Ravaged by years of alcoholism, Gale Lamont was at rock bottom when she started a very special choir that ended up saving her life.
Three years ago, Gale Lamont spent Christmas alone in a darkened room, surrounded by empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays.
Her 50th birthday was just a month away. She had been trying to stop drinking for 10 years and been in rehab more than 20 times, but the longest she had stayed sober was 75 anxious, miserable days.
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Her friends and family were sick of trying to help her, only to see her slide further into the abyss.
“I got to the point I wasn’t going to beat this,” she says. “I was going to die and I was going to meet my maker drunk.”
After two more weeks of solid drinking — she did not leave her couch to change or go to the toilet — Gale called an ambulance to take her to Royal North Shore Hospital, where she had become well-known among emergency department staff.
The psychiatric registrar, aware of Gale’s 22 attempts at rehabilitation, suggested a different option for her 23rd.
In the past, she had tried 28-day programs at private clinics, but this time, Gale went to Selah, a 10-month rehabilitation service run by The Salvation Army.
What happened next was nothing short of a Christmas miracle. Her 23rd rehab worked.
Slowly, over those 10 months, Gale regained the things she’d lost to alcohol over 30 years — her family, her dignity and her identity.
For almost three years now, Gale has been living the fulfilling, sober life which she’d always dreamed of and, this Christmas, she hopes to inspire others to do the same through her choir, the Selah Soul Sisters, which gives a voice to women recovering from addiction.
Selah is a rehabilitation centre for women on the NSW Central Coast, run by The Salvation Army.
Unlike other facilities, which keep patients for 28 days, Selah’s patients stay for 10 months.
The course is designed to not only treat alcoholism and other addictions, such as drugs or gambling, but help women come to terms with their demons. It also supports their return to the community.
It’s not glamorous. Gale was treated like a “princess” at private treatment clinics, but says there are no princesses at Selah.
Women share bedrooms, do housework or gardening and have to learn to get along with each other.
Slowly, Gale walked through the 12 steps — admitting her powerlessness over alcohol, turning her will over to God as she understood him, making amends — and reclaimed her life.
Gale believed it was the Salvos’ emphasis on Christian spirituality that worked for her.
“When I arrived here, I felt compassion,” she says. “In all of those other programs, the emphasis is not on spirituality. And addiction is physical, mental, emotional, but mostly spiritual.
“I could liken it to a candle. Mine was almost out. The whole time I was drinking, I was praying. I would pray, ‘God help me, God help me, God help me’.”
Soon after she arrived, Gale set up the Selah Soul Sisters choir. She had been a talented young singer, but alcoholism had derailed her singing dreams.
This was a way for Gale to find her voice — literally.
After 10 months, Gale “graduated” from Selah, but settled nearby so she could be close to her support network and carry on training the choir.
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As Gale says, the Selah Soul Sisters allows women to lift their voices to the heavens in gratitude for the second chance they’ve been given. “It’s very therapeutic,” she says.
“We’re never going to be the Vienna Boys’ Choir, but it shows us, ‘I can do this, I’ve been given this gift.’ And it’s about having fun.”
Read more of this story in the December issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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