A haven from the hell of addiction
You won’t even find plush leather armchairs and racks of daily newspapers. But the bubbling atmosphere that hits you as you walk in from the cold of City Road in St Paul’s is better than anything you would find at your big American coffee shop chains.
But there are troubles being shared and comfort passed around, because all the customers at The Wild Goose have lost their way in the world. The coffee shop caters for Bristol’s homeless.
As well as offering a warm meal and a steaming cup of coffee, the team at the Crisis Centre Ministries – the charity that runs The Wild Goose – are also available to guide their regulars back on to the straight and narrow.
“Most of the people we feed are suffering from complex problems – often alcoholism or drug addiction,” explained assistant manager Alan Goddard.
“We try to help them find a rehab bed, if that’s what they want. But they need to ask us for help first. Some people aren’t ready to tackle their addictions, so we just concentrate on feeding them and offering a haven in the city where they can find support and a little comfort away from life on the streets.”
The charity has run the coffee shop since 1986 – helping thousands of addicts find a way out of the slippery cycle of decline.
“We’re a Christian organisation,” Alan said. “All of us who work or volunteer here try to live by Christian principles – offering help and comfort to those who need our support.
“Most of our food is donated by a charity called Fair Share – we’d never manage to keep going without their help.
“We feed more than 300 people each day, and have helped more than 130 to find a bed in a rehabilitation unit in the past year.
“So we are eager to appeal for any help we can get in finding more ways to fund our work and develop it. For example, we desperately need to find new accommodation – we’ve outgrown ourselves here.”
It’s only when you get to meet the individuals behind the issues that you really start to appreciate what a lifeline the coffee shop can be.
Take David Neale, for example. It’s all too easy to pass the 33-year-old in the street.
I’m sure I’ve walked past as he’s held out a begging hand in my direction in the past. But here at The Wild Goose the homeless are not faceless anymore.
We sit down for a chat, and David explains just how any one of us could end up as the beggar we quicken our pace to walk by on the streets of our city.
David’s story is typical of many living rough.
Everything was going well for him just a few years ago. He had a job he loved as a woodland conservationist for a wildlife trust. But when he was made redundant, things started going wrong.
“I took to drinking to cope with my depression,” he said, his eyes trained to the ground nervously.
“I rapidly reached a point where I was drinking all the time, and nothing else seemed to matter. That included paying my rent. It wasn’t long before my landlord had kicked me out. When you’re in that state, it’s actually very easy to find yourself living rough.”
After 14 months on the streets, David asked for help at The Wild Goose, and the charity was able to find a bed in one of the city’s hard-pressed hostels.
“I had to get out of the cycle of drinking,” he said. “I’d spend the day sitting in Brunswick Square drinking nine per cent lager – begging to find the cash to buy it.
“And I was surrounded by other rough-sleeping alcoholics who would encourage me to drink to forget my problems.
“Finding The Wild Goose helped me to start breaking the cycle.
“I’m still drinking, but not nearly as much. I’m slowly fighting the addiction. I have to do something – the doctors have told me I’ll die if I keep drinking.”
And if anyone can offer support and guidance, it’s Alan Goddard, who is himself a recovered alcoholic.
“I know exactly what it’s like, because I’ve been there,” he said.
“I used to wake up every morning soaked in my own urine and force down two cans of Guinness before I could find the strength to get out of bed.
“Alcoholism is a mental illness, and as a society we need to start seeing it as an illness. No sane person would put himself through what I did to myself for decades.”
But Alan is keen to emphasise there is often a personal tragedy behind every alcoholic’s fall.
“For me, I had been sexually abused by a teacher as a child,” Alan said. “I started drinking heavily as a teenager, as I struggled to come to terms with what he’d done to me. But it’s very easy to allow the drink to take over and destroy every element of your life.”
That’s exactly what happened to David Thompson.
I find the 44-year-old huddled in the corner of the coffee shop, tucking into scrambled egg on toast. It’s the highlight of his day – a chance to get off the streets that have been his home for 16 years.
The former squaddie had served for 14 years in the Army and seen action in the first Gulf War.
But he simply couldn’t cope with life outside the military.
“As soon as I left the Army, I just fell apart,” he said. “I couldn’t readjust to civilian life after all that time.
“I missed the discipline and routine that the Army offered. As a soldier, life is simple – you do exactly as you’re told. Everything else is done for you.
“Back in the outside world I had to try to get my head around juggling bills and finding work.
“I just couldn’t do it, and before I knew what was happening to me, I was living on the streets.
“Once you’re into that spiral of decline, you become depressed, take to drink, and then you go down rapidly.”
But it’s not just alcoholism that haunts faces at The Wild Goose.
There are those battling drugs, like 22-year-old Peter Holmes, who found consolation in heroin after his partner left him, taking their child. It wasn’t long, he tells me, before the heroin had led him deeper into trouble and he found himself facing the hell of living on the streets. “Things are getting better for me now, thanks to places like this,” he said. “I’ve been able to get off the streets and into a hostel.”
Peter can take inspiration from Ricky O’Shea, the former punk rocker standing with a cup of tea in the corner.
The 47-year-old spent 30 years on heroin, but eventually came through the other side.
“My life had become nothing,” he says, the pain still burning in his eyes. “For me, it was religion that finally gave me the strength to start sorting myself out. Now I work here as a volunteer. It gives my life meaning to try to give something back to this place that did so much to help me.
It’s not just men living rough in Bristol – The Wild Goose sees its fair share of troubled women.
Take for example, the 23-year-old giggling cheerfully with staff at the serving hatch.
This nervous young woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, had a tough start in life – her parents were both drug addicts in her native Gloucester.
Drug misuse combined with epilepsy eventually resulted in her father stumbling and drowning in a canal in the city.
But things went from bad to after coming to Bristol. “I took to prostitution to try to feed my drug habit,” she said. “At first I thought I could take the money off the men and run before they did anything.
“It worked for a while. I used to tell them I was under-aged, so they were scared to tell anyone what I’d done.
“But it reached a point where none of the men fell for that trick any more, so I had to give myself up to them. It felt so horrible to reach that kind of low – but the need for the drugs was more important to me than anything.”
The staff at The Wild Goose hope that one day her life will be transformed like one of their great success stories, Katie Hook.
The 24-year-old had a tough time – falling pregnant at 16 and, she said, suffering at the hand of her schizophrenic boyfriend.
“A friend offered me a drug called speed, as a way of escaping my depression. But of course, that just took me to an even darker place.
“I had to give my baby daughter to my boyfriend’s parents, because I wasn’t in a state to look after her at the time.
“But now, thankfully, with the support of my friends from The Wild Goose, I’ve started to get my life back on track. I’m even going to college now – to train to work as a nurse in old folk’s homes.”
l To find out more about The Wild Goose and the Crisis Centre Ministries charity, or to volunteer, visit www.crisis-centre.org.uk
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