I dedicate my song today to all people who are ‘problem drinkers’ or alcoholics.
My song today is ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’. This song was written by Kris Kristofferson and was recorded in 1969 by Ray Stevens before becoming a number one hit on the ‘Billboard US Country’ chart for Johnny Cash.
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‘Alcoholism’ is a deadly condition that can be just as addictive a lifestyle as other types of addictions. In some ways, ‘alcoholism’ is much harder to detect than some other addictions as it can be concealed easier beneath a cloak of ‘respectability’. It is also harder to detect if the alcoholic drinks vodka which cannot be detected on the drinker’s breath or benefits from the wrongful perception of others who may consider them as having no more than ‘a bit of a drinking problem’. The latter misconception can effectively (in the eyes of others) relegate the real condition of the ‘alcoholic’ to one of a more socially acceptable level.
There are many alcoholics who hold down good salaried occupations and manage to disguise their problem within the likable aspects of a pleasant disposition and social popularity. They can become the person that work colleagues kindly refer to as, ‘the soul of the party, and a person who is not afraid to let their hair down’.
I once supervised a mature Probation Officer student for a six-month placement back in the 1970s. He was an affable man, married with three children, and in his late 40s. He never physically displayed any problems with his appearance, speech, or mannerisms apart from two areas I observed. He would often come into work later than other work colleagues but would then frequently stay back later at the end of the working day to make up for his later start.
More suspicious, however, was his records that I was obliged to check as his supervisor. I started to notice inexplicable gaps; particularly in his sentence construction. There was nothing that might be considered as being ‘obviously wrong’ to indicate anything more sinister, but nevertheless, there were too many inconsistencies. He would miss out words in a sentence and forget about some punctuation. While such relapse might seem nothing to overconcern oneself about, it was inconsistent with his high educational standards, and middle-class upbringing, and university background. Also, my mature student never joined the others in the staff room at lunchtime and would absent himself for an hour each noon, on the pretence of liking to have a walk or to grab a nice cup of coffee and a sandwich.
The upshot was that he was eventually seen at mid-day in a pub on the outskirts of Huddersfield as drunk as a skunk; having pleaded ill with a bad migraine and stating he was going home early. After making a few more inquiries, it became apparent he had a drinking problem, and I was obliged to inform his university lecturer of any observed problematic behaviour. The instant response of the student’s course lecturer was, “I thought that might have been the case!”. When asked why I had not been informed beforehand as his ‘Probation Work Placement Supervisor’, all I received in reply was having the ‘confidentially clause’ of ‘professional practice’ recited.
I had a face-to-face interview with the mature student about his excessive drinking, and he came clean about his problem of sometimes drinking too much, but on no account did he consider himself to be ‘alcoholic’. The bottom line was that the frequency of his drinking had worsened over the previous three years after his wife had been diagnosed with a muscular disorder that left her wheelchair-bound. He said that he had found the added stress of changing occupation late in life and returning to university study was just too much, especially on top of being constantly worried about his wife’s deteriorating condition. He also indicated that he initially started having the odd drink at home in the evening after a stressful day, but gradually found himself having one in the pub at lunchtime or before he went home at the end of his working day.
My mature student placement eventually secured a post as a Probation Officer in Rochdale and reportedly attended the 'AA Meetings' with his new employer’s knowledge (presumably having been prepared to consider himself as being ‘alcoholic’). Again, the university lecturer had failed to inform his new employer of the student’s ‘drinking problem’ on grounds of breaching ‘confidentiality’, and it was left to me to inform his new employer. I informed the student that I had done so, and he said that he understood, and apologised for the uncomfortable position he had placed me in.
I have known too many people whose lives have been ruined by drink and who have lost their partners, marriages, careers, houses, families, and friends. I have even worked with a few alcoholic clients in Huddersfield who finished up living in doss houses, or sheltering in derelict properties, squatting in private premises they broke into when the owners were on holiday. or sleeping rough on the streets, park benches, and in shop doorways. Occasionally, the problem has been closer to my own family.
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As a new Probation Officer entrant to the Probation Service in 1971, most of my colleagues avoided working with alcoholics whenever they could, and so I volunteered over a two-year period to have around a dozen vagrants and alcoholics on my client list. Most of these individuals were not what I would call ‘criminally inclined’, and most were ‘guilty of being subject to poverty, addicted to alcohol and homeless’. Every now and then, they would commit some minor offence which brought them in conflict with the local police. Some would steal to survive or find themselves in trouble with the law for brawling in the pub or in the street when drunk, Some might break into derelict properties to bed down for the night and cause some criminal damage while effecting illegal entry.
