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Drinking was simply part of being a teenager when Paul Gosling was growing up in Whakatane.
"If you didn't drink there was something wrong. Everyone else was doing it," he says.
"It's a cool thing to do. It's like getting a tattoo, that sort of rebellious streak. And
you know, you're at that stage where the hormones are running rampant as well, and alcohol helps with the relaxing and gives you the courage to talk to a woman and things like that."
But Mr Gosling, now 36, found it hard to stop. When he went to the pub or to parties, he became "the one everyone talked about afterwards".
"I couldn't just have a few beers. If I drank, I would drink to get drunk," he says.
It may have been partly genetic. Auckland counsellor David Chaloner has said 85 to 90 per cent of people can drink in moderation and stop, but 10 to 15 per cent get hooked.
In Mr Gosling's case, he now realises that it was also to do with deep feelings of resentment and loss that he felt when his mother left him with his father when he was 4.
"It [alcohol] brought up emotions in me and made me do things that were out of character. I became very emotional, and if I wasn't emotional then it would be anger and I'd lash out at people," he says.
"I would just destroy things - kicking over letterboxes, just damaging property.
"I guess I held a lot of resentments against people. When I drank it
gave me the courage to say what I felt like saying and it would all come out sideways."
Despite taking risks, Mr Gosling held down a good job as a landscaper and generally kept his drinking to the weekends for the first few years.
Things got worse when he married and had a daughter, who is now 11. His own childhood trauma began to overwhelm him.
"I had a lot of fear around trying to be a good parent and a good husband, to get the house with the white picket fence and the wife and child, due to my childhood reality," he says.
"I found it too difficult to trust myself or to trust other people through the sheer fear of abandonment, and I didn't know how to cope with that. The only way I could cope with those feelings was to drink."
His fears became self-fulfilling when his wife left him 18 months after their daughter was born. He started drinking during the week, often alone.
"I started not enjoying surfing, which I used to love. I stopped fishing with friends, just general socialising and bush walks and things," he says.
"I slowly got more and more depressed and couldn't get myself out of it. And then the alcohol slowly took over."
He moved to Britain for a clean break, using his British-born father to get a UK passport. He found work as a landscaper and eventually developed his own landscaping business.
But he couldn't escape from his personal trauma. He gradually started drinking heavily again and was arrested for drink-driving and breach of the peace.
Finally, an arrest for assault made him realise he needed help.
"I just hit rock bottom," he says. "I didn't want to end up in jail. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to commit suicide. I didn't want to injure anyone else. So I flew home." After several efforts and relapses, Mr Gosling has just come out of four months at Higher Ground in Te Atatu, a residential programme he describes as "like the boot camp of the treatment community, but also the Rolls-Royce of the treatment community".
"It's just an amazing programme that helped me deal with my behavioural issues and my core issues - the deep-seated stuff, the abandonment issues, the trust issues, the resentments, the self-pity, the whole thing," he says. "I learned assertiveness, confidence, hope and courage."
He might have got that help earlier if someone had pushed him.
"My friends just accepted me, that I was like that. Some people enjoyed it, it was amusing. Possibly it made them feel better about themselves because someone else couldn't handle their liquor," he says.
"It would have been really nice for my friends to have that courage to say to me, 'Listen, we're really worried about you and we're here to support you', and just be honest with me really. That's what I've learnt now, just a lot of honesty."
* Alcohol and Drug Helpline, 0800 787 797.
* Addiction services directory: www.addictionshelp.org.nz
