my self worth. The entanglement of issues that arose from this 'active addiction' period took, and is still taking some unravelling. However, life has never been better for me than it is now and I know that as long as I face life full-on and deal with problems as they arise - it will continue to stay that way.