Every Probation Officer is placed on a staff rota to undertake the ‘Duty Officer’ role. The role of ‘Duty Officer was a nightmare duty that all Probation Officers disliked having to do. The Duty Officer function would last a full day (8 hours) and would be allocated to a Probation Officer ‘in addition’ to their other regular Probation Officer office interviews, court undertakings, preparation of reports, home visits, and other duties and functions. The ‘Duty Officer’ would see every miscellaneous client who called into the Probation Office that day, plus any statutory client who was reporting to their own supervising officer but who found upon arrival that their own Probation Officer was not there. Their own Probation Officer might be ill, visiting a prison, or otherwise unavoidably detained, and so it was the responsibility of the Duty Officer of the day to cover for their absent colleague and to do whatever was required. The Duty Probation Officer would also have to deal with every phone contact of people leaving messages for other absent colleagues.
In addition to their designated function as being a national service, every Probation Office in the land is also used by all and sundry as a ‘Citizen’s Advice Bureau’ and an extension to the ‘Social Service’s Department’. The Duty Officer is expected to be an expert on all matters, and know all things, and provide whatever is required. They are expected to know of contacts where the unemployed visitor could get a job, or where a destitute and homeless person could rent a flat, or how to go about leaving a wife-beating partner without involving the police or getting killed in the process, or how to sue the police for wrongful arrest etc. etc.
The ‘Duty Officer’ is also the only Probation Officer of the day who has access to ‘a petty cash fund’ which is only supposed to be used in the event of ‘emergencies’. Unfortunately, for the first six months of my Probation Officer career, I foolishly assessed many situations as being worthy of the title ‘EMERGENCY’ which unfortunately my employers and some of my colleagues did not. I refer to situations such as ‘starvation: wearing threadbare clothes: walking in holed shoes with no socks on one’s feet: long term homelessness: long-term unemployment: having had one’s DHSS or Social Security Benefits suspended for some irregularity. I foolishly viewed all these situations as representing a genuine ‘emergency’ for the person who was experiencing them!
I once interviewed a homeless man who had no decent footwear and I finished up giving him the shoes I had been wearing. I went home that day in trainers I would use at work whenever playing table tennis at the lunch break in the staffroom.
Most alcoholics and homeless persons in any town or city know about the Probation Service’s ‘emergency cash fund’, especially if they have had previous contact under Probation Officer supervision. Such persons ‘in the know’ invariably make it a ploy to be the last visitor to the local Probation Office on a Friday afternoon before the Duty Officer of the day goes home. It was always five minutes before leaving time (at 4:55 pm on a Friday afternoon) when some destitute person with addiction would call into the Probation Office and spin the greatest sob story one ever heard in order to extract some cash from the ‘emergency cash fund’. If the fund (which was replenished with twenty or thirty pounds every Monday morning), had anything left in it on a Friday afternoon (which had never once been known), the visitor with the sob story would probably be given it. However, if the fund was empty, and the Probation Duty Officer wanted to get home safely in one piece that day before 7:00 pm, many a Probation Officer would dip into their own pocket to provide a handout.
You see, if there was no money in the ‘emergency fund’ to be given to the Friday afternoon visitor, and they refused to leave without getting some, the only legal alternative opened to the Duty Officer was to call the local police and have the troublesome or threatening person forcibly ejected from the premises or arrested. This was always a riskier position for the Duty Officer to be in on a Friday afternoon where all other Probation Officers in the building would have gone home earlier to miss the heavy traffic.
Needless to say that all of the ‘experienced’ Probation Officers (Monday-Thursday inclusively when other colleagues would be in the building to 7:00 pm often) rarely used their own money to give away to the needy, and a few stricter colleagues would even see it as a distinct failure to even part with any money from the Office’s ‘emergency cash fund’, however full the emergency fund was at the time! As for me, I was a typical greenhorn who would fall for any old line or hardship tale of woe.
The Friday afternoon visitors soon came to recognise that the Probation Duty Officers came in all shapes and sizes; some who were sympathetic to hearing a tale of woe and bitter hardship, and others who couldn’t care a shit, whatever heart-rendering story they told (unless it was Friday afternoon just before the empty office closed for the weekend). Most late Friday afternoon visitors were ‘alcoholic’ or were clients who displayed problematic behaviour, and especially with a drink inside them.
Perhaps the reason why I had a soft spot for the ‘alcoholic’ was that my own father never touched the stuff apart from drinking a Christmas glass of sherry; and the reason he was teetotal all of his life was because his father was an alcoholic.
