Thirty years ago, Michael Garnham couldn’t imagine a life without drink or drugs. He certainly couldn’t imagine standing in front of 1,000 people to speak about recovery, opening a world convention in America, retraining as a psychotherapist, getting back into education or spending his working life helping other people find their way out of addiction.
At the beginning, he was frightened. “I thought recovery would be full of anxiety, that every day would be a battle and I’d have to live a very small life,” Michael says. “I believed my personality was in a pint or a packet.”
This year, Michael, our Admissions Director at Abbington House, celebrates 30 years in recovery. The life he feared would become smaller when he stopped drinking and using drugs has, over those three decades, become much bigger.
“How did I get here?”
The period before Michael entered treatment had been difficult. He’d been hospitalised for around ten weeks with pancreatitis after years of drinking, alongside cocaine and heavy cannabis use. His anxiety was through the roof and his thinking had become increasingly paranoid.
Eventually, he found himself receiving psychiatric treatment and was advised to move into addiction treatment. His first response was denial. “I said I didn’t need it. I thought I was OK.” But eventually, he agreed.
Michael remembers sitting in the Priory in North London, looking out over a park he’d played in as a child. Back then, the building had been derelict, and he remembers throwing stones at it as a boy. Years later, he was sitting inside that same building receiving treatment.
“I remember looking out and thinking, ‘How did I get here?’”
Even then, part of him still couldn’t accept the seriousness of what had happened. He remembers a doctor looking at his pancreatitis scar and asking him, “And you don’t think you’re an alcoholic?”
Michael remembers his first days in recovery in two words:
“Dread. Sheer dread.”
He couldn’t understand how he was supposed to function without chemicals, and he wasn’t immediately convinced by what he found in recovery either. Meetings felt unfamiliar and, at first, he questioned whether the 12-Step approach was for him.
But something made him stay. “Something told me I was in the right place.” He began attending meetings and eventually extended his treatment by another four weeks.
“I thought stopping meant I wasn’t going to be able to live my life. Recovery taught me there was a life outside drink and drugs.”
When weeks became months
There wasn’t this one dramatic moment when Michael suddenly knew everything was going to be OK. Instead, the change happened gradually.
“Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. My mind started to become more positive. There was more recovery and less addiction.”
For the first 18 months, Michael says he “buckled down”. He found a sponsor and began building the foundations of a recovery that would eventually carry him through the next three decades.
One of the biggest lessons was learning not to solve his entire life at once. “Keep it in the day. Don’t project. Don’t obsess. What do I need to do, and what don’t I need to do?”
That meant accepting something that hadn’t always come naturally: he couldn’t control or fix everything. The people around him were enormously important too, giving him experience and support while helping him stay in the present rather than constantly projecting into a future he couldn’t control.
Thirty years later, that’s something Michael still practises.
Finding a place in the 12-Step fellowship
Michael hadn’t walked into recovery convinced by the 12-Step approach. In fact, some of the things he heard in those early meetings were exactly what made him question whether he belonged there. The talk of God and spirituality felt unfamiliar, the programme felt very American and he was initially suspicious of the whole thing.
But he kept going.
Over time, the fellowship became an important part of Michael’s recovery. He found people who had experienced addiction themselves and could show him, through their own lives, that recovery was possible. They gave him experience and support, helped him learn to keep things in the day rather than constantly projecting into the future, and gave him somewhere to turn when he couldn’t work everything out on his own.
Sponsorship has remained an important part of that. Michael still has a sponsor himself, as well as sponsoring other people. For him, there’s real value in having someone who knows your story, understand where you’ve come from and can guide you when your own thinking might not give you the clearest view of what’s happening.
His understanding of the spiritual side of the programme changed too. Thirty years later, Michael describes having a spiritual connection as an important part of how he lives and maintains his recovery.
“I will always advocate for the 12 Steps.”
But perhaps one of the biggest things the fellowship gave him was something he would later give to other people. Once Michael had built enough recovery of his own, he could begin passing on what had been freely given to him. Sponsorship became part of that, and he continues to sponsor people today.
For Michael, that connection between receiving help and giving it away has remained part of recovery for 30 years. The people around him helped him believe there was another way to live long before he could fully see it for himself. Now, he gets to be one of those people for somebody else.
A life he couldn’t have imagined
As Michael’s recovery grew, so did his confidence in what his life could look like. There was a time when he struggled to go to the supermarket, get on a train or plane or sit in a cinema. Years later, he was standing in front of 1,000 people and opening a recovery convention in America.
He passed his motorbike test and returned to education. At 38, Michael put himself through four years of college, gained professional accreditation and completely changed careers, going from working as a floor layer to becoming a psychotherapist. “That’s given me experiences I never thought were possible.”
But when Michael talks about what recovery has given him, the biggest things aren’t qualifications, careers or achievements. They’re much more fundamental.
“Choice.”
Before recovery, he describes himself as being “a passenger in my own life with no direction”. Today, he’s grateful simply to be able to participate in his own life and be present in it.
“I was always onto the next thing. If I was somewhere, I wanted to be somewhere else. I wasn’t able to be present.”
