Max Wallis: 'I had to leave London because I was an alcoholic'

I never made it to the bridge where I was going to take my own life. As the Toyota Prius got closer and closer on the morning of February 25 and I swigged raw gulps of Glen’s vodka from the blue corner shop bag, I kept changing the route. I was on a comedown. I hadn’t eaten. I was a broken man needing to escape.

Tower Bridge was too close to my flat in Hackney, my illogical reasoning went, and the Millennium Bridge could wobble. I watched the taxi driver look at me drinking, tears running down my face, and the grey wreaths trailing out of my T-shirt where I tried to hide my vape. I’m not sure why he said nothing.

My relationship of twelve years was imploding. I was boxed in. I couldn’t talk to anyone. Memories of my childhood were haunting me. I was taking cocaine every day and by the baggies left each morning it was also the major contributing factor to the debts I had mounting up like the Shard. Financially, I was on the precipice. Freelance writing had dried up and my parents were supporting me. On Facebook I said goodbye. On Twitter, adios. People commented. But I didn’t care.

I’m not a religious man, but my best friend’s a priest. In times of need, I’d go to them for sanctuary and respite. They picked up the phone and told me to go to St Paul’s. By this point, I’d got out of the taxi and wandered the streets looking for anything to help my head.

Then the sun broke through the pewter, the colour of clotted cream on the stone of Wren’s cathedral. “You’ll be safe there.” Two priests came to me. They took me into their cloisters. They read me the Lord’s Prayer. Part of me thought I could go for a hug. Part of me probably thought I could get some wine. I tried to explain something I couldn’t explain — how my mind was unravelling.

As part of safeguarding, they had to call an ambulance and automatically the police were called too. Impulsively I legged it. I bolted straight into the middle of the London Winter Run. And while the vergers had to deal with the Sunday service, I was running in pyjama shorts along with the other runners for all of 30 metres. And then: the ambulance, some kindly police officers, and a waiting game as they allowed the runners to move on so the ambulance could eventually move too.

At the hospital, I lay down on a bed made out of children’s soft-play furnishing and ate custard creams while they assessed me. A man down the hallway watched true crime on repeat. The door to my room had no lock. What little sleep I had that night was filled with fear. The next day I was allowed to leave. And it was then I decided to leave London for good.

My flat had become a burial ground for vodka bottles. They were uncapped and wedged behind the bedframe like canopic jars used in Egyptian mummy rituals and I valued them almost as much. The red screwtops were scattered and crushed underfoot. In the corner was a Deliveroo bag full of empties, five vapes and half-eaten McDonald’s. In the bathroom, sick made a watermark in the toilet bowl. The mirrored doors that enclosed my wardrobe were off their tracks, the massive fronts now a peculiar footrest at the end of my bed. You might think it was a hell of a party. But no. It was another day on a train to nowhere that was my addiction. And one I’d been battling for years.

It wasn’t just London, with all its noise. There were many factors at play in what led me there. But addiction bound them all together in a twisted hall of mirrors. I hated myself. Every day I needed a dopamine hit. Booze and drugs followed. Both of them were rueful mistresses. What had started as something to help me be more sociable had become a daily dose to do seemingly anything. Cocaine in London is a quarter of an hour, £60 and a text away. The pandemic was cruel. The world was cruel. The beer had become wine had become straight vodka. But the seeds of addiction were there from the age of 10 when I wrote in my school textbook how much I liked lager.

Money was burned. Things of value were taken to the pawn shop. Smiles were painted. Excuses were made; haircuts were rare and the cat litter was changed less frequently. I wasn’t a functioning member of society or even my own four walls. It wasn’t so much rock bottom as Hades. In 2019, King’s College London found that 23kg of cocaine was used daily in London. I can only imagine what it would be like now.

I broke up with my ex and moved back to the town I grew up in and had left more than a decade ago: Chorley, Lancashire. After a week or so of leaving London, I got sober. I’d been clean from drugs since the moment I left. After a while at my priest friend’s house, I made up my relationship with my parents and moved back in with them in an effective rehab situation. They don’t drink while I’m here. I go to meetings. I am very much in a daily recovery. At the time of filing this piece, I’m 94 days sober.

