From the Hilton to homeless: An alcoholic's tale

Tuesday, 17 July 2018

Auckland Council has announced it will count the city's rough sleepers to fully grasp the scale of homelessness. We took to the streets to learn about those on society's edge in the city's centre, whose current way of life the council hopes to eliminate.

Ross never imagined that in his mid-40s he'd be sleeping under a tree on a smelly old mattress with only a stolen towel to keep him warm.

He never thought he'd 'knock up a couple of lesbians' either.

The now 51-year-old grew up in a loving Hamilton home, drove a fancy European car, and 'only flew business class, darling'.

**READ MORE:

* Auckland's phoney homeless make $100 a day on the streets

* They fight, take drugs, and sleep rough: can the chronically homeless be saved?

* Homeless women targeted for sex

* The 'streeties' of Lower Queen: life on the edge in the centre of the city**

His journey to homelessness was via an alter-ego Ross' mum dubbed 'Rupert'. While Ross was (and is) kind and law-abiding and scared of spiders, Rupert thought nothing of blowing his life up for existential limbo in a park. As long as he got his wine.

Rupert took over after Ross got fat. By his early 40s, Ross weighed 140kg and decided to get gastric bypass surgery. Up until then Ross loved his job in the travel industry, lived in Auckland, and had a full – if tipsy – social life. 'There was lots of travel, lots of fun. I was gay, single … well, not every night of the week,' he says. He felt that life slipping away as he got heavier - for fat-ism, he'd learned, is a thing.

He emerged from the operating theatre almost half his original weight, and his prospects soared. So did his ability to absorb alcohol: Ross' radically reduced stomach size meant liquids moved quickly into his small intestine, where most alcohol gets absorbed into the bloodstream. Not only hitting the blood faster, it'd arrive purer because it's the stomach that starts breaking alcohol down.

While Ross wasn't boozing more than he had prior to surgery, the changes to his gut fast-tracked him to alcoholism.

'The drunk episodes were getting more frequent, and I made a few bad choices, a few enemies through being rude and obnoxious,' he says.

RISE AND FALL, RISE AND FALL

When the opportunity to manage a motel with an ex-partner in Brisbane arose in 2011, Ross grabbed it. He had an inkling his drinking was getting out of control, so saw escaping New Zealand as a chance to re-set.

It didn't work. Stress and isolation drove Ross to drink in the middle of the day, then in the morning. He'd sit at reception with coffee or coke laced with gin, and fall asleep beside an open bottle of wine – which he'd swig from whenever he woke up.

'I wasn't doing a very good job at anything,' he says. 'But I didn't stoop to drinking meths, or anything cheap – I did have standards. Ha.'

He flew to America for a holiday and drank himself into a blackout state on arrival. He says the trip ended in 'complete meltdown'. Returning to Brisbane was off the cards and at the urging of his mum, Ross flew back to Auckland to get help from the Community Alcohol and Drug Service (CADS).

He still didn't admit to being an alcoholic. 'That was a dirty word, and besides, I was surely just stressed,' he says, wryly.

But things did get better before he cut into a vein on his arm, six months later, at his friend's house.

Ross had a new job, was flatting with an old mate, and hadn't touched alcohol in months when he allowed himself a small shandy at Friday drinks. The next Friday he had a glass of wine. Then he allowed himself another holiday to Los Angeles, and again had his first drink at the airport.

'Basically, I came home and couldn't stop drinking,' he says. He lost the new job.

Ross – or Rupert – also lost his accommodation, as the deal he had with his friend was that he wouldn't drink. For a while he'd tried to hide his return to alcohol, and that's how he got the scar on his wrist.

'I thought that if I could just drain the alcohol from my system, I'd be OK and no-one would know,' he says.

'It wasn't a suicide attempt, but I cut my vein. It wasn't scientifically viable, perhaps, but it felt right at four o'clock in the morning. That was quite a turning point and my flatmate told me to go.'

DOING 'HOLLYWOOD' AT THE HILTON

That was in September. Ross moved into the Hilton, on Auckland's Princess Wharf, and decided he'd drink himself to death by Christmas – living like a rockstar while his organs pickled. He had a couple of credit cards, and some money in the bank.

He laughs as he describes his attempts at decadence. There were rent boys, lengthy SkyCity massages, charging up the credit cards at Queen St's luxury lifestyle shops. And a lot of drinking. He'd side-step the bedraggled beggars dotting downtown Auckland, never thinking that the next month he'd be joining them.

