We met with Jurek over coffee. He wanted to revive the sobriety movement in Bolesławiec. He set himself the task of inviting Piotr Nagiel to perform—a well-known artist who is also a sober alcoholic and who plays with the band STO% and addresses the problems of addiction, violence and misunderstanding in his songs.
Jerzy was a well-known person in the town. He organized the Film Discussion Club in the 1980s. He did so on a grand scale. There were film marathons at the Forum cinema and screenings of “shelf films” censored under communism (films that, because of censorship, had lain on shelves and were not released for distribution). In July 2008, Jerzy disappeared from Bolesławiec.
During our meeting, as a customary greeting, I asked what he had been up to and how life was treating him. He replied that things were good now because he was sober. That is how the conversation began. I heard the story of an alcoholic, similar to other such stories as one drop of vodka is to another.
“Gone with the Wind” transported in a PKP toilet
Jurek, a graduate of I Liceum Ogólnokształcące, tried to get into the University of Wrocław to study Polish philology after passing his school-leaving exams. After a second unsuccessful attempt, he gave up. He began working at the “Relaks” club at the “Bolesławianka” Housing Cooperative. That was where the idea of creating a Film Discussion Club in Bolesławiec emerged.
“I came across the manager of a traveling cinema, and he suggested the idea to me,” says Jurek. “Even though the conditions at ‘Relaks’ were not good, because I did not have a screening room, I set up the club anyway. I got the films from Wrocław, consulted with film journalists I was friends with, and worked with the film school in Łódź.”
Up to 30 people would attend screenings at the club, but the lectures organized at Forum cinema were packed beyond capacity. From the government film distribution agency, he managed to obtain censored films, the so-called “shelf films.” “I showed everything: comedies, westerns, action films,” Jurek recalls. “Matka królów,” a strongly politically incorrect film at the time, caused a huge sensation, as did Żuławski’s “Diabeł.” The latter shocked many people back then.
The organizer of the film screenings never encountered overt censorship intervention. He was most worried when he screened Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film “Blind Chance.” The film, made in 1981, reached screens in Poland several years later. Kieślowski was accused of condemning the communist system in his work.
“I remember the queues before the first DKF marathon,” says Pietrzak. “At the time, I screened Gone with the Wind. I transported the film in a train toilet. There were a few crates of it, and we had to keep watch over them, because not only was the copy terribly expensive, there was also no license for it from the United States. You could say it was outright cinema piracy.”
Jurek left the Relaks club in 1990. The reason was alcohol. His illness was progressing.
The history of drinking
When Jurek analyzes the beginning of his addiction, he goes back to his school years and drunken weekends. “Now, looking back over the history of my drinking, I believe I was already addicted in secondary school,” admits Jurek, sober today. “I always drank more than the others on Saturdays and Sundays. First wine, then stronger alcohol. I didn’t notice it. The hangovers and unpleasant states got in the way. That might have given me something to think about, but I guess an alcoholic has to hit rock bottom to understand…”
The year 1990. The period soon after he stopped running the DKF was the bleakest time in his life. “I was addicted to alcohol; I had no hope that I would stop drinking. There was not even any indication that I would take a short break,” Jurek recalls.
He went to Germany for work for a short time. He drank a lot there as well. He calls it a period of suspension. It lasted seven years. In 1997, a colleague extended a helping hand to Jurek and gave him a job at her company. “I wandered aimlessly through the streets; she gave me a chance,” he says. “I worked for her and sold events. At first it was temporary work, then she hired me full-time. My illness was so advanced that I failed to take advantage of it. My family suffered, and so did the people who wanted to help me.”
In the end, Jurek’s acquaintance couldn’t take it anymore either. She decided that things could not go on like this, and giving an alcoholic a job did not help him at all. Jurek entered therapy for the first time. “Before I left for the hospital, my acquaintance played me a song by my favorite group, Pod Budą,” Jurek recalls. “We were both nervous. She wanted somehow to calm me down, comfort me, and encourage me. However, the therapy was unsuccessful—the disease was devious, and I did not take part in any sessions. I did it for my family, not for myself, and it did not work out,” he adds.
Although Jurek had periods of abstinence, they were short-lived, and in 1998, unable to cope with drinking at work, he left it. Once again he was unemployed, had no purpose and had no hope. Another employer took him off the streets. He worked for him for another 10 years. “I worked in a bookshop. I found fulfillment in that job, but I wasn’t sober. The owner reacted strongly to it; he could talk some sense into me and didn’t mollycoddle me. That’s why it lasted so long, but even he couldn’t put up with me in the end,” Jurek admits.