I left because I had to. And in doing so I found out I am much better and much happier away from the city. Leaving meant I found out I had undiagnosed adult ADHD. Brains like mine lack dopamine and noradrenaline — chemical parcels that make you feel good and help you focus. This deficit means I was impulsive and made foolish decisions. I looked for anything — shopping, booze, drugs, games — to give me those chemicals.

Dr Ute Liersch, counselling psychologist at The Soke, a London-based mental health, wellness and coaching clinic tells me: “The ADHD brain is consistently under-stimulated. An intrinsic goal for someone with ADHD is to reduce this brain deficit by getting more stimulation through life experiences. Some drugs can induce such a state, helping the ADHD brain to feel more normal. However, this constant quest to stimulate the brain can be exhausting, leading to a need for balance. And drugs can also provide a state of relaxation. So, it’s no wonder that this group of people has a biological vulnerability to addiction.”

My psychiatrist told me that it’s a common comorbidity of ADHD. And that ADHD is a disability which makes you more emotionally vulnerable. At any one moment, I have a dozen different thoughts going on at the same time like the old telephone switchboards. Substances allowed my brain to smooth out that vortex. Where most people were stimulated by stimulants, I found focus. My psychiatrist told me I needed a legal one.

She prescribed me methylphenidate and part of how it works is that it wakes up the “sleepy part” of the brain which, when understimulated, makes it wander. As a stimulant, it works differently in ADHD brains than neurotypical ones. It makes us less impulsive, less likely to abuse substances, and more likely to be able to finish tasks. And in turn, combined with recovery, more likely to stay sober.

There are hills near my home in Chorley. Reservoirs, too. Nature and the external world have become my lodestones. I started to run — it makes me feel like I can control where I go in the future during this limbo of recovery. Living with my parents again after 16 years is not perfect — a bit like being at school — but I can have frank conversations with them about my life, and about drugs and alcohol. When I run I try to see how many plants I can name: the magnolia trees, hawthorn, jasmine, clematis. Where before I could only shuffle to the cash machine and the car, now I run for miles. Last week I totted up 35. For the first time in my life, I got a medal for sports.

London might have the best flat whites this side of Australia, but I’m happy to sacrifice that for my well-being. I’ve had to reappraise everything in my life and what makes me happy. It’s sort of like Marie Kondo — does it spark joy? London doesn’t right now.

For the first time in my life, I’m taking care of myself and making progress daily that I can track rather than burying my head in the sand. Survival and recovery mean that life does get better. It’s tough. But I wake up in the morning without a hangover and feel safe. I have better skin. I have more money and more laughter, I am medicated and I am clean. There are still obstacles, but if I get through the day I will get past them. London overwhelmed me by its choices — an anathema to people with a brain like mine. I’d get overstimulated. And that’s not to mention the addiction. I’ve learned that a smaller world, with wins I can quantify rather than ingest is the pathway to recovery. I’ve learned the people I should pull towards me and nurture and those I should detach from with love.

I’m selling my flat. I’m reinvesting in myself. The hometown that used to remind me of pain and suffering has become home again. Every day I go out to the garden with my cat and nurture the tomatoes and cucamelons I’m growing from The Pot Gang. I drink Aqua Libra instead of vodka. I’ve even given up coffee. And that’s not just because the ones here suck.

I’m rebuilding myself. I’m finishing a novel. I’m starting a memoir. I’m writing more than ever and sending poems off to magazines. Life, oddly, is what I’ve always wanted it to be. Maybe I’ll live in Manchester, maybe I won’t, but that’s for future-Max to decide.

Sometimes the binds that tie us, even when they might seem to be as strong as steel, have to be cut. However difficult, however painful, however regrettable. Life is for living. And in London I almost died.

Max Wallis is an award-winning poet and writes on his Substack, maxwallis.substack.com, and Instagram @maxwallis. His first book Modern Love was shortlisted for the Polari Prize.