Love and peace Bill xxx
My song today is ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’. This song was written by Kris Kristofferson and was recorded in 1969 by Ray Stevens before becoming a number one hit on the ‘Billboard US Country’ chart for Johnny Cash.
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‘Alcoholism’ is a deadly condition that can be just as addictive a lifestyle as other types of addictions. In some ways, ‘alcoholism’ is much harder to detect than some other addictions as it can be concealed easier beneath a cloak of ‘respectability’. It is also harder to detect if the alcoholic drinks vodka which cannot be detected on the drinker’s breath or benefits from the wrongful perception of others who may consider them as having no more than ‘a bit of a drinking problem’. The latter misconception can effectively (in the eyes of others) relegate the real condition of the ‘alcoholic’ to one of a more socially acceptable level.
There are many alcoholics who hold down good salaried occupations and manage to disguise their problem within the likable aspects of a pleasant disposition and social popularity. They can become the person that work colleagues kindly refer to as, ‘the soul of the party, and a person who is not afraid to let their hair down’.
I once supervised a mature Probation Officer student for a six-month placement back in the 1970s. He was an affable man, married with three children, and in his late 40s. He never physically displayed any problems with his appearance, speech, or mannerisms apart from two areas I observed. He would often come into work later than other work colleagues but would then frequently stay back later at the end of the working day to make up for his later start.
More suspicious, however, was his records that I was obliged to check as his supervisor. I started to notice inexplicable gaps; particularly in his sentence construction. There was nothing that might be considered as being ‘obviously wrong’ to indicate anything more sinister, but nevertheless, there were too many inconsistencies. He would miss out words in a sentence and forget about some punctuation. While such relapse might seem nothing to overconcern oneself about, it was inconsistent with his high educational standards, and middle-class upbringing, and university background. Also, my mature student never joined the others in the staff room at lunchtime and would absent himself for an hour each noon, on the pretence of liking to have a walk or to grab a nice cup of coffee and a sandwich.
The upshot was that he was eventually seen at mid-day in a pub on the outskirts of Huddersfield as drunk as a skunk; having pleaded ill with a bad migraine and stating he was going home early. After making a few more inquiries, it became apparent he had a drinking problem, and I was obliged to inform his university lecturer of any observed problematic behaviour. The instant response of the student’s course lecturer was, “I thought that might have been the case!”. When asked why I had not been informed beforehand as his ‘Probation Work Placement Supervisor’, all I received in reply was having the ‘confidentially clause’ of ‘professional practice’ recited.
I had a face-to-face interview with the mature student about his excessive drinking, and he came clean about his problem of sometimes drinking too much, but on no account did he consider himself to be ‘alcoholic’. The bottom line was that the frequency of his drinking had worsened over the previous three years after his wife had been diagnosed with a muscular disorder that left her wheelchair-bound. He said that he had found the added stress of changing occupation late in life and returning to university study was just too much, especially on top of being constantly worried about his wife’s deteriorating condition. He also indicated that he initially started having the odd drink at home in the evening after a stressful day, but gradually found himself having one in the pub at lunchtime or before he went home at the end of his working day.
My mature student placement eventually secured a post as a Probation Officer in Rochdale and reportedly attended the 'AA Meetings' with his new employer’s knowledge (presumably having been prepared to consider himself as being ‘alcoholic’). Again, the university lecturer had failed to inform his new employer of the student’s ‘drinking problem’ on grounds of breaching ‘confidentiality’, and it was left to me to inform his new employer. I informed the student that I had done so, and he said that he understood, and apologised for the uncomfortable position he had placed me in.
I have known too many people whose lives have been ruined by drink and who have lost their partners, marriages, careers, houses, families, and friends. I have even worked with a few alcoholic clients in Huddersfield who finished up living in doss houses, or sheltering in derelict properties, squatting in private premises they broke into when the owners were on holiday. or sleeping rough on the streets, park benches, and in shop doorways. Occasionally, the problem has been closer to my own family.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As a new Probation Officer entrant to the Probation Service in 1971, most of my colleagues avoided working with alcoholics whenever they could, and so I volunteered over a two-year period to have around a dozen vagrants and alcoholics on my client list. Most of these individuals were not what I would call ‘criminally inclined’, and most were ‘guilty of being subject to poverty, addicted to alcohol and homeless’. Every now and then, they would commit some minor offence which brought them in conflict with the local police. Some would steal to survive or find themselves in trouble with the law for brawling in the pub or in the street when drunk, Some might break into derelict properties to bed down for the night and cause some criminal damage while effecting illegal entry.
