Volunteer Voices: Phil Slack
Finding your voice and purpose through community.
Volunteers come from all walks of life and have a wealth of experience, some of which is particularly poignant and visceral. We all encounter hardships to varying different degrees, sometimes for many years before the tide turns, and we can find ourselves in circumstances that can challenge us deeply and that push us to our absolute limits.
For many people in our Invest Local groups, the programme entered their lives at a pivotal moment, where they have felt so welcomed by others in the community that they have been compelled to take steps to forge a new path in life via volunteering.
BCT recently met with Phil Slack, one of our volunteers from ‘We Are Plas Madoc’, who spoke to us candidly about his twenty-year fight with alcoholism, how it has affected his life and how he found the possibility of a new start in the support and friendship of his Invest Local group.
Phil begins by explaining his background: “In 1988, I left school and walked into a job cleaning cars and an opportunity came up to work in the panel shop; before I knew it my boss was sending me all around the country on approved welding courses for all sorts of makes and models. To get a car on the road it had to be stripped down, cut up, rewelded and then they pass that on to the pan beaters or mechanics so that’s what I was doing, and I was just good at it Then my dad passed away when I turned 21 and it was alcohol-related. My sister said to me that I shouldn’t be like dad, that I should do the opposite, but it doesn't work like that. It doesn't matter what your background is or how much you know that it is harmful – addiction doesn't care.
“After that I met someone, and we got married; she was a mechanic and ended up going into aerospace work and earning really good money. I was earning good money too and we bought a house and had a dog, cats, cars, you know the works. But we wanted different things. I wanted more children, because I had my first daughter when I was 23, but she didn't want children and the relationship broke up when she moved on with someone else. It was just one of those things, I got through it, but it was hard, and drink was involved. I think that possibly was the catalyst to me drinking. Then I lived by myself, and my drinking escalated. My days were, drinking, girlfriends… chaos. Always picking someone that was as chaotic as me, someone that could drink like me, behave like me.”
After Phil’s alcoholism had taken over, he was set on a long journey towards recovery that would be complicated, and that would subject him to many hardships before he could find his way back towards a more hopeful future.
Phil explains: “I moved to Wales in 2014. I was in substance misuse and rehab, and I was a volunteer at the time in the recovery hub. I was there for six months and there was accommodation available, a sober house if you like, and within a couple of months I'd met my partner. For the next couple of years, I was drinking on and off, and there were various places around the country that I was sent to for help – Nottingham, Salford, Chester – and then ended up back in Wrexham. Many of those places weren’t very nice and I have bad memories from those places, so it was better to be back in Wrexham.
“I’ve been struggling with alcohol for probably about 20 plus years. I first decided to do something about it 10 years ago, but it didn’t come easy. I struggled a lot due to my drinking and I tried to take my own life… I was just here, there and everywhere for a number of years. I lost my job, lost my house, went bankrupt; it was a very dismal time. But I’ve got a relationship now and I've got a little girl who's six, but even when I met my current partner that didn't stop me fully drinking and I had to move out for two years. I was homeless for six months and had to find accommodation in Chirk. For a couple of years, I'd go missing for days, weeks at a time, all around Wales. I was found trying to walk into the sea, I got dragged out then put in hospital to sort myself out – but after that I would go straight to an off-licence and carry on.
“This went on for years, it was painful, but I went back to it all the time. I was always falling down the stairs, I've got pictures where I'm black and blue from head to toe, and at one point I also started having alcoholic withdrawal seizures. So, I ended up going to hospital and they did a scan – they found something – it wasn't a tumour or anything like that, it was something called a cavernoma, which is a build-up of blood vessels. I had to speak to a neurosurgeon, and he said they would keep an eye on it – thankfully it hasn’t grown and the fits have stopped.
“By this point, I was going to different groups for a structured recovery. I went to AA, but I was getting overloaded with information on different ways of recovery, and that made it worse. I should have stuck to one group, but I didn’t. Then eventually there was another suicide attempt a few years ago. It was a revolving sort of thing… I caused chaos for myself, my family and everyone here as well at the time.”
With Phil having decided he wanted to recover, but not being able to find a route that worked for him to commit fully to the process, he described how he had a moment of clarity that led to his most successful attempt at recovery yet.
“While I was back here in Wrexham, I was trying to volunteer with ‘We Are Plas Madoc’. I started volunteering because my partner was going to groups that they run, and I came along and they found out that I liked cooking and doing other things and they said: ‘We’ve got a job for you!’ And that’s pretty much how I got here. I’d volunteered with them before about four years ago as a street champion, but that wasn’t regular and so this was the first time I’d committed to something more. I wasn’t turning up regularly at first, but a few months ago I was debating with myself and thinking either I should do it properly or not come back. So, I went back to the doctors and told them what I was thinking… I got sent to an occupational therapist, they got me into counselling, got me into a structural recovery programme in town. I told the team at ‘We Are Plas Madoc’ and they told me that when I was ready, I should come back.
“On 29 December I stopped drinking – it took a while because of the way I think, and I don't think people accept me. That's another vicious circle I struggle with. So, it took time to believe that the people in this group were truly accepting of me and wanted to see me succeed. That’s something I’ve had to work on and I'm nowhere near the finished article, but I'm on the right path with the things I’ve got in my life at the moment.
“I’ve been volunteering for about 18 months; I help with the cooking for the Kettle Club and Breakfast and Brews, and I help out with the food pantry. It’s a lot of work and it can be stressful, but it’s good stress, and it keeps me from sitting at home and gives me a structure that works for me. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to the structured recovery programme in town and my social worker got me into a cook and eat thing for one day of the week as well and I also ended up in art therapy after that. So, I now have things to occupy my days. The best bit is that what I want to help out with is all completely my choice and I feel like it's giving me a plan that works for me and AA is still there when I feel everything else has run out and activities dwindle. It's also given me the chance to gain new skills – I’ve been on two barista courses and on emergency first aid, allergens and safeguarding training.
“Another really important thing for me that I have found through volunteering is that I need to sometimes say ‘no’ so that things don’t get too much – that’s another big part of recovery for me because I’ve always struggled to speak up and say when things are getting too much, which would lead to me getting burnt out and drinking. So, through this I feel like I’m learning so much about myself and finding my own voice again.”
Phil’s story is full of hard-won lessons and shows just how easy it can be for things to go off track. He readily acknowledges that his journey is only just beginning and that he still has a long way to go. Although he is likely to encounter setbacks along the way, the connections he has made to his community through volunteering with ‘We Are Plas Madoc’ and having started to rediscover his voice again, means he has a way forward to help continue his journey to recovery.
“Now I wake up on the right page. I’ll set my alarm to get up a little earlier than the rest of my family and I have a cup of tea at the front door with the dog. I do some readings, maybe a prayer or a poem or something. So it's good, it's slow progress, but it’s good. Both my counsellor and the occupational therapist said it's going to get worse before it gets better. The roughest point so far was probably the three months before I actually stopped drinking. It didn't get worse as in material stuff, but it got worse, but I'm still here, we’ll see what happens and I’ll keep going.
“But volunteering – and connecting with the people through volunteering – has given me a quiet confidence. If anyone's thinking about bettering themselves, even just a little bit, then I recommend you think about volunteering. There's a lot more flexibility and what you lack in cash, you get back – and more – in personal growth. This hasn't put food on the table for me, but it's made me a better person to go out and get my own food. It gives me the skills to do all the stuff – to budget, think of the bigger picture – and there’s no pressure, the only pressure I get is what I put on myself.”