'I remember feeling very Hollywood. I was definitely out of reality,' says Ross. He'd thrown his phone away to avoid all the 'get help', 'stop being so bloody narcissistic', and 'eff off' texts from friends and colleagues.

COROMANDEL SWANSONG

In October, $52,000 later, Ross' credit cards ran out. His parents were practicing tough love, so the family wasn't in contact.

'I decided to drive down to Waihi Beach, where my parents lived,' he says. 'I was going to drink a couple of bottles of wine and go for a swim. That would be my final swansong.'

He drove his bright red BMW to his parents' street, but couldn't bring himself to face them – or carry out his suicide plan. Thinking 'maybe tomorrow', Ross spied an unoccupied bach about 15 houses down from his parents' place that had a lean-to shed out the back. He broke in.

That was home for the next three days. He pondered death, and how best to achieve it. He kept drinking. Eventually neighbours called the cops, who rolled up to ask the mysterious and clearly addled character what he was up to.

Waihi Beach police know their community well and escorted Ross to his parents' house. His mum and dad were upset – more, he said, over the fact their son had been suicidal for three days, just a few hundred metres from their home than by the extent of his drinking.

Ross told them he needed 24 hours alone to figure things out. He told his parents he'd stay at a nearby motel, but instead drove straight to Waihi Beach pub and drank himself silly.

FAST TIMES IN THE KARANGAHAKE GORGE

In that state of mind, Ross hopped in his car to head back to Auckland. He made it through the narrow and twisting Karangahake Gorge – past its white cross shrines of fatal accidents gone by – to be pulled over by police in Paeroa.

'I think the driver behind me had alerted them to my erratic driving,' he says. 'I was probably weaving all over the road.'

He blew into the breathalyser, was pronounced three times over the the legal limit, and had his car keys confiscated. Police pointed to a motel down the road, and advised Ross to go sleep it off.

Smug in the knowledge he had a spare key, Ross waited half an hour and took off again in his BMW. He only made it the 20km to Ngatea when the same cop pulled him over again. This time the car was impounded.

'At that stage I had no money and no car, which I'd actually planned to sleep in,' he says. 'So I got a friend from Hamilton to come and collect me. He let me have a shower and said he didn't know what to do with me: he said 'here's a hundred dollars, go and find a backpackers, or whatever'.'

BETWEEN THE PORNO THEATRES AND A PONSONBY PARK

Ross took a bus to Auckland, dragged a mattress some Ponsonby resident had chucked over their fence to a spot under a tree in Western Park, and was thus officially sleeping rough.

'You become so resourceful,' he remembers. 'At 46, I'd never shoplifted in my life but I went to the supermarket and stole a bottle of wine. And it's not like any of this fazed me; I was so numb from the alcohol that I just thought, 'oh, OK'.'

Each morning Ross would wake up, cold, with the sun. He'd crawl to a park bench to defrost, praying dog walkers – potentially people from his past life – wouldn't recognise him. He'd be shaking from alcohol withdrawal, but his first few mouthfuls of wine would steady him enough to walk up to Karangahape Rd by 8am.

There, he'd start hustling. He'd tell people at bus stops – very politely – that he'd lost his wallet and just needed $2 to get home to Point Chev.

'I'd sit there until I had $7, which might take 15 minutes, then go to the supermarket and buy a bottle of wine,' he says. 'I needed about five bottles a day.'

He also did the odd dine-and-dash on Ponsonby Rd and was arrested for it three times, spending those nights behind bars.

'I don't know how a homeless 40-something-year-old man thought he could out run a 20-year-old Thai boy,' he says, able to chuckle at the memory now. 'But there was me, dashing across the road with two bottles of wine under my shirt … and he got me.'

Most nights, however, he says he'd hang out in the 'porno theatres of K Rd' until they closed, kipping on or behind couches. Then it'd be 'home to The Mattress', to fall asleep beneath a stolen towel with socks on his hands for warmth.

He'd stolen a jacket too, that had been slung over a chair at a bar. Ross says he became 'very opportunistic', and that you tend to when you've got nothing to lose.

'I did everything out of need and desperation without any thought for anyone else,' he says.

'If someone had left their bag open and there was a wallet in it, I would have taken it. It was a very non-existence. The objective was to get money to get wine to get through the day and go and do it all again. I had no purpose, I just remember there being so many hours in a day and so many days to fill.'

