By YVONNE BOLOURI, The Sun newspaper 17 August 2001

MURDOCH and Lilian MacDonald met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, eloped three years later, and spent their honeymoon on a £5,000 booze bender.
 
The couple were chronic alcoholics - decades of hard drinking had left their lives in a mess, and they were penniless and living rough on the streets.
 
When they got together seven years ago, it was a disaster waiting to happen.
 
To look at them today, however, sitting in their comfortable Ayrshire home sipping a glass of wine, you'd never believe that they'd almost drunk themselves to death.
 
Most recovering alcoholics only manage to keep it together by staying on the wagon and resisting the temptation to have even one drink.
 
But Murdoch, 56, and Lilian, 57, shunned the AA method to devise their own recovery programme that allowed them to conquer their condition AND enjoy social drinking again.
 
Now, for the first time in their lives, alcohol is something that they can enjoy in moderation, and they want to share their secret with the world.
 
Lilian said: "We can now drink safely and in a socially acceptable fashion. We're so delighted with our recovery that we tell anyone who'll listen that if they go back and examine their childhood, they can cure themselves.
 
Slippery
 
"Before this, there was never any alternative to AA, but we've been to many AA meetings over many, many years, and lapsed many, many times.
 
"I don't want to live my life scared of alcohol, thinking just one slip and I'm down the same slippery slope.
 
"I would never treat myself so badly again. Alcoholism isn't a disease, it's a behavioural problem."
 
Murdoch and Lilian's backgrounds were very similar. Murdoch was a high-powered banker with a degree from Magdalene College, Cambridge University, who had lived the English middle-class life with his first wife and children.
 
Lilian's previous marriages had given her two children and all the trappings of wealth - a big house, a cabin cruiser and exotic holidays. But they both had long-standing drink problems that years of AA meetings could not conquer.
 
When they first met, it was the perfect excuse to fall off the wagon again.

Only this time, their explosive potential for self-destructive behaviour almost led to disaster.

Lilian said: "We'd both been married twice before. We each had two children, all of whom are grown up now, and we had lives and responsibilities.
 
"We met up at an AA meeting, and eloped three weeks later to York on a bender that would change our lives forever.
 
"We booked into a B&B, and woke up days later with about 40 empty whisky bottles littered around the room. We had taken about £5,000 with us when we set off, but soon it was all gone.
 
We headed for Cambridge determined to make a fresh start. Then we made the mistake of telling our landlady that we were recovering alcoholics.
 
"She locked us out of the house, and we spent our first night on the streets, where we were mugged and robbed. All I had was a pair of gold slippers and someone gave us a stolen duvet from Marks & Spencer."
 
As they shambled around with other drunken dossers, Lilian and Murdoch talked about getting their lives back on a even keel. Lilian said: "It seemed an impossible dream. I was also anorexic. I was a size six, just skin and bone. I honestly don't know how I'm still alive."
 
Weeks passed in a drunken haze, until one night, slumped together on a park bench drunk and starving, two nurses on their way home from a nightclub stopped, bought them food, and found them a place in a homeless hostel.
 
Demons
 
The security provided by having a roof over their heads once again proved to be a turning point for the couple as they started the painful process of working out WHY they drank as a way of conquering their demons.
 
Lilian explained: "We both had unhappy childhoods. I know that it sounds all too simple, and you just think 'get over it - you're an adult.'
 
"But alcoholics all carry this child inside of us. We cannot cope with life, and that is why we drink."
 
Once they realised that they were making progress, Murdoch and Lilian took jobs selling the local daily newspaper, the Cambridge Evening News, on the streets. They started to put the pieces of their lives back together again.
 
Lilia said: "Murdoch got a job in market research. We got better by forcing ourselves to go back over everything in our lives to find out what had made us the way we were.
 
"When I learned to let go, instead of keeping such a tight rein on myself, I realised that it was me who was making alcohol a problem, not the alcohol itself."
 
Murdoch is now editor of a recruitment newspaper, and writes a regular weekly column in a local Ayrshire newspaper.
 
The couple are writing a book about their experiences.
 
Lilian said: "We are now both totally free. The AA doctrine tells you 'the body of an alcoholic is as abnormal as his mind.' RUBBISH! There's nothing abnormal about any alcoholic. They need to examine their childhood, put their life in order, and change their behaviour."
 
The couple's recovery programme has put them at odds with Alcoholics Anonymous, who doubt that their plan would work for large numbers of recovering alcoholics.
 
Lilian said: "AA has provided a place of safety for many people who would otherwise have drunk themselves into prison, hospital, or a premature grave.
 
"But AA assumes that everything they say is correct, and tolerate no discussion. They think that their way is the only way. Well, it's not.
 
"Believe me, it's wonderful to be able to enjoy a drink again, knowing that you can take it or leave it at will!"

[Photo: Bruce Willis and Halle Berry in "Perfect Stranger"]