Every Probation Officer is placed on a staff rota to undertake the ‘Duty Officer’ role. The role of ‘Duty Officer was a nightmare duty that all Probation Officers disliked having to do. The Duty Officer function would last a full day (8 hours) and would be allocated to a Probation Officer ‘in addition’ to their other regular Probation Officer office interviews, court undertakings, preparation of reports, home visits, and other duties and functions. The ‘Duty Officer’ would see every miscellaneous client who called into the Probation Office that day, plus any statutory client who was reporting to their own supervising officer but who found upon arrival that their own Probation Officer was not there. Their own Probation Officer might be ill, visiting a prison, or otherwise unavoidably detained, and so it was the responsibility of the Duty Officer of the day to cover for their absent colleague and to do whatever was required. The Duty Probation Officer would also have to deal with every phone contact of people leaving messages for other absent colleagues.
In addition to their designated function as being a national service, every Probation Office in the land is also used by all and sundry as a ‘Citizen’s Advice Bureau’ and an extension to the ‘Social Service’s Department’. The Duty Officer is expected to be an expert on all matters, and know all things, and provide whatever is required. They are expected to know of contacts where the unemployed visitor could get a job, or where a destitute and homeless person could rent a flat, or how to go about leaving a wife-beating partner without involving the police or getting killed in the process, or how to sue the police for wrongful arrest etc. etc.
The ‘Duty Officer’ is also the only Probation Officer of the day who has access to ‘a petty cash fund’ which is only supposed to be used in the event of ‘emergencies’. Unfortunately, for the first six months of my Probation Officer career, I foolishly assessed many situations as being worthy of the title ‘EMERGENCY’ which unfortunately my employers and some of my colleagues did not. I refer to situations such as ‘starvation: wearing threadbare clothes: walking in holed shoes with no socks on one’s feet: long term homelessness: long-term unemployment: having had one’s DHSS or Social Security Benefits suspended for some irregularity. I foolishly viewed all these situations as representing a genuine ‘emergency’ for the person who was experiencing them!
I once interviewed a homeless man who had no decent footwear and I finished up giving him the shoes I had been wearing. I went home that day in trainers I would use at work whenever playing table tennis at the lunch break in the staffroom.
Most alcoholics and homeless persons in any town or city know about the Probation Service’s ‘emergency cash fund’, especially if they have had previous contact under Probation Officer supervision. Such persons ‘in the know’ invariably make it a ploy to be the last visitor to the local Probation Office on a Friday afternoon before the Duty Officer of the day goes home. It was always five minutes before leaving time (at 4:55 pm on a Friday afternoon) when some destitute person with addiction would call into the Probation Office and spin the greatest sob story one ever heard in order to extract some cash from the ‘emergency cash fund’. If the fund (which was replenished with twenty or thirty pounds every Monday morning), had anything left in it on a Friday afternoon (which had never once been known), the visitor with the sob story would probably be given it. However, if the fund was empty, and the Probation Duty Officer wanted to get home safely in one piece that day before 7:00 pm, many a Probation Officer would dip into their own pocket to provide a handout.
You see, if there was no money in the ‘emergency fund’ to be given to the Friday afternoon visitor, and they refused to leave without getting some, the only legal alternative opened to the Duty Officer was to call the local police and have the troublesome or threatening person forcibly ejected from the premises or arrested. This was always a riskier position for the Duty Officer to be in on a Friday afternoon where all other Probation Officers in the building would have gone home earlier to miss the heavy traffic.
Needless to say that all of the ‘experienced’ Probation Officers (Monday-Thursday inclusively when other colleagues would be in the building to 7:00 pm often) rarely used their own money to give away to the needy, and a few stricter colleagues would even see it as a distinct failure to even part with any money from the Office’s ‘emergency cash fund’, however full the emergency fund was at the time! As for me, I was a typical greenhorn who would fall for any old line or hardship tale of woe.
The Friday afternoon visitors soon came to recognise that the Probation Duty Officers came in all shapes and sizes; some who were sympathetic to hearing a tale of woe and bitter hardship, and others who couldn’t care a shit, whatever heart-rendering story they told (unless it was Friday afternoon just before the empty office closed for the weekend). Most late Friday afternoon visitors were ‘alcoholic’ or were clients who displayed problematic behaviour, and especially with a drink inside them.
Perhaps the reason why I had a soft spot for the ‘alcoholic’ was that my own father never touched the stuff apart from drinking a Christmas glass of sherry; and the reason he was teetotal all of his life was because his father was an alcoholic.
Love and peace Bill xxx
