I Am the Voice Left from Rehab

I Am the Voice Left from Rehab

Language: English

Pages: 304

ISBN: 1741665566

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


"I have performed for royalty, dined with Superman, stood on a stage before 100,000 people and graced the covers of magazines. I lived an enchanted lifestyle. I woke up one day to find it had all deserted me. I found myself lying broken, beaten, and bleeding upon the wreckage of my youth."
 
Achieving fame in the eighties with hits like "Barbados" and "Modern Girl," James Freud was voracious for everything and anything life had to offer. Vivacious and irrepressible, he hung out with Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux in London, he once hit Elvis Costello, toured with Kylie Minogue, stared down the barrel of Chopper Read's gun, and got drunk with Tommy Lee. But as alcohol and pills came to rule his life, the hits stopped coming. He briefly got sober, but by the time he was promoting the first part of his autobiography, I am the Voice left from Drinking, he had become a chronic and hopeless alcoholic. I Am the Voice Left From Rehab is the dark, gritty account of exactly what happened to James and his family next, chronicling his physical, mental, and spiritual demise as time and again he drove himself to the brink of death through booze and drugs, to the despair of his loyal wife and sons. For four years, he was repeatedly arrested, hospitalized and institutionalized, and attempted suicide several times before finally he called on his deepest reserves of willpower to try, one last time, to get clean and stay that way. This is the most brutally honest account of alcoholism you will ever read, by a man who even in his darkest days was so charismatic, funny and full of love that his family wouldn't leave him, a man who ultimately found the strength to turn his life around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

all in. I am imagining hurtling down the highway on the verge of a panic attack. I’m the dad and husband. It’s me who’s supposed to look after the family. I don’t feel like I can. We climb aboard and I pull nervously out of the driveway. I’m sort of doing okay, so far. We go about a kilometre down the road to where I miss the turn-off and have to do a bloody U-turn. I am in no shape to be ordering breakfast, let alone driving a huge campervan. But I am. There’s no tour manager to handball it

ride will take sixteen hours from the Gold Coast and I know I need a ton of booze to make it. I figure I may as well have a good time, so I fill up a two-litre water bottle with vodka. As the countryside rushes past I stare out the window and sip from my water bottle. As I get more pissed I become more melancholy and call Sally from the train. I am nonsensical and can only manage to mumble. ‘It’s all over … I’m dead. It’s over.’ ‘Where are you?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know. I’m dying.’ As the

tide in the Australian music business had turned and only very young artists were getting signed, so there was no place for me. We don’t value our musical history and heritage here. So much great Australian music drifts away to die a lonely death, only to be resurrected on Australia Day All-Aussie Radio Weekends. (Though they didn’t even do that on the last Australia Day. When was the last time you heard the Zoot?) I eventually picked up a deal for the album with a new label called TWA but they

how much my life has really changed since I fell off the train seven weeks ago. I had about a week to live, and now my life is just beginning. I would cry with joy but I don’t cry anymore – I finally stopped crying after my first seven days of sobriety. The taxi races through the tunnels that lead under the harbour and the eastern suburbs of Sydney. I used to be afraid of tunnels, but now as I sit here I notice I am incredibly calm. So many of the fears I drank to suppress were actually

‘The doctors said if you drink you’ll die.’ ‘Hey, I can guarantee you one thing: I will die … at some point.’ I grin, trying to lighten the mood. The disappointment on Sally’s face says it all but I am powerless to tell the waiter to forget it and give me a Coke. I want this drink more than anything else in the world and nothing is going to stop me. The glass arrives and I am so excited. This is the happiest I’ve been since I got out of hospital. I pick up the glass and smile at the beauty of

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