As he says, drinking made things easy for him. He would go to work, and after an hour he would start to feel that something was missing. His hands would begin to tremble; then he had to go out and “replenish the chemicals,” so he would invent some pretext for stepping out for a moment, some errand that needed running. He would return a different man. Calmer, but smelling of alcohol. Everyone saw it, sensed it in his breath, appearance and behavior, but the alcoholic did not see it. “This state can be compared to a general feeling of ‘what-the-hellism,’” Jurek explains. “You wake up in the morning, and there is no one and nothing around you. So what do you do? You have to have a drink. Replenishing the chemicals is the most important thing.”
Eventually Jurek moved out of the house and in with his mother, making her life hell. He was depressed for six months. At night he did not sleep, had no purpose, did not eat; he thought only about where to borrow money to get a drink. Then he received an offer to go to work in London.
Drunk London
In England, Jurek had a distant cousin who knew that he was an alcoholic. Despite this, she offered to help him find work in London. “I went there and worked washing dishes in a large shopping centre,” he says. “I boarded the bus to Great Britain drunk, with a sprained leg that I had injured earlier, also while drunk. To this day I wonder how one can decide to leave with almost no knowledge of the language, with an injured leg, drunk?”
In London, he did not stop drinking, but he managed at work. At first, he even sent money home. Then it all began to be needed for alcohol. The vicious circle closed, and he lost his job. He ended up on the street.
“I approached some people in the street and asked them to give me money for a bread roll, and they offered me a job at a waste-sorting facility,” Jurek recounts his fate as a homeless man. “I found work again. I gave them a cut of the money for it, because that was the deal. Things started going well for me again. I had a bank account and an apartment. But the drinking was frequent and destructive; everyone there drank. Only Poles worked at the sorting facility, and I was no different from them…”
Once again, Jurek lost his job and his home. He was homeless for six months. He lived in garages in one of London’s districts. He had his own place there. He knew which restaurants and at what times they put food out for the poor. He went to a day centre for the homeless, where there was coffee, television and a pool table. And he drank. He found friends who had money, so he drank with them.
“I slept on a bench once. It was winter,” he recounts the final stage of his time on the streets. “I woke up and couldn’t feel my feet or hands; they had become frostbitten. It terrified me and sobered me up.”
God did not turn away from me
Jurek found another job, and lost that one too. Friends helped him. He left the room he had been occupying just as he was. He does not know whether he set out to kill himself or to seek help. But in the end, ill and looking like a complete tramp, he reached the Polish Embassy. The consul called “Barka”—an organization helping Poles return home in difficult situations. Jurek was given a ticket to Bolesławiec. After returning, he continued to drink.
“It was like in London: I drank, I passed out in the street, and an ambulance took me away,” he recounts his return. “When they took me to the emergency department again, the doctor who admitted me put it plainly, without beating around the bush. He told me I would die if I kept drinking. He could send me to rehab, but afterward I would do whatever I wanted. I went through detox, therapy, and started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Jurek approached the meetings with some distance. He did not skip them, but he did not feel entirely comfortable there. “I won’t say that I was captivated by them, but I went with the persistence of a fanatic,” he recounts. “I experienced an epiphany later, during the Days of Sobriety in Krzeszów. For the first time, I went to confession and spoke with Father Bronek, a priest who ministers to alcoholics. I waited a long time to confess to him, almost until midnight. In the morning I received Communion and took part in the Stations of the Cross. It was a new day of sober living for me. My spirituality awoke. I stopped being a wreck without feelings or faith.”
Jurek says that later miracles began to happen. He left the homeless shelter, found a better job and an apartment. The AA fellowship helped him with this. “That epiphany which came in Krzeszów still stays with me,” he concludes his story. “The support at the meetings gives me a great deal. I can draw goodness from my sobriety. Piotr Nagiel’s concert is a personal matter for me; I’m doing it for myself, for the fellowship and for sobriety.”
Piotr Nagiel’s concert – February 2
The concert, conceived by Jerzy Pietrzak and organized by the “Przemiana” Association, will take place on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. Admission ticket: PLN 20, available for purchase at the “Perfekt” Travel Agency at Sierpnia '80 Street, at the headquarters of the “Przemiana” Association on Komuny Paryskiej Street, and at Forum cinema at the Tourist and Cultural Information Point (the desk by the cinema ticket counters). The “Istotne informacje” portal and newspaper are the event’s media patron.
(information: Grażyna Hanaf)