The
chefs’ guide to life: how recovered from Drug addiction
By
Dr.Fourkan Ali
Iwas
born and grew up in South Africa until I was eight. I was a good swimmer. Like
most people in South Africa I could reach the end of a length. Then as a teen
at boarding school in the UK, I swam and ran and played fives, but I certainly
wasn’t a sports nut. The concepts of “health” and “wellbeing” didn’t cross my
mind and wouldn’t until I was 30 years old.
At university I spent
more time partying than doing anything particularly constructive. I studied
microbiology and my friends were all anthropologists and archaeologists who
were burning the candle at both ends – which I did too, but I struggled more
with work. Yet I discovered the joy of cooking at university. I travelled
afterwards for a year then came back, hit the top restaurants with begging
letters and started rapidly, aged 22, on the journey of cooking professionally.
It took over my life. At 24 I opened The Square – I wasn’t qualified and had no
clear strategy – and for the next 15 years I worked full-tilt, six days a week
from 7am to 11pm, or midnight, on four hours sleep per night. I’d sleep harder
on my day off but eat hard and party hard, too.
When I think back to
being a teen and a young man, when the conveyor belt of life was offering
substances I hadn’t seen before, I wonder why I was one of those people who
said yes to everything and jumped straight in, while others said no. My crash
and burn was going to happen but I think the job and workload made it happen
quicker. The restaurant became very successful and everything was going
fantastically, on one level, but it was absolutely cripplingly exhausting, and
I’d found cocaine did a phenomenal job of giving me energy and the belief that
I could conquer the day’s work. I was the owner of a restaurant which took lots
of cash and I had access to funds I certainly wouldn’t have had as an employee.
The reality over the three years is that, very quickly, it became habitual and
pretty quickly the consequences began to outweigh the benefits. It became a
complicated hell-hole. When you become obsessed with cocaine, you don’t realise
when the line’s been crossed – that you’ve gone from young and invincible to no
longer being in the driving seat. You’re waking up thinking, “How? When?
Where?” I became one of those guys who’d smoke crack cocaine first thing in the
morning to get me up.
Ridiculous scenarios
included walking out of the kitchen, saying, “I’ll be back in five minutes”,
and not returning until the following day. A kitchen doesn’t collapse when the
chef disappears but it’s hardly ideal. I wasn’t off doing anything particularly
wild and exciting, but I was behaving inconsistently and deceitfully. And I
can’t say towards the end of my use of drugs that they were serving my cooking
well. It’s possible to go through the motions of cooking – burning a piece of
meat, adding onions, caramelising, making stocks, there’s lots you can do, but
ultimately fine judgment and taste is required, too. And if you’re preoccupied
with smoking a drug down in the car park that effectively suppresses your
appetite, your enthusiasm for cooking wanes and your ability to taste is
compromised. I could still produce a great dish but that’s not the same as a
great,great dish cooked with real precision and love.
Ever since my crash and burn I’ve worked hard,
but not to the point where I do nothing but work. Work became secondary
I remember my business
partner at the Square, Nigel [Platts-Martin], stopping me in the corridor one
day, holding a mirror up to me and asking, “What the fuck’s going on?” I
reached rock bottom, which is the point where the fear of change is less
painful than the fear of continuing with what you’re doing. For me, it was a
relatively uncomplicated sense of utter spiritual bankruptcy and very real pain
as a result of fucking up both a young marriage – she left, with our child –
and an apparently extremely successful career. Plus the realisation that
continuing to use drugs would involve lies so cripplingly complex and toxic
that it could finish me off.
I went into treatment
– and the rest is history, really. You get told very clearly what the required
changes are to remain clean and sober, and you start the journey, which is not
easy but the benefits are so quick to come that they provide the fuel to go
forward – and, once back in the kitchen, the ability to form, to lead, to cook
was transformed. Initially, as soon as I put down the drugs, the first thing I
remember doing is running and running. I used to break out of the treatment
centre in Marylebone and run every day like a lunatic along Regent’s Canal. And
it’s now been 20 years since I crashed and burned. Twenty years in which I’ve
been conscious of maintaining my health, fitness and balance in life. Looking
back – now I’m 50 and facing the ageing battle – I regret not being more
focused on fitness when I was in my physical prime. I’ve done 25 marathons and
25 triathlons since, but it would have been better if I’d begun at 20. I don’t
enjoy marathons and triathlons while I’m running them – they’re miserable and
disgusting – but I love finishing and another being on the horizon and training
for it.
My daily routine
nowadays is much different, although I still sleep quite badly – I don’t know
why. I wake up early and get out of bed and write menus, pay bills, plan
projects, plan holidays. I’m most effective in the morning, when it’s peaceful
and quiet. But I realise – and feel – that I need more sleep than I get at
night, so for many years now, when I can, I’ve been snoozing for 20 or 30
minutes in the afternoon in my office, my spiritual sanctuary. It’ll make me feel
right as rain. The other important thing for a chef is having time that is
yours when getting home after work. That’s the chef’s biggest psychological
struggle – spending so much time working that there isn’t enough time to
achieve all a human being needs to achieve to be happy and content.
Earning back my wife’s
trust after I recovered was the greatest thing. She hadn’t wanted to divorce me
but she felt she had no other option than to remove a child from someone who
was not playing his part. Because you’ve got to be there for your wife and
family and friends. Just as important is finding time on your own to do things you want to do, whether it
be drinking mojitos, reading or playing football. That’s balance. Ever since my
crash and burn I’ve worked hard, but not to the point where I do nothing but
work. Work sort of became secondary in my life.
What I feel, after all
these years in recovery, is that I’ve had a net gain. The price was paid but
then there was a lot to learn about life and how to operate. I feel most humans
just get on with life and don’t contemplate why they act in certain ways, don’t
access their own behaviour – whether it’s being super-chilled or forcing their
thoughts down other peoples’ throats. All of us are different and all do things
that have negative consequences on the way we feel about life, ourselves and
others. But when you, like I did, plug into a spiritual programme that requires
you to look very carefully at yourself and sheds a light on flaws and reveals
how to operate in a more effective way, it’s really beneficial.
Narcotics Anonymous
and such associations are, in my opinion, the only solution to addiction – and
free of charge, 24/7, lifelong and extraordinary. I know for a fact I can’t
smoke another cigarette or drink another drop of alcohol or take another drug.
But after going to meetings for 20 years I’ve finally been tailing off with
them during the last year. I still go to church and I like the way that makes
me feel – nourishing my soul, big time. But I went to an NA meeting last Sunday
and thought, “I do feel differently now.” Meanwhile, the kids have been leaving
home and I’m entering a new stage in my life. My wife and I will be able to
say, “Let’s fly away for the weekend.”
When you’ve been doing
the same job in the same kitchen for 25 years, many aspects of life can get
pretty entrenched in a comfortably furnished rut, and I have to admit food is
one of them. I don’t have a particularly good diet. There’s no pint of green juice
in the morning, but I like vegetables and I like chips and I’m not neurotic
about what I eat. I like sweet things and I’m greedy for them, so what can I
say? That’s the one completely unchallenged area of my life – what I eat. There
comes a point in life when you think, “You know, I’m in pretty good shape, so
it’s fine.” You’ve got to have one vice, for god’s sake.
Sources: The Guardian
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