4 individuals share their experience of alcohol and substance addiction and their journey to recovery and discovery through films that they are producing.
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00:00 A lot of people when they talk about addiction they talk about people could have made choices,
00:09 you know they could have chosen differently. But for me I don't know if I feel that to
00:15 be true. I mean for me I do believe that it is an illness. I don't need to get into the
00:22 why it happens or when it happens but I do think it's an illness and I think that when
00:30 you are at the worst places that that illness can take you, you do become paralysed by this
00:37 kind of choicelessness. You're not able to make choices until you fully understand what
00:45 it is that you suffer from and can admit it to yourself and other people. For me once
00:50 you've got that level of understanding about yourself and acceptance and it's almost always
00:55 a painful journey to get there. That is when the ability to make choices begins. It's the
01:01 same as if you felt unwell and you went to the doctor. You're not going to be able to
01:06 stop feeling unwell until you've got a diagnosis. So for me that's sort of how it shows up.
01:12 I'm Derek Gale and I live in Southsea. I live in a homeless shelter at the moment with my
01:20 partner. This is in the cinema club in Southsea. The cinema club wanted to do a programme about
01:32 people who are homeless and get involved in film making and doing cinematography acting
01:41 and doing the things behind the camera like directing cinematography, doing the grips
01:49 and all that. So I came on this course, I think it was 11 or 12 weeks and how I got
01:57 involved because the hub asked me if I was interested and I said of course, yeah. With
02:03 my training in the background and drama theatre I've done basically the same course that we
02:10 did, this 11 week course here. While I was here in the course I got to know a lot of
02:18 the others who were involved in it and we decided to do a, pick what was the best stories
02:28 about our life or turn it into a story, into a film.
02:40 My name's Campbell. I've lived in Portsmouth now for about five years. I got myself into
02:49 a bit of strife, found myself in a bit of a pickle, started drinking a bit too much,
02:55 doing a bit too many drugs. I ended up making myself homeless because of it and it was after
03:04 quite a long time of keeping my life together and up together and certain events happened.
03:11 And so, yeah, anyway, but I ended up basically getting some support from SSJ which is basically
03:20 like housing, it's a charity and I managed to get temporary housing and I basically,
03:28 yeah, because I wasn't doing too much in a day I was doing all the courses on offer,
03:35 everything actually, even if I'd done it before, like qualifications that I'd done before but
03:40 I just did them just to keep occupied, keep my mind busy, keep myself just normal, like
03:47 sane, because I've got a very busy mind. Yeah, so and then I found myself being signed up
03:55 for this course which was sort of like someone signed me up for it but I was like yeah, alright,
04:01 whatever, I'll just do it and I'll come along and yeah, it was alright. I met quite a few
04:06 good people on the course, I think there's like 11 or so to start off with. People from
04:13 every walk of life, different stories, different backgrounds, different upbringings and yeah,
04:23 I think in general on the course, the cinema course, everyone got on well.
04:27 I'm a local, I'm locally born here in Forksmouth. I was brought, I got into Irish's attention
04:43 by involvement that I have with the societies in James's. They were helping me out with
04:50 a few issues with various mental health and other things and part of the sort of curriculum
04:59 that they operate is to run various courses which among many others actually, including
05:06 one from intuitive thinking and others just like it, they pointed me towards a film course
05:13 with South Sea Film Society which is what Ayesha is running. My own personal story is
05:22 more about mental health and that didn't really make it, my story is just too complicated
05:31 to make a short film out of. I mean, it has to be a whole sort of three volume series,
05:37 you know, sort of Netflix style, four seasons, long jobby book. But you know, there's always
05:47 a reason why people turn to drink or substance. They don't just do it because they're happy,
05:52 oh and they're all trying to escape something and that something is where many people now
06:00 in the professional people are actually looking to what's happening there to try and block
06:06 it before it ever evolves into a problem over there sort of thing. So there's a whole new
06:12 mindset as we move on into the sort of new way of thinking. It's a good thing. I mean,
06:18 I think it's already looking like it's working a bit. So I'm fully behind that in every respect.
06:24 That's Haribro. I'm fully behind it. I want to help him out and work with it.
