I am an 80-year-old man who has been in recovery from alcohol use for 29 years. I started having issues with my drinking when I was in my twenties, and this continued and off throughout my life.

Despite being in recovery for 8 years, one day when I was 30, just when I thought I was safe from the demon and could control the drink, I had taken a sip of whisky from someone’s flask on a cold winter’s day at a football match. It was just to heat me up, surely after 8 years I would be okay… and the battle began all over again.

It was another 12 years before I made it to my recovery again. I wrote this poem at the beginning of my recovery in my early fifties. It is about how I felt sitting in the local pub being whispered about… “Oh there’s the local alky in the corner, the waste of space, the down and out!!”

I felt so alone and depressed, they had no idea the battle I was having just to stay alive. Stigma is so damaging. Next time you see someone using drugs or alcohol, before you jump to conclusions and use your labels, just remember there is a real person and a real story behind their actions, and they will already be fighting the biggest battles of their life without having you adding to that.