YVONNE BRADSHAW had sunk so low as an alcoholic that she tried on four occasions years ago to kill herself.
“I was just on my way down,” she said.
“At one time I thought I was so bad that God did not have any use for me, the devil did not have no use for me. I was destined to die a drunk.”
Now 68, Bradshaw will celebrate 30 years sober in April.
Her story of living for more than 20 years as an alcoholic is her greatest asset, she said, and uses her experience to help others who are struggling the way she did.
When the Independence Honours were announced last year, Bradshaw was one of the recipients of the Barbados Service Medal for her work in alcohol addiction and counselling.
She works as a unit support worker at the Substance Abuse Foundation that runs Verdun House, assists at Alcoholics Anonymous and has founded fellowships in other islands across the region.
Bradshaw had her first drink of alcohol at age nine, a glass of wine, and then she did not drink again until 12 years later on Christmas Day when she got drunk.
Recipient of the Barbados Service Medal Yvonne Bradshaw said the story of her life as an alcoholic is her greatest asset. She uses it to help others beat alcoholism.
Four years later she started drinking brandy when she took a job with a bookkeeper.
“I recall he told me his hair was dropping out and I told him to buy eggs and brandy so I could apply it to his hair to strengthen the roots,” she recalled.
“I put the eggs in his hair and I drank the brandy. When he asked me if it was growing, I told him yes.” At that she laughed loudly.
“When I look back, I know I was born an alcoholic.”
At age 21 when her grandmother who raised her retired, Bradshaw got her job working at the maid at District “A” Police Station.
“I remember she gave me a two snap brandy for the sergeant, and he and I drink that, so every morning I would carry brandy and we would drink it or he would bring one,” she said.
Eventually, Bradshaw got into contact with some policemen and grooms who were rum drinkers and her love for drinking rum began.
Weekends were used for binge drinking and it started to affect her work.
“I started missing Mondays from work after drinking all weekend; I just could not make it. Then my weekends got longer and longer until eventually I stayed home a whole month without sending in a doctor paper,” she said.
Though she did not lose her job, the superintendent asked her why she wouldn’t work, but she said she did not know. All she could say was that she got dressed for work, but instead of heading to the bus stop she would end up by the rum shop.
“When a mini rum come I say I going to catch the 6:30 bus, but then a half bottle come and I would say I catching the 7:30 bus, but by the time the pint and a half rum came I was not studying work anymore,” Bradshaw said.
In retrospect she now understands that she was “blind”.
“I could not see that the people I was drinking with were getting up and going to work and coming back home to find me at the rum shop,” she said.
Bradshaw lost a lot over the years – her job, her home and her pride. She said she was living in a “see-through” house and even though she borrowed money to repair the house it was never spent on the house; it went into rum and gambling.
“I did not have to open a window or door to see who was coming or going up the gap,” Bradshaw said.
“It had in a lot of holes, the windows were broken out. You would not believe that a young woman of 36 years lived in there.”
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart pinning the insignia for the Barbados Service Medal on recipient Yvonne Bradshaw.
She also lost all sense of pride and slept with different men to get a bottle of rum and a pack of cigarettes. Some encounters she remembers, most she has no recollection of.
When the drinking affected her job severely, the superintendent in charge sent her to the medical board at the Psychiatric Hospital, where she spent three weeks. Then she did the Alcoholics Anonymous programme and was sober for six months.
It was on the final day of that six-month stint that she had a drink of brandy.
“I took that brandy and I went to hell for four years,” she said.
“I suffered because of it; I was in and out of institutions. I tried to kill myself four times; drank Gramoxone twice, drank Roundup. The last thing I did was in 1986; I lay down in front of a bus. I wanted to die.”
She would eventually be released from work medically unfit.
“The doctors had written me off and said I was a hopeless chronic alcoholic and there was no hope for me; they even gave me six months to live,” she said.
Bradshaw then went on the road begging for money to buy rum. Her father disowned her and no shop owners would trust her a bottle of rum.
Her road to recovery began on a fateful day in 1987.
“I woke up as usual, drinking white rum and chasing with coloured and after I got to the third bottle, I fall upside down in the house and I got up and called the Psychiatric Hospital and I told Dr Belle her that I was coming in,” she said.
Her long-time partner, who was with her throughout her addiction, helped her. She stole his money to buy rum, and when she got angry she put him out of her house.
But when she sobered up she would make amends and he would come back, though he was ridiculed by many in the district for allowing what others saw as “a dirty old drunkard to treat him any old how”. She credits him with helping to save her life and the two are still together.
She said that when she first got sober it was hard as there was a shop directly opposite her home. To this day she is taking it one day at a time and is mindful that she is always one drink away from catastrophe.
She now uses what she learned in rehabilitation, particularly the twelve-step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, to help other alcoholics. At Verdun House, she processes the first three steps.
For the programme to work, the alcoholic needs to be honest and admit that they have a disease called alcoholism, she said. That is expected to be followed by love and appreciation for self.
“I am now living. Before I was just existing. Today I love Yvonne and I have a heart of gratitude. I am no longer selfish and thinking about me only,” she said.
Bradshaw acknowledged that she had a good upbringing and her behaviour was hurtful to her family.
She is delighted with her Independence honour and intends to continue her work with alcoholics.
“The alcoholic and the addict deserve a second chance,” she said.
“We are not bad people; we are sick people. Alcoholism is a disease.”
