Dougher spent 20 years drinking, smoking and sniffing anything he could get hold of. At his lowest, he spent a month sleeping on a park bench. How did he bounce back – and forge a new career as an artist?
All stories of addiction are grim and harrowing, but Patrick Dougher’s memoir reads like a picaresque comedy at times – albeit one laced with trauma and tragedy. There are hilarious tales of eccentric characters, like the great-aunt with enormous buttocks who killed his kitten by sitting on it: “That booty made all the decisions, and Aunt Cat, she just followed obediently.” And there are almost unbelievable episodes from Dougher’s life: his near-death experience in a crashing elevator, playing drums in Sade’s band, being stalked by a serial killer, finding a kilo of cocaine hidden inside a stolen table football machine. It almost sounds fun. And yet Dougher’s life is also a story of emotional damage, homelessness, self-destruction, loss and regret.
“The life of an addict, or at least my life, it is the full spectrum, it’s the polarities,” he says. “You can have incredible moments of exhilaration and joy and excitement, and it puts you in situations where you’re surrounded by unique characters, and then obviously the downside, which is pain and suffering and all of that stuff.” And yet, somehow, Dougher made it out the other side. “I would say I had a charmed life,” he says.
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