Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [98]
One of the features about Hazelden was their very good aftercare program. Before I even left my unit, they had contacted AA in the area where I lived and organized a sponsor to meet me. I was assigned a man who lived in Dorking, named David. It was recommended I stay with my first “given” sponsor until I had a little time under my belt, and then maybe choose another, based on what my requirements were. (It was widely pointed out, by the way, that I would be the last person to know what those requirements were.) It was also impressed upon me that it was not a good idea to make any great decisions or embark on any momentous voyages of work—for about a year. This was supposedly to allow time for my head to clear and also gradually be reintroduced to reality. I did the opposite, of course.
Before that, however, I had to face the problems of integrating myself with the people at home. I remember that I had a friend there, one of my drinking partners, whom I didn’t know that well, but every weekend he would come down from Chessington and we would go out boozing round the local pubs. It usually started at the Windmill on Saturday mornings. So the first Saturday I got back from America, he turned up as usual. He had no idea where I had been, and I realized that this would be one of the first times I was going to have to tell anybody about it.
I was naturally nervous, but I came out of the house and said to him, “Look, I’m afraid I can’t go up to the pub. I’ve stopped drinking.” He looked at me curiously for a minute and then said, “Well, fuck you!” and got into his car and drove off. I never saw him again. I don’t think for a minute there was any malevolence in his reaction. That was just a normal conversation for us, but in a way it prepared me for the kind of reaction I probably could expect from some quarters, especially old drinking buddies.
Most of the Ripleyites, like Guy Pullen, my oldest and truest friend, were proud of what I’d achieved, but this didn’t mean they were going to temper their drinking just to accommodate me. So I had to make some fairly tough choices. Certain people, places, and things were dangerous for me, and I needed to carefully identify what was safe and what wasn’t safe for my sobriety from a long list of past associations and haunts. But my judgment was useless, and my value system was completely upside down. What had previously been number one, two, and three on my list of life priorities—excitement, danger, and risk—now had no place there at all.
For a while I tried to associate only with people who would be good for me, but it was hard; I was angry and disagreeable, and I didn’t know what to do with all the time that I used to spend drinking. I went to twelve-step meetings, sometimes five or six a week, and would sit there thinking, “I’m not like these people. I don’t really belong here.” What I needed was someone to take an interest in me, but now I was just Eric the alcoholic, and I wasn’t too sure that I had totally accepted that.
Among the hardest things I had to face on my return from Hazelden was attempting to re-enter my relationship with Pattie. I came back from treatment with no real idea of how to open the door of intimacy again. It was not something we had covered in treatment, and I regret that now. Not that I think it would have made any difference for us, although that is debatable, but because it is a very real issue and ought to be included in all programs of this nature.
Suffice to say, we didn’t know what to do. It had been so long since I had done anything without booze, I just didn’t know where to start. It was heartbreaking, for both of us. Pattie had been so looking forward to having this clean young man coming home to her, and here I was, partially broken, like a Vietnam vet. I would go to bed with her and