Article from the Daily Record by Maria Croce

Homeless alcoholics Lilian and Murdoch MacDonald almost drank themselves to death. But after dragging each other down, they pulled each other up again. They tell Maria Croce their amazing story
 
AS Lilian and Murdoch MacDonald huddled together on a park bench, they thought they were about to die. After a drinking binge, they'd been mugged, were freezing cold and had run out of booze.

Lilian recalled: 'It had not been my first bender, and it wasn't my last, but I will always think of it as my worst.'

Her clothes ripped by muggers, dirty from living on the streets after being kicked out of their lodgings and sporting a black eye, a dishevelled Lilian even considered snatching a blanket from a nearby tramp.

But he looked up at her and said: 'You wouldn't steal from one of your own, would you?'

Initially she was shocked by his response, but then her thoughts returned to booze and how she was going to get her next drink, as nothing else seemed to matter.

As Lilian and Murdoch, from Ayrshire, shivered in the freezing park, they were approached by two nurses returning home from a night out who realised the desperate pair needed help.

The women bought them a burger with the last of their own money.Then they persuaded a passer-by to give the couple the taxi fare to a hostel.

'They saved our lives,' said Lilian. 'I don't think we'd have survived another night on the streets.'

That brush with death proved a turning point for Lilian and Murdoch and spurred them on to reclaim their lives.

'We lived in the hostel for a year,' said Lilian. 'We did lapse into drink once, but mostly we'd visit the library and read.'

The pair became interested in psychology and started to analyse what had led them to start drinking to excess.

They came to the conclusion their problems lay in their upbringings.

'We had feelings of low self-worth and just didn't know how to cope when things went wrong,' said Lilian.

Their life on the streets seems a world away from how they live now. They're a respectable, middle-aged couple and, as they serve tea in the lounge of their listed flat in Ayr, it's hard to imagine how 10 years ago they had sunk so low through alcoholism.

Murdoch, 58, writes for the local paper and runs his own PR company, while Lilian, 61, has been involved in charity work.

Two years after their brush with death, they returned to Cambridge where they'd lived rough to track down the nurses who'd helped them.

Through the local paper, they were reunited with Donna Powter and Kirsten McDougall.

'It was very emotional and we hugged them when we saw them,' said Lilian. 'I don't know what would have happened if they hadn't stepped in to help us that night.'

Lilian and Murdoch began writing a book about their experience of alcoholism, initially as a form of therapy.

But now they're hoping the book, Phoenix In A Bottle, could help others suffering problems with drink.

Lilian said: 'When I look back, I can't believe that I behaved like that. But we feel no one's powerless to change.

'Through writing this book we wanted to empower people. Alcoholism isn't a disease, it's a self-harming behaviour problem rooted in childhood.'

Lilian and Murdoch believe they've now been able to overcome their problem through identifying and addressing the issues from their past.

And controversially, they say they even enjoy a social drink now - although they insist they never get drunk.

Murdoch said: 'Once we addressed our problems, there was no longer a need for escape through alcoholism, and we can drink normally like other people again. Now we know when to stop.'

They initially met at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Ayr in 1993, although they now disagree with the methods of AA, whose logo is below.

'I don't think lifelong sobriety is the solution to alcoholism,' said Murdoch. 'It only treats symptoms and not causes.'

Lilian believes her problems stemmed from when she was a teenager battling against anorexia.

'My grandmother told me I was fat and ugly, so I stopped eating properly,' she said.

Lilian admits she turned to drink to give her the confidence to eat. She married at 19 to escape her home life and had two children, John, 41, and Elaine, 36. But that marriage broke down after 10 years and Lilian's problem with alcohol escalated.

She moved in with a wealthy businessman and the pair ran a pub, enjoying luxurious holidays and owning a cabin cruiser.

But Lilian felt unhappy and turned to alcohol to cope with her life. After that relationship ended after seven years, she married a man who worked for a whisky company and inevitably, with so much spirit available, her drinking grew worse.

'I'd drink every day for two to three weeks without stopping,' she said.

Meanwhile, public school-educated Murdoch was a Cambridge University graduate whose contemporaries included BBC correspondent John Simpson.

He had a strict upbringing and worked in banking and ran his own PR company before his addiction to booze wrecked his career and left him without a job.

By the age of 30, he was drinking four pints of beer at lunchtime and another four at night, before switching to cider because it was cheaper.

He married at 26 and had two children, Kirsty, 31, and Grant, 27, but started drinking because he couldn't cope with a marriage that wasn't working. His second marriage also ended in disaster.

Murdoch was then on his own for eight years before he met Lilian when he was working in a homeless hostel.

Lilian and Murdoch married within months - but soon alcohol took over and almost claimed their lives.

Murdoch suffered liver problems and Lilian collapsed more than once.

On one occasion, doctors feared she wouldn't last the night.

The couple moved to Cambridge, where Murdoch planned to do a PhD at his former university. But their dream turned into a nightmare as they drank away their savings.

Murdoch recalled: 'We'd start drinking first thing in the morning and just continue drinking through the night. Then, after a brief sleep, we'd wake up to find bottles around the bed and start again.'

The pair hit rock bottom when they were kicked out of their lodgings and ended up on the streets.

But after the nurses saved them from freezing to death in the park, they began to get their lives back and returned to Ayr.

'We've lost years of our lives,' said Lilian. 'But you can't look back with regret.You just have to go forward.'

Murdoch added: 'You can only make-up for it by doing something positive.'

Now the pair insist they'll never return to a life ruled by booze.

Lilian explained: 'I'm a different person and I won't go back to being the person who had to rely on drink.'

And although they nearly killed each other through their mutual dependence on drink, Lilian believes they also wouldn't have survived without each other.

'We almost destroyed each other through drink, but I also feel Murdoch saved me,' she said. 'We saved each other because we believed in each other.'

Now they hope their story will inspire others to help themselves.

Murdoch said: 'If there's a purpose to this book, it's to empower people to save themselves.We're not saying that everyone has to do it our way, but we hope it stimulates discussion.

'I'm not embarrassed about what we've been through. People now come to us and ask our advice if they're having problems because we've been open about what we went through."