Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [127]
My own work in the Priory, and my relationship with Chris, now led to one of the most significant periods of my life. On recent trips to my house on Galleon Beach in Antigua, I had become increasingly disillusioned by the number of addicts and drunks who were springing up, or maybe it was just that I was noticing them more now. There were, for instance, a couple of places I liked to hang out in English Harbour, in particular a bar owned by a friend named Dougie. I used to go in there to play pool, and sometimes just people-watch, but when I came out I’d get hit on by some of these guys, who were quite frightening, and it began to wear me out.
Coming home from one trip there, I confided in Chris and Richard about this dilemma, saying that I was thinking of selling and not going back again, and they both said, “Well, why don’t you take the program to Antigua?” I asked how I would do that, and Chris said, with a twinkle in her eye, “You’ve got the money; build a treatment center.” She also said that if I were to do that, then she would advise me on running it. My immediate reply was, “Well, I’ll build a treatment center if you come and run it.” This was not such a crazy idea, as I knew that Chris was experiencing some difficulties at the Priory. But it was the way she ran the rehab that impressed me. I really believed in her philosophy of treatment and how it could be applied collectively and individually. It really hinged on the need to always come back to focusing on the individual, so the scheduling had to be flexible in order to achieve that aim. A tall order, but that was the ideal I wanted the new clinic to be founded on.
I was introduced to the head of the Priory group from America, who turned out to be a music fan, and I told him what I had in mind. To my surprise he seemed quite interested in the idea. In fact, he was so enthusiastic that I felt vaguely suspicious. My intuition was telling me that things were not what they seemed. Nevertheless I forged ahead, explaining that I was happy to provide much of the finance and the experience I had of recovery, but that I would need help in creating an infrastructure, and that was where the Priory group would come in.
The object would be to build the clinic in Antigua, with a view to servicing the entire Caribbean area. It was accepted that few clients would initially come in from the local communities, and that we would need to promote the center elsewhere, drawing on people from America and Europe who would pay to come there and thus fund scholarship beds for the locals who couldn’t afford it. It was a Robin Hood scheme really; take from the rich to feed the poor. Finally, we had to headhunt somebody to be the chief clinician, and the person we found was Anne Vance, from the Betty Ford Clinic in California.
The more I considered it, the more excited I became by the project, to which we gave the name the Crossroads Centre. It seemed like the perfect antidote to the toxicity of my love life, and I was excited by the idea of doing something to pay back for all the good times and spiritual healing I’d got in Antigua. It really has been one of the only places on earth I’ve found where I can completely discard the pressures of my life and blend into the landscape.
The villa we had built in English Harbour, however, had become a bit of a tourist landmark, so I asked Leo to find something a bit more remote. He showed me a piece of land jutting out into the sea, just around the coast from Falmouth, that was absolutely beautiful. I bought it on the spot and eventually