06:30 [Counting]
06:39 So my name's Kirsty and I am a recovering alcoholic. So it's coming up to two and a
06:46 half years that I've been sober. And I came to this project through Society of St James,
06:53 SSJ. They do a lot of sort of not just helping people to get their initial recovery, but
07:01 helping people to maintain it by adding dimension and structure and consistency to their lives.
07:08 And I've always been quite creative. I'm a performing stand up comedian and I've always
07:15 written, I've always made things with my hands. So my worker put me onto this course at the
07:22 South Sea Cinema Club that I'd never, I'd never been to the cinema club or anything before.
07:26 And I've never made anything on film or anything using technology or anything like that either.
07:33 So it was something new and I didn't really know what to expect, which I think is good
07:38 when you come to something with no expectations, because it means you're probably always going
07:42 to come away with something. You're always going to have been able to grow or kind of
07:45 find the lesson. What did I do on the project? A little bit of everything, because I am absolutely
07:54 a doer. I scripted one of the films. So it's actually something that happened to me. It's
08:04 a sort of turning point moment in my story. It was the moment that I realised that I was
08:10 absolutely powerless to do anything about my drinking by myself. And I tried to keep
08:18 the story really open ended because I, you know, if you sort of look at the ratio of
08:24 people that were on this course and stayed, I'm the only woman here. Women don't really
08:29 make it in recovery as often as men, because there's so many things that pull us in like
08:33 different directions. Children, partners, putting everyone else's wellbeing before
08:41 our own. And so I knew that that moment that happened to me probably has happened to a
08:46 lot of women and that the outcome hasn't always been what it was for me. So I wanted
08:53 to leave it open ended and just kind of make the point that the moment is not that far
09:02 away for a lot of us. That moment of decision, that moment of helplessness and not try and
09:10 capitalise on where it goes too much. And it was nice to be in a surrounding where,
09:15 like for example, you've got a room full of people who are kind of traditionally sort
09:21 of stigmatised or criminalised in society. And we're being trusted with filming equipment,
09:26 recording equipment, editing equipment, all of which is incredibly expensive and sensitive.
09:31 But we were just given the opportunity to get our hands on it and use it. And there
09:36 was no kind of nobody was hovering over us. You know, it was it was yeah, it was really
09:43 freeing. And I mean, I've made friends for life, I think, from the course as well, because
09:51 we were quite a small group and we're all super different. I think the thing about that
09:57 is like addiction doesn't discriminate by whether you're rich, poor, male, female, gay,
10:04 straight, black, white. It comes everywhere. And so every single person on the course came
10:11 from a totally different walk of life and had a totally different perspective, which
10:15 could have been carnage. But it wasn't because we were all able to learn from each other
10:21 and like lean on each other in terms of who had strengths with what and where and why and how.
10:28 My piece is pretty heavily fixated on that moment of realisation of powerlessness. So I think it's
10:42 going to, people are going to have mixed reactions to it. Some people might see it and just think
10:49 it's really sad, or it might get some people in the gut about what kind of knife edge moment it
10:56 actually was. But really, for me, it is about the fact that it was the moment I fully understood
11:05 that I had no willpower, no control over my drinking, and that I needed help, I needed to
11:17 find a solution, I needed to find treatment to this problem, and it wasn't going to come from
11:21 within me. Sometimes you've got to go down before you come back up. You've got to go down dark and
11:28 deep. And yeah, it's just a brutal reminder of the affliction of addiction. Some people don't have
11:43 even the ability or the support or the need or the want to try and get through the other side.
11:49 I'm grateful that I can and I can see the light, and I can see that there was going to be light as
11:56 long as I did it and did it myself. I was lucky I had decent people around me to help me through it
12:01 again. It's been quite a harsh lesson the last year or so, really. My life was pretty good for
12:10 quite a lot of years. And yeah, it's a brutal reminder, but I think sometimes everyone
12:18 takes life for granted and then you realise how quickly you can lose it.
12:22 Not everyone's lucky enough to come out the other side.
12:24 You know a lot of people, I know a lot of people. So yeah, I'm grateful for that, really.
12:31 [Music]