The journey from alcoholism to recovery is tough – and for many what matters most is support and community. Kenny Neilson found a dip in a cold waterfall was also part of it. To mark the start of Sober October, he tells how he went from drinking benders to setting up a cold water therapy community, The Polar Bear Club. Extracted from The Ripple Effect by Herald journalist Vicky Allan and photographer Anna Deacon.
"I’m a chronic alcoholic. I’m a recovered alcoholic. I don’t drink or take drugs anymore. About four weeks before my daughter was born, I had a bad episode – a horrific meltdown. Months before it, my family were all telling me, you need to stop drinking. But I didn’t know what an alcoholic was. I knew I was a guy that went to work and drank at night and drank at the weekend and probably took it a bit far – the typical scheme boy, maybe involved in a bit of trouble and drama.
"My family kept telling me to stop and I had it in my mind that my daughter was coming in four weeks, and so it’s time to stop. But I couldn’t. I had no control. I started to realise, maybe I’m an alcoholic, which is a horrible position to be in, especially for a turning-thirty scheme boy who didn’t think he was scared of anything. I started to realise I was scared of everything. I was riddled with fear. I was using drink to mask all this.
"What happened then was I went missing for four days, drinking. I self-isolated. I was at rock bottom. After four days of drinking twenty-four/seven, I got myself back up the road, and I was lying in my bed the next morning and I could hear my family all downstairs, all sobbing and sad and upset. I would describe it as listening to my own wake. I was thinking, Here we go, we’re going to get all the alky patter again.
"And I had to go down and face it.
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"There are fifty questions you have to answer for the twelve-step fellowship, to diagnose you as an alcoholic. My sister read them, my mother answered them, and they diagnosed me an alcoholic there and then – and I ended up in the fellowship. I didn’t want to do it. I still wasn’t sure what an alcoholic was. I went to work every day. I was quite popular. I had a partner, a big house. But at that time, if I put drink into my system, I couldn’t stop drinking. And when I wasn’t drinking, I was thinking about it. It was a scary place to be.
"I went to fellowship, and I met a guy there, who was called the Jazz Man, and he was talking about this idea of looking for a power greater than yourself. I was to start praying and meditating and I was to get five beautiful years sober.
"Long story short – I did do five years sober. My son was born, my youngest daughter was born, I’d got three children, and although I wasn’t with my original partner anymore, I still had my daughter in my life. Everything was going well. I was on the brink of starting a big business in the gas industry. Then we went on holiday.
"At that time, I’d stopped going to fellowship, stopped working on my programme, stopped everything that was good for me. I didn’t realise that my old attitudes and my old ideas of thinking were all slowly trying to creep back into my life again: getting angry, getting aggressive. I wasn’t happy with myself. The taxi to the airport was a nightmare, the airport was a nightmare, the plane journey was a nightmare, going to the hotel was a nightmare. The very first morning I went to the shop, pointed up and asked for a bottle. I don’t even know where it came from.
"Four years later I woke up in hospital after a serious suicide attempt. In that time, I’d built a massive business in the gas industry. I had ten guys working for me. I was getting flown backwards and forwards down to London. But I drank my nights away. I never spoke to my weans, never spoke to my partner. I was isolating in my room every night, getting up in the morning going to work, coming home and drinking till I passed out. That came to a head on Halloween 2021.
"I knew twelve-step back to front. But knowledge is irrelevant. Action is everything – and I wasn’t putting it into action. So, having a head full of that and a belly full of swally, I was in total meltdown. That Halloween, I couldn’t take it anymore and I couldn’t stop drinking. I was lost. I had all this knowledge, but I couldn’t stop. I had a litre of Morgan’s Spice that I’d got as a present when I started my business. I put it all in two big tumblers, and I thought if I drink these two in a oner, I’ll never wake up again. So, I gubbed them and woke up in hospital the next morning, thinking, What has happened?
"I was a lost boy. When the psychologist assessed me, they said, “You know there’s nothing we can do for you. There’s nothing anyone can do for you. You’re as well running back to your meetings.” And that’s what I did. I went back to my meetings.
"I’d already tried the water. About nine months prior, my sponsor from twelve-step took me up into the Campsies in the middle of winter when it was snowing and he put me in the water.
"Then, around December, after I had come out of the hospital in October, my big mate said to me, want to try the cold water again? He took me up to the Campsies. I went in and this time I was sober and searching for something. The thing is, with the programme, you’re searching for a god of your own understanding, a power you can talk to and hold inside yourself. But being a scheme boy, I was like what is a god? I couldn’t understand it. How can I find a god? I don’t know nothing about religion.
"But when he put me in the water, something came over me. My head went blank. I couldn’t think and it was beautiful. I sat in the water and embraced the cold. It was December and freezing, but I was in the zone with it. And I made the decision that day to shut the business down. I paid the guys off and never did another day’s work for about four or five months.
"In that waterfall, I was searching for a god. I was praying and I was trying my hardest. I was in the water screaming, “Please, God, don’t make me drink today!” I was broken. I was at a moment of desperation. In that moment in the water when I felt the cold seeping into me, it came to me like that, You’re going to be alright. You’re going to be alright. Then I started laughing. I was howling to myself. I thought to myself, See, if someone was walking down there and saw me, they’d be saying, “Who is this big bam?” They’d be going, “God save me!”
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"I came out of the water that day and I felt like I’d been plugged into nature. I’d been plugged into my surroundings, plugged into the cold water, plugged into the deep breathing. And the next morning I woke up and I prayed. I prayed to Mother Nature.
I began The Polar Bear Club after I started sharing what I was experiencing on social media. I started turning my camera on when I went into the water and saying, ‘Look what’s happening everybody.’ I felt the craving for alcohol was gone. I’ve cleared my head and I’m no longer craving it because I’m no longer drinking it.”
If you think you have a drug or alcohol problem, often the best first contact is your GP. But help is also available through Alcoholics Anonymous on 0800 9177 650 Al-Anon is there for anyone whose life is or has been affected by someone else’s drinking; you can call their confidential helpline on 0800 0086 811.
The Ripple Effect: A Celebration of Britain's Brilliant Wild Swimming Communities by Vicky Allan and Anna Deacon is published by Black & White
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