"Give yourself freedom"

On October 25, 1974, on Friday evening, I was in a hurry home from the house of pioneers. Mom said that the ambulance was taken to the hospital right from work - an attack suddenly happened. Volvulus.
Exactly a week later, on Friday, November 1, 1974, without any preparation, I became non -core.

Awareness of this happened gradually. Those who lost loved ones know how it happens.

Details...

Someone inserted the key into the keyhole, and the sound reminded how dad opened the door every evening. He climbed into the papal coat's pocket, and there was a handkerchief that absorbed his smells. He went to the shower and waited for dad to go now, as always, to soap my head ...

Mom by that time was a disabled person of the second group. Scattered sclerosis. I went with a wand. After the death of dad, she began to quickly take. Soon, she almost stopped moving and without my help could no longer make the most elementary.

I was 12 years old.

In the evenings, I climbed into the pantry, poured tincture from a huge tub. Her mother once did for calculation with plumbers and locksmiths. He sat on the floor, put some music, drank and grieved. I remember then only the song of Vysotsky “Bill” came out. She was written on behalf of a woman. But it did not matter to me, she was about trouble, and I already began to understand what it was.

I carried my misfortune
On the spring on ice
The ice broke, the soul
I cut it off.
I went under the water with a stone
And the trouble is even heavy
And for the sharp edges detained.

My trouble was everywhere ...

In the 79th year, a few months before the release from school, Papin friend called. His own sister was a university professor-historian. And her husband is a famous philosopher and popularizer of science, also a professor. They decided to help me with admission to the university at the Faculty of History and invited to their home. She seemed to me a beautiful, holder, majestic woman. And their whole apartment was saturated with comfort and scholarship. My apartment was saturated with urine and bugs. But I was already the wrong twelve -year -old delicate boy, fooled from the fallen misfortunes. Rather, by some miracle I continued to be gentle and vulnerable, but my skin was already strangled, and if the championships were held in stubbornness, I would certainly be an absolute champion. I did not want to be a historian. I wanted to be a philologist, and I refused their generous proposal. I filled up exams at the university, went to work at the factory. Then he filled up again. And so it was in everything. And here and there, and here, life completely inexplicably subjected me to tests. I dragged this strap, changed my mother’s diapers, erased them, treated unheated faults, fed, washed, cut her hair, lived some kind of life, and in the evenings poured wine or vodka in the evenings, I didn’t care, I had the taste of music and howled to myself.

And the trouble is from that day
Looking around the light of me.
Rumors go with her, with crookedwood.
And that I have not died
She knew the naked Vetla
And also quail with quails.

Being incredibly stable, it would seem, to everything, I turned out to be completely defenseless before ... alcohol. But I did not realize this for a very long time ...

The university has become a turning point for me. I could not do it twice, all my friends were already studying. And so I was complex from this that when I managed to do it, I finished the fool with a red diploma. I began to live. And it rushed. TV. Perestroika. Own television company ( Arkady Mayofis is the founder of the legendary Tomsk TW-2 -SR ). The 90s, when the feeling arose that everything is in your hands and nothing can stop you. I became lucky. Fame appeared, some money. Girls. And insaturation in everything. It lasted 20 years. It seemed to me that I continue to be quite effective at work, but more and more it was automatic efficiency. The body still withstand the load, but it also began to fail.

I began to suddenly “catch a cold” on Mondays, then I lingered on business trips, then more and more - all, like all alcoholics.

Alcoholism cannot be defeated. It cannot be overcome. There is no will of the will on which you will come out the winner with alcohol. He is more insidious and stronger. Alcohol is like a loved one you broke up with. To stop suffering, it must be released

Once on December 31 of some year I had a fight at home and went to work. From my office I went out only to the store. The numbers on January 2, and maybe later, a friend took me in an insane state to the hospital. It was a white fever. In the hospital, something was done wrong, the edema of the brain began. I was on the verge. I was urgently transported to another - a specialized clinic, where two days later, or maybe more, I came to my senses. Drinking me from the hospital, the doctor said: usually alcoholics die from problems with liver or pancreas. You have an iron organism. You will part with consciousness. Your brain will not withstand the second shock.

With a fright, I did not drink for six months. Then he began again. Little by little. Carefully. And then as usual. Fear turned out to be a short -lived motivator. But at the same time, I finally realized that I had a problem. Why do you need to reach the point, almost die in order to realize such an obvious truth? Don't know. I realized that there is something that is stronger than me, which I just can’t cope with. And this is alcohol. It was incredibly difficult to accept this. It was humiliating. And humiliation is what it is most difficult for me to go through. At some point, not telling anyone, I went to the Moscow clinic. Her name I heard by accident. I didn’t care what they treated there, I did not understand anything about it. I lay there for some crazy money for 2 weeks. These were very important 2 weeks for me. Step by step, I analyzed my whole life, again and again experienced burning shame for many of my drunken antics. I realized that this is a disease, that I am seriously ill. And that I should not deal with the disease because I was forced or persuaded, not for the sake of someone, even the most expensive. And for the sake of yourself. I brought the line under my previous life with alcohol. I stopped being ashamed of this. Because diseases are not ashamed. And I caught the main thing - alcoholism cannot be defeated. It cannot be overcome. There is no will of the will on which you will come out the winner with alcohol. Even I can’t do it. He is more insidious and stronger. Alcohol is like a loved one you broke up with. To stop suffering, it must be released. Everything, further without me, I have a different life now. I am free from you. You can win only by stopping fighting. It seems that I was the only "graduate" of the clinic who did not get drunk on the very first day after discharge. I did not get drunk both in the second and the third.

I no longer remember how much I do not drink. Immediately after the clinic, I went to the conference of the STS channel, it took place in Ritz-Carleton in Moscow. So it was more than 10 years ago. 12? Sometimes I want to know how many years I have not been drinking. Then I ask a question to a friend who worked at STS: in what year was that conference? And soon I forget again.

When they killed the television company , and the ears of the gesniks stuck out from under each bush, one person called me, said that he has something important for me. We met in a cafe. He worked in the hospital where I was brought with psychosis (the so -called white fever).

He said: everyone is interested in your person, they requested the history of the disease, they probably want to discredit you. I thought that you would have these pieces of paper.

I took it. It was written there: Arkady Mayofis, born in 1962, entered the hospital in a state of acute psychosis ...

I thanked a good person and broke my medical history. But you can't tear life. It was. And I talk about this because someone now, I know this for sure, writes my medical history, and she can break in a half-word.

Take your life in your own hands. And let her go. Give yourself freedom. And don't worry.

How to sow in one song, "Don’t cry, uncle, you are not one orphan."
Or differently: it is never too late to have a happy childhood!

Arkady Mayofis - entrepreneur