Giving up alcohol the right move

Page 15

Lawrence Ghostkeeper spent almost half his life drinking and doing drugs.

He started sneaking drinks at the age of 13 and ended up in a juvenile detention centre at 14. He ran away at 16 and within a month he was arrested for breaking and entering, which led to his first six-month sentence in an adult jail.

When he got out, he went back to his old ways of drinking and doing drugs and committing robberies and break and enters.

"I just basically didn't give a shit. I just wanted to party," says the 26-year-old, who has been sober for more than eight months.

Because he had money, he could usually find someone to party with him, as long as he was buying.

"I didn't want to be alone, just like I don't want to be alone now."

He eventually got caught and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in a penitentiary on April 8, 1986. He got out Aug. 6, 1991, and was in a 28-day treatment program at Poundmakers by Aug. 7.

He stayed away from alcohol and drugs until Christmas of that year, when guilt got the better of him and he started drinking again. The guilt was worse during the Christmas season because he remembers breaking into homes and ripping open the presents under the tree to see what was worth taking.

"I went straight to the tree - I just didn't care. It didn't matter - I wanted to party. It was Christmas and I wanted to party."

He escaped his guilt through drinking and by going back to jail - this time for a 10-day stretch. The first time he got out wasn't the right time, he says. There were too may thoughts of partying and him missing out. When he got out after the 10 days, he was ready.

"I said never again. I'm tired of it. What am I doing to myself? I have a lot of things people don't have. I have the desire and the intelligence and the most important thing I had was the belief (that I could do it)."

When he got out of jail on Jan. 3, started drinking again but only his parents and his girlfriend knew about it. He partied for a solid week and found himself starting to crave drugs again. He went back to Poundmakers, where he told them he was not drinking, so they let him into a 14-day-treatment program. He left on March 9 and hasn't had a drink since.

Ghostkeeper got a job as a telephone solicitor for $5 an hour and was eventually offered a full-time permanent position as an accounts co-ordinator for an Edmonton promotions company. His boss knows his background but is concerned with Lawrence

as he is now, an honest, loyal and hard-working employee.

He works as a volunteer on Friday nights at the Boyle Street Co-op, spends time with his girlfriend and drops into bars frequently to dance and drink ginger ale or soda water.

He's also getting his driver's license for the first time.

"I didn't want to drive because I was afraid I would kill someone."

Although he originally joined an Alcoholics Anonymous group, he doesn't attend meetings very often. He finds talking on a one-to-one basis helps him more than the group approach of AA.

"The essence of sobriety is growth and growing up and you don't have to go to an AA meeting to find that."

When people try to get him to have "just one drink", he eventually stops seeing those people. Although he knows a lot of people in Edmonton, he still misses some of the friends he made in jail.

"There were people I could talk to there - people that if I needed to cry, I could cry."

Another thing he liked about jail was the respect he was given there.

"I never lied to anybody or ripped anybody off," he says, and he finally decided that he deserved to be respected on the outside as much as he was on the inside.

Now he relies on his parents, who are very supportive, and his girlfriend, who is there for him most of the time, he says.