https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNp9dp1x-qI
I haven’t written about giving up drinking before. A lot of my experiences around addiction I have put into my Prurience play which is set in an addicts support group. This song seemed to come from nowhere although it was inspired a little by watching my favourite one-person theatre show, At Liberty by Elaine Stritch. She is so honest about the agonising irony of drink, which is that it works. It makes you feel better, and it makes you feel great. Until it doesn’t. Then the problems start.
Ebb
The only way I could make sense of it
The only way I could make the pieces fit
Get out of my head
Then I could live in my head
Out of control gave me control
I remember sitting on that wall in the traffic’s roar
Weekday afternoon, nothing unusual except
It was my lowest ebb
Rock bottom and I said
This is it, the depths
I had tried to think my way out of it
I only thought deeper into the shit
Get out of my head
Now I couldn’t be not out of my head
Out of control
No control
I remember phoning home in the traffic’s roar
Hearing the answerphone, nothing unusual except
It was my lowest ebb
Rock bottom and I said
I won’t survive the depths
Out there alone, not a friend, no safety zone
All the time I had a friend at home
But pain sent me out to roam
I had to sabotage
Every good thing of ours
But I got my second chance
Phoenix from the dead
Now the only way I can make sense of it
The only way I can make the pieces fit
Turn towards the pain
Catch it playing games in my head
Am I too controlled
All I know
I will survive the depths