Addict documents recovery battles

Getting sober is easy, the challenge lies in staying sober – and for one recovering addict the road to sobriety was so littered with ups and downs he felt the need to write a book.

From as young as 13, Andrew Sullivan, 42, of Plettenberg Bay, dabbled with substances, starting off with alcohol and eventually moving on to drugs like cocaine.

“My drinking started when I was 13. I started smoking when I was 15, took my first toke on a spliff when I was 16, had my first trip when I was 17, and got fully loaded on Es and whizz,” the father of two young girls said.

Sullivan was born in Warrington in the UK and his family moved to Saudi Arabia when he was three.

He said he was sexually assaulted by a stranger when he was six.

“My mind still flashes back to this moment that has haunted me for so long.”

He said he had kept the assault a secret for 22 years.

Shortly after the incident Sullivan moved to Greece when his mother, a recent divorcee, remarried. At the age of eight, he was sent to boarding school in England where he befriended older people who used him to buy alcohol. At 15, he was a regular at pubs.

After school, Sullivan went into magazine publishing and media sales.

“My drinking at this stage was consistent but not ridiculous and while the use of class A drugs had tapered off, I would still smoke weed pretty much every day.”

In 2001, Sullivan married a South African woman and by mid-2003 emigrated to South Africa.

“I was introduced to cocaine while I was in Johannesburg. It started out as the odd weekend here and there,” he said.

“Then [it became] every weekend, then Wednesdays, then every night of the week.

“Before I knew it, I was phoning the dealer in the morning, on the way to work, to score.

“Within three months of my first line I was scoring 5g a day. “I would snort at my desk. “I would put myself in dangerous situations when my regular dealer couldn’t supply and I needed a hit, often venturing into townships with money, looking for someone to hook me up.”

The drug addiction became so bad that his wife left him while pregnant with their second child. Finally, in 2014, Sullivan booked himself into rehab, and has since turned over a new leaf.

“After initial introductions to the staff and my peer group, the first thing that struck me was the empathy – not sympathy.”

Sullivan has now written a book, A Year Without Substance, which according to him is a real-time journey through the pitfalls and breakthroughs of leaving the world of addiction and surviving the first year of recovery.

“I’m not a psychologist, nor a counsellor, but what I do have is first-hand experience of living in the dark world of addiction as well as living one day at a time in recovery,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, Sullivan will be touring the Eastern Cape bringing his message of hope and how to combat inner demons to youngsters, adults and everyone in between.