As we arrived in Liverpool, the coach I was in was hit by a petrol bomb. That night I realised that I was in a situation where I had no control. I had no control over whether I was going to live or die, and that experience lasted for four days and nights. It may sound strange but because I had no control, I became extremely calm. Calmer than I’ve ever been before or since.

It was trying to feel the way I did during that riot that shaped almost 30 years of my life.

After I left the police, I got a job in one of Reading’s roughest pubs, I won’t name it, but it’s fair to say the skills I learnt as a policeman came in useful! I worked there for three years. It was during this time I started to drink heavily. Drinking was the only thing that made me feel anything like the calmness I felt in the Toxteth riots. I enjoyed that feeling and was desperate to recreate it.

I had a career change in my late thirties – after going to university as a mature student I followed in my dad’s footsteps and became a university lecturer. Looking back, I wanted to show my father I could be as good an academic as him.

At face value life was going well – very well. I was married, I had a family and a good job too. I was a brilliant lecturer, and I can honestly say that my students loved me. I still had my mischievous flair and always got great feedback from the students.

But throughout this entire period, I was a heavy drinking, but functional alcoholic. When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. I could drink half a bottle of vodka on my way home.  I was gripped by alcoholism for years and I neglected everything else, including my family.

My family tried to help me stop drinking, but nothing worked. Despite appearances, my life was very dysfunctional, I knew I was killing myself. And increasingly so did my friends and family. My family used to video me to show me what they experienced – they were appalled, but it didn’t stop my drinking.

One of the most tragic things about this part of my life is that the people around me remember it much more clearly than I do. I was so drunk that I don’t really remember all the bad times, or the impact they had.

Eventually my family told me I had to leave the family home. The situation had just got so bad. I left the family home and started to rent a flat in the town centre.

Then I lost my job. Looking back, the university had been making allowances for me, but I think they were glad to see the back of me and my drinking. At this point I’d become a dysfunctional alcoholic.

At this time everyone I met must have known that I was an alcoholic, but no one said anything to my face. I continued to drink heavily. All the while I was trying to feel the calmness I’d felt in Toxteth. Things got so bad that I was in hospital every 3 to 4 weeks, seriously ill with alcohol poisoning. Regularly, I wouldn’t be able to stand or walk.

After a period of living like this I couldn’t hold down a job and I lost my flat.

I was hospitalised again, and at this point I was certified as a ‘lunatic’ by a doctor. It sounds so old fashioned now! When this happened, I was admitted into Prospect Park Hospital. I stayed with them for a month and didn’t drink for the whole month, but only because I couldn’t get to a shop! I wasn’t ready to stop drinking, and when they decided they needed the bed I was in for someone else, they kicked me out.

In my early fifties I was homeless and just left with a bin liner of possessions. I continued to drink.

I quickly became disconnected from I guess what you’d call the ‘normal world’. Even now I feel shocked at how quickly this happened. I couldn’t wash, I smelt, I felt that I had no worth.

I started sleeping in the woods in the university campus, I knew the campus well, and I slept under the same tree every night as I knew it would keep me dry.         

I slept there for several weeks, until one night it rained so hard, I did get wet. I went to my parents, to try and sleep under their porch. When they saw me they called the police out of desperation and pleaded with me to do something.

This night was the first time that someone mentioned Launchpad.

I turned up at Launchpad’s door homeless. I came to the coloured doors. You let me in and that was my first step on the road to recovering.

Having taken this step, my now ex-wife saw that I was trying to change things – for the first time. She suggested I went to stay with them for a while.

Drink still defined my life at this point. It was still the only way I could feel anything like I did on those four nights in Toxteth. For so many years I thought of drink as a way to get to my ‘happy place’. Despite all the damage it was doing to me – and everyone close to me.

It was at this point that I finally realised that my three lovely children were not going to give up on me. I remember asking them ‘Why are you sticking by me still?’. I just couldn’t understand it.

Launchpad moved me into their supported accommodation in Reading town centre.

Despite still drinking heavily, I tried to exercise. I was out cycling early one morning, and I slipped on some black ice and smashed my hip up badly. I knew that I was in trouble straight away but managed to crawl home in great pain.

I was stuck like this in the flat for several days. I was so ill with booze that I didn’t know sepsis had set in. I was not thinking straight. I’d decided that I was dying and there was nothing I could do. I just accepted it… pure fatalism I guess.

Thankfully the lady in the flat below me wasn’t fatalistic and had realised that something was wrong. She called the police, who forced their way in. I remember being really irritated – I was going to a lovely, peaceful place which transcended everything else that was going on.