I LAY NO CLAIM TO THIS STORY. The Million-Rand Teaspoon is someone else’s story, and it belongs to him and the others who have contributed to it. My authorship has simply been a bridge between their experiences and the way they are described in this book.
The primary character in this story is a blind and brain-injured ex-drug abuser named Paul Bateman. I was first approached by his family in April 2003 to help Paul tell his story. Their concern was that they would not be around to look after him forever, and they were hoping he would be able to derive some form of future income from going to schools to give talks on drug addiction. The original idea was to put something on paper to complement such talks, which the children and their parents could take home with them.
However, apart from some immediate doubts as to the logistics of Paul touring the country’s schools, at our first meeting a listless Paul told me he hoped that by telling his story it would give his life a purpose, and between us we expanded on the original idea of ‘putting something on paper’ to producing a book – intended for the market that Paul felt he needed to reach in order to obtain the purpose (and peace) he sought. Paul wanted to put his story ‘out there’, he said – but he was concerned, as were other members of his family, that among the recent glut of addiction tales, and considering the change in drug trends, his story would not carry the weight required to affect anything. So he made it clear that he didn’t want to come across as preaching the evils of drugs. He just wanted to tell his story, get it out of him, with the hope that it might make just one vulnerable teen think differently. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘I’ve been there. I didn’t listen. So why would they? Preaching is a turn-off. It just encourages you.’
My intention was to write Paul’s story just as he told it to me, but I quickly put that idea aside – for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Paul has ‘lost’ most of his life. It quickly became apparent that he remembers only bits and pieces, and he had a tendency to get ‘stuck’ in one place when trying to delve into both the past and his psychological present. Therefore I needed the input of Paul’s family and friends, to fill in the gaps in his story.
Secondly, while interviewing Paul and his family, it struck me that their story needed to be told just as much as Paul’s did. Addiction is a selfish disease, but the way recovering addicts are treated encourages that selfishness. So much on the subject focuses on the psychology of addiction and methods of recovery for the addict … while the enormous cost to the addict’s family, both financial and emotional, is brushed aside. The addict is seen as a ‘sufferer’ (with carte blanche to relapse without losing points), and the family is left emotionally and financially broken in the wake of the addict’s actions and, most of all, needs. By giving voice not only to Paul, but also to his family and loved ones, this book shows the effects that addiction has on people close to the addict.
So, instead of interviewing those involved for information in order to build the framework of the story and with which to jog Paul’s memory, it made sense to give each of them their own chapters.
Therefore, while the history remains the same, the story has been told from several points of view – providing a more holistic picture than could have been provided by Paul alone, even if he could have remembered more, and also extending the relevance of the story to the families and friends of addicts.
What follows is the result of a collaborative effort between me and the various contributors. This collaboration took the form of interviews and the submission of requested written accounts – followed by further interviews and correspondence to the point where I felt that I had the right input to create a story with sufficient chronological coherency and content. In all chapters, I have aimed to retain the character of each contributor as much as possible.
No part of the story is fictional. Every event and incident referred to is factual, and where poetic licence has been used for descriptive purposes, it has been done carefully and with dedicated attention to conveying the precise meaning intended by the contributor.
This last applies most to the chapters contributed by Paul. Some explanation may be necessary in this case. How does a brain-injured man produce a completely coherent and often very descriptive account of his life and feelings?
While he is cognitively impaired, this impairment is highly function-specific – for example, he has only relatively recently re-learnt how to dial numbers on a phone, but he has been verbal and fairly articulate for years.
Paul’s ability to understand specifics fluctuates, as does his ability to verbalise his thoughts appropriately and succinctly, or put them in order. He also has little descriptive ability when it comes to talking about things outside of himself, or when elucidating on a statement. This necessitated many interviews and, in some instances, suggesting suitable words to help him express what he was trying to say. I obtained what we needed by revisiting ‘weak areas’ over and over.
However, his verbal abilities and insight into his condition, past and present, were at times surprisingly sophisticated – with him conveying things with a level of perception that seemed utterly incongruent with other interviews. A good example of this is the final chapter, which is the most similar to the original tapes provided by Paul. Some sentences have been transcribed and remain in the text almost word for word, as there was no need to rewrite them much or use other words to better convey what he was trying to say.
On reading his story back to him, which I did many times and at all stages of the process, he constantly interrupted to say, ‘Yes! That’s it! That is it! Exactly!’ To test this, I occasionally threw in ‘red herrings’ – to see if he was just saying yes for the sake of it. On each occasion, I was brought up short with ‘No. It wasn’t like that.’ All analogies and descriptions used are based on an attempt by Paul to make a certain point, then built upon by the two of us, and subsequently approved by him.
The overall intent was for Paul to tell his story, to make that story readable and give it impact, and I believe that we have succeeded in doing so without straying from the truth. For the purpose of integrity, where Paul’s memory has failed him, it has been written as such. Nothing has been fabricated to ‘fill in’ gaps or to attempt justification of content.
The story has been told as it happened, and the result is, according to Paul, what he intended: to put his story out there, and so perhaps give some meaning to the direction his life has taken.
Nikki Ridley
MAY 2006