After six weeks of numbly trekking between K Rd and Western Park, Ross' routine changed. Rain was bucketing down when he left the porno theatre one night and he couldn't face The Mattress. Instead of making his way to Ponsonby, Ross turned down Edinburgh St in search of a dry bed; it ended up being a sheet of cardboard, pulled from a skip, laid beneath someone's car.

'It was a BMW, though' says Ross. 'I did laugh to myself.'

JOINING THE SYSTEM

Soon afterwards, in late November, a downtrodden Ross walked into Rainbow Youth's office.

'Even though I'm not a youth, I went in and said, 'can I please talk to someone – I don't know what to do. I'm tired and exhausted and homeless'.'

The woman at reception told him to go to Auckland Hospital. Off over the Grafton Bridge he trotted, only to be told he should try the City Mission. There, Ross met a social worker who slowly, gently, pushed him towards rehabilitation.

'I'd had enough, I'd really just run out of energy and I was tired of being tired,' he said. 'The loneliness was catching up with me and by then I basically did what I was told. Though I did ask him for money, which he refused to give me – rightly.'

The social worker got Ross signed up with WINZ and told him to visit the mission every day, which he did. When a room became available at Liston House – an emergency housing provider just a few hundred metres from The Mattress – Ross moved in. In early December he shifted to Pitman House, a CADS-run detox clinic, to get weaned off alcohol. Then he had a stint at the City Mission's residential social detoxification centre on Federal St.

The next step was Higher Ground, an intensive drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic in Te Atatu. Ross says his time at 'that university crossed with the army' saved his life.

He hasn't touched alcohol in five years and seven months.

'THAT LIFE IS NOT SOMETHING YOU'D DO SOBER'

Looking back, Ross feels disconnected from his homeless chapter.

'Jesus, I couldn't do it now; that life is not something you'd do sober,' he shudders.

'But the fuzzed up brain I had back then made it possible. I wasn't even pining for a comfortable bed. There was just total acceptance that it was what it was.'

He doesn't think he could have gotten out of his drunken haze any sooner than he did, and he doesn't think there's any magic cure to alcohol-driven homelessness.

'There'll be people who will never get beyond where they're at,' he says. 'What I've learned is that someone trying to give you logic when you're in that state of mind will not have an impact. Your brain will not process it because you can only function at level your headspace is at, and I must say that was pretty shallow.'

Shame is Ross' worst hangover these days. 

'I've got a lot of of it,' he says. 'I'm ashamed of treating people the way I did, begging for money, just not being kind to friends. I'm ashamed of my actions and the stress they would have caused my parents.'

Ross acknowledges he can't change the past, so says he works hard to make sure his present and future actions outweigh his Rupert period.

He reckons his mum's Rupert-Ross distinction helps him with that – 'it's not passing the buck, but it can help you distinguish between normality and the craziness of addiction,' he says.

'I know I'm not capable of shoplifting. Ross doesn't steal, he's not a criminal. And Ross didn't drink and drive – I'm lucky I didn't kill someone, or myself. You just don't think of the consequences when you're an addict.'

THE SIMPLE LIFE

Ross re-trained and now works in the drug and alcohol rehabilitation sector; he earns less than his pre-homeless salary, but lives more simply – and says he couldn't be happier.

'My life is completely different to what I ever expected,' he says.

'I never thought I'd be involved with gang members, for instance. Gang members, people without teeth, sex workers, housewives, straight businessmen, you name it, you never know who'll walk in the door to rehab next.'

He's also got two young children, a boy and a girl. Ross had never dreamed he'd experience fatherhood, as a gay man, but met a lesbian couple in rehab who desperately wanted a family. The trio grew close, and the women ended up asking Ross to be their sperm donor – twice. The kids have mum, mama, and dada, and they all get together on Saturdays. While Ross doesn't have day-to-day parental duties, he loves being a dad.

'I sometimes cry because it makes everything all worthwhile,' he says.

'The fact that I could give two wonderful people I never would have met otherwise such a gift … If there's a big picture up there that says 'get drunk, knock up a couple of lesbians' – then I'm winning.'

WHERE TO GET HELP

Alcohol Drug Helpline (open 24/7) – 0800 787 797. You can also text 8691 for free.

Alcoholics Anonymous New Zealand – 0800 2296757

Higher Ground Drug Rehabilitation Trust – (09) 834 0017 (Auckland only)