Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [93]
My rock bottom was preceded by a number of warnings, the first during a weekend away visiting some friends in the country. We had been invited to stay with Bob Pridden, sound engineer for the Who, who was married to Lady Maria Noel, one of the daughters of the Earl of Gainsborough, and they lived in a house on the grounds of Exton Park, the family home in Rutland. Being full of bravado and therefore having no idea what I was taking on, I promised Pattie that I would not drink during the trip. We set off on the journey, and when we were quite close to the destination we got lost. I spotted a telephone box and stopped to call Bob to get the final directions. While I was talking to him, I suddenly felt faint and a bit dizzy and fell against the side of the kiosk. The blood soon came back to my head and I straightened up and finished the conversation, but I was a little perturbed.
When we arrived, we were met by Bob and Maria, who showed us our room, and then we had something to eat. I noticed there was no booze to be seen, and then it struck me, because I knew that Bob liked to take a drink, that they obviously had been told to hide or lock up all the liquor. I remember getting up in the middle of the night and prowling around the house, opening every cupboard to try and find some alcohol, without success. The next day Bob was going duck shooting, and I went with him and helped him carry his stuff, and by the time we returned I was feeling a bit agitated from not having any alcohol. I started suffering the first signs of withdrawal.
That night we went out to a local restaurant, the George at Stamford, for dinner. It was a grand occasion with a lot of very posh county people, and I noticed that while we were sitting in the bar before dinner, everyone was drinking water or orange juice, which made me think that these people, too, had been given the “E.C. brief.” We went in to dinner and I’d hardly sat down at the table when I felt the earth revolve. I was sitting upright, but the room went sideways, and the next thing I remember I was coming to in the back of an ambulance.
Pattie was with me, literally shaking with fear, as she had no idea what had happened. It turned out that I had suffered a grand mal seizure, brought on by abruptly ceasing my heavy intake of alcohol without medical supervision. I was admitted into the Wellington Hospital in London for tests, where I was soon diagnosed as having a late-arriving form of epilepsy that they said could have been dormant in my system for years. They then gave me the appropriate medication, which was fine because it was another chemical to play with.
Soon after this, at the end of November, we flew to Japan for a short, eight-date tour, opening in Niigata. When we arrived at our hotel in Tokyo a few days later, I went up to my room to find I’d been given a bottle of sake that had flakes of pure gold floating in it, a very highly regarded gift in Japan. I drank it in one sitting, and within a few hours I had a serious physical reaction. My body became covered from head to foot with an enormous rash, and my skin started peeling off. Somehow I got through the show, and that night I showed Roger, and he reiterated what he had been saying for months. “You’re an alcoholic.” Of course, I refused to accept it.
That Christmas we had lots of people staying at Hurtwood, close friends and family of all ages. I had asked Santa for some special thermal underwear for fishing, and on Christmas Eve, I waited till everyone was asleep, and then, blind drunk, I decided to open my gifts. There I was, in the middle of the night, sitting under the tree opening presents, the kind of thing a naughty boy of five would do. I found my precious bright green thermal underwear and put it on and went wandering. When I came to, hours later, I was