Thirty years doesn’t mean the work is finished
Michael once had an idea that if he could reach ten years sober, somehow all his problems would disappear. Thirty years has taught him something different: recovery doesn’t have a finishing line.
“It’s never done. It’s always evolving.”
That doesn’t mean recovery still feels as difficult as it did at the beginning. It doesn’t. But Michael still actively looks after it. His mornings include daily reflections and time to ground himself; he continues to sponsor other people and his spiritual connection remains an important part of his recovery.
He compares it to wearing a retainer: something you continue doing because you want to protect what you’ve worked hard to build.
“Getting clean is the first part. Staying sober is the next part.”
Michael remains a strong advocate for the 12 Steps, but over the years, recovery has also changed the way he understands himself.
One of the biggest changes has been learning to look at the part he plays when difficulties arise, rather than automatically blaming somebody else. That ability to reflect on himself has helped him both in recovery and in his personal life.
“I’m not a weak person. I’m a person with an illness. But that’s no excuse now I’ve been given the tools to deal with that illness.”
He knows he has a predisposition to reach for chemicals to deal with life, but recovery has given him another way. It’s also taught him that he can make mistakes and keep learning from them.
“It’s OK. Every day is a school day.”
Recovery still gets tested by life
Thirty years of recovery hasn’t meant 30 years without painful or difficult experiences. Michael has faced significant health problems and changes in his personal life, and there have been periods that have tested what he’s learned.
“Not at one point did I think about picking up a drink or drug.”
Instead, he’s had to return to some of the principles he learned much earlier in recovery: accepting powerlessness, asking for support and recognising when something is outside his control.
“I had to get away from ‘it’s not fair’. I knew I had to sit still and let it pass.”
He didn’t do that alone. Michael talks about having “support from amazing people” during those periods, something that has remained important throughout his recovery.
For him, that’s part of the difference between simply stopping using substances and learning how to live without them. Difficult things still happen. Recovery hasn’t removed those experiences, but it has given him a way to live through them.
From receiving help to giving it away
Michael’s journey towards helping other people didn’t begin when he became a psychotherapist or started working professionally in addiction treatment. In his mind, it began much earlier.
“It happened the minute I got into recovery.”
At first, he needed to build what he describes as his own “recovery capital”. Then, once he had enough experience to give something back, helping other people became part of his own recovery too. He talks about the importance of getting out of “self” and turning his attention towards what he could offer someone else.
Eventually, that developed into a career. Michael retrained as a psychotherapist and today works on the admissions side at Abbington House, where he’s often one of the first people someone speaks to when they’re considering treatment.
For Michael, there are few things more rewarding than watching someone begin to experience the change he once experienced himself.
“There’s no better thing than looking at someone who’s been in the same situation, or worse, and seeing that light turn on in them.”
Sometimes that journey begins with someone crying on the phone, frightened about what treatment means and unable to imagine life without the thing that’s controlling them. Michael knows that feeling because he’s been there himself.
He also knows that forcing somebody isn’t the answer.
“You don’t railroad them. What you’re doing isn’t working, so give us four weeks of your time. There will be a change.”
For Michael, the hope is that someone who comes into Abbington and engages with the process can begin to experience what he found in recovery: freedom from the constant pull of addiction and the chance to make choices about their own life again.
“I recognise that in people”
When Michael speaks to somebody entering treatment, he often hears versions of the same thoughts he had 30 years ago: this is never going to work for me; this thing is bigger than I’ll ever be; I’ll spend the rest of my life battling something that’s eventually going to beat me.
Then there’s another side of the denial that he recognises just as clearly. Maybe it isn’t actually that bad. Maybe a new job will change things. Or a new house. A different relationship. Maybe then it’ll be possible to control the drinking or drug use.
“I recognise that in people.”
It’s one of the reasons Michael’s own experience of addiction and recovery remains so important in the work he does. He knows what it’s like to be frightened of recovery while simultaneously believing you might not really need it.
Working alongside people at the beginning of that journey also stops him from taking his own recovery for granted. After 30 years, being sober, turning up for life and taking responsibility can start to feel normal. Seeing somebody at the beginning reminds him that it wasn’t always his normal.
“It reminds me that it hasn’t always been like this for me. And when you see the light come on for people, it reminds you of you and how your life changed.”
30 years later
Thirty years ago, Michael was sitting in treatment wondering how he was ever going to function without chemicals. He thought sobriety might mean spending the rest of his life fighting against himself.
Instead, recovery gave him the ability to participate in his own life. It gave him an education and a new career, relationships and family, and experiences he couldn’t have imagined when he first entered treatment. It took him onto stages and across the world, but it also gave him something less visible: the ability to be present and to get through difficult periods without needing to escape from them.
Eventually, it put him on the other end of the phone to people asking many of the same questions he once asked.
Michael doesn’t talk about 30 years as though he’s completed recovery. For him, it’s still something that evolves and something he continues to look after.
But the man who once sat in treatment wondering how he could possibly live without drink or drugs now spends his working life showing other people that life on the other side of addiction is possible.
Recovery didn’t take his life away. It gave him the freedom to live it.