Rabelais.org.au | La Trobe University's Independent Student Newspaper, est 1967

Sunday 5 September 2010

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I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous not six months ago with a throbbing headache, a pain I always considered the necessary consequence of a decent weekend.

For a long time I figured this was just what young adults did. But when the weekends began to drag on for four days, then five, I knew my life had become unmanageable.

By attending my first AA meeting I had taken the first step in the "Big Book" - I had admitted I was powerless over alcohol.

I guess I expected AA to be an instant cure, but after that first meeting I didn’t know whether I was in denial or if AA simply wasn’t for me. I mean, surely a 22-year-old couldn’t be an alcoholic, right?

I decided to attend a few more meetings and eventually I heard a message.

It felt like a message just for me and I wore it like a badge, a constant reminder to myself that things could get better if I embraced the program and continued to share experience, strength, and hope with people who share this affliction.

I think it was my third meeting when I was first introduced to a man called Brian "Coxy" Cox. He was the final share of our Wednesday-night Tyler Street meeting and as he walked up to the front of the hall, I couldn’t help but notice his aged appearance.

Bald, bespectacled and with a thin frame, his only aggressive features were the tattoos that covered his arms - but when he began to speak you immediately knew you were at a northern suburbs Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Amid the "fucks" and "shits" you could see this guy was desperate to impart a message to us and it was a fairly simple one – "Grab this program with both hands," he would shout, with clenched fists and a rigour that could draw a sweat.

He approached me at the end of the meeting and gave me his card - "MARC: Melbourne Alcohol Recovery Centre Inc., Brian Cox, founder and co-ordinator". I tucked the card away in my wallet and went home.

Six months from that day puts me here, still sober and writing an article about MARC – a not-for-profit organisation that has been operational for over 20 years. It started in Newton Street, Reservoir when Geraldine McMillan, a representative of the Department of Housing (now the Department of Human Services), offered Brian a house.

She said, "If you can help us help alcoholics, we’ll help you." The house became a home to many relapsing alcoholics who had been at Pleasant View Receiving House just across the road. After only a few months "there ended up being about seven or eight people sleeping in here", with almost all the furniture removed to accommodate more alcoholics who were being supported by Brian’s pension and part-time job.

The closing of Pleasant View in the mid-1990s under the Kennett Government saw the disestablishment of Victoria’s last public drug and alcohol rehabilitation department.

The places that remain are detox clinics, which are seven-day ‘band-aid treatments’, and private clinics such as Malvern Private, Pine Lodge, and The Melbourne Clinic, which only alcoholics with private health care can afford. One member of the fellowship claimed he attended a Melbourne-based clinic, paid $14,000 for a three-month program, and was then referred to AA.

The 2006-2007 progress report from the COAG National Action Plan on Mental Health claimed that "the challenges of providing services where individuals present with both a mental disorder and substance abuse are well-recognised".

The Victorian Government, in its Alcohol Action Plan 2008-2013, claims that it has "committed an additional $255 million to alcohol and other drug services since 1999". This may be the case, but this is a rather trivial figure considering the new health reform claims to dedicate a lump sum of $174 million to youth mental health programs.

Apart from this, government policy towards alcohol has steered away from ‘service providing’ and become more directed towards ‘harm minimisation’, which, although necessary, seems less important than the high rates of suicide and psychosis because of alcohol abuse. "It pisses me off that there are people out there dying because they can’t get help for their addictions," Coxy says.

During its lifetime, MARC has established partnerships with other organisations and as such has gained the attention of many philanthropists.

Because of these donations MARC now runs three houses dedicated to rehabilitating chronic alcoholics.

The majority of the tenants of these houses were homeless before they were accepted into the program. One member, who wanted to remain anonymous, said he was evicted from his home in Faulkner and asked Coxy for help. "I have been at Coxy’s for nearly three months now … If it wasn’t for him I don’t know where I’d be today."

A member of another residence in Rosanna was originally part of the Odyssey House program, but after a brief tenure in a transitional home he was evicted and lived in a park for over a month. "A mate of mine who knew Coxy told me to give Coxy a ring. Eleven weeks later here I am. The greatest thing I’ve done."

These people live with other recovering alcoholics in the "million-dollar houses", as they are often referred to, and are progressively rehabilitated back into a stable life.

One of the fellowship members said, "[I] always felt alone ... I didn’t want to live no more … but today I put my head on the pillow and I’m able to sleep."

The members whom I spoke to said they cherished the fact that they have people around them who share their common problem and help with it. "I open up to them and they open up to me … and I think that’s one of the miracles that’s going on in the houses."