Drinking for breakfast

Used to wait for everyone to leave for work in the morning, then I would stumble out of bed and pour myself a big warm glass of red wine and drink it in the morning sunlight.
With the birds tweeting and the grey suits piling out of the train station.  Nine floors up watching them all scurry off to their desks and eat tuna from tins.
I would be smoking and listening to this song.  Thought it was fucken heaven, I did.

100 Days Sober


There.  Did it.  Now I can shut down this indulgent crap and get on with life.




Now I am well rested, calm and able to reflect with a measure of sobriety, I am sad to the point of tears.  It is such a fucking shame I was a stumbling drunk for so many years.

The chances I let slip, the opportunities I worked so hard for to sweep away with a drunken flick of my wrist, the friends I embarrassed and shamed who quietly faded away, the precious moments I sullied with my red faced drunken presence.  Treating life like it was some cheap fucking experiment.

Starting things with clear headed good intentions and inevitably failing with foggy hangovers.

Devising amazing drunken schemes and plans, only to wake up to a pad full of unintelligible scribble.

And resolutely defending alcohol to the death.  It was never the alcohol, it was – it was always something else.
 
Now, at 100 days, looking back it seems such a fucking waste.  An angry, pointless waste of everyone’s time and potential.  Sticking my finger up at the world.

Completely utterly spent.  Now I am just cruising on this lighter than air sensation that it doesn’t matter so long as I don’t drink and everything is just fucking rosy.


The Voice in Your Head

Drinking was a means to an end - escaping the incessant chatter of that negative voice in my head.

The voice in my head was busy keeping my past alive and in the present, whilst also in constant anxiety about the future.  "You aren't like that" it would hiss, "you've always been a bit lazy," it reminded me each time my motivation wavered, "you were never good enough."

The voice in my head kept the most embarrassing and humiliating failures and inadequacies of my past alive and in the now.  So I was a walking talking example of all my previous fuck ups.  And it was stifling - there was nowhere to go because the future became a foregone conclusion.

So I would just drink.  And mourn.  Mourn my losses and what could have been if only for the voice in my head.  And drinking alone fed the voice in my head with even more of that endless downward spiral of negative self talk.  It was quite gloomy and dank at the bottom. 

And most hopeless of all, once you finally reach what seems like a never ending rock bottom after so many other rock bottoms, it is a complete dead end.  No way out.

One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head,
as you would smile at the antics of a child

(Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now)

And that's what happened - like all torture, self torture has a moment of utter peace and serenity where the torture becomes farcical and ridiculous, and you can see it simply for what it is.  Torture.

Here is a simple mindfulness meditation you can do right here, right now to escape the voice in your head, even just for the moment

1.  Sit comfortably.  Take a few full breaths and scan your body for any areas of tension.  Relax and release these areas with each exhale.  Feel how your muscles and tendons loosen as you breathe out tension and rigidity.  Sense the weight of gravity connecting your body to the earth, feet to the floor, body on the chair or floor.

2.  Simply observe the movement of breath on your body.  In and out.  Be conscious of your breath and as it happens, don't control it, just be aware of the rise and fall of your chest.  Tune into the rhythm of your breath.

3.  Call to mind a time in your life when you felt at peace with yourself.  Connect with this memory, flesh out the details, what do you see?  What do you hear?  Be in the moment with the place - where you outside in nature, what sounds can you hear?  Let yourself feel the sensations and emotions in this memory.

4.  Notice how you didn't have to force the pleasant feelings and sensations - they arose naturally within you.  Notice how you were lifted free of distractions, you were present with what was happening.  Remember how good it felt.

5.  Now, know this moment, right here and now, is a perfect moment.  It doesn't have to be manipulated.  It is waiting to welcome you, each and every time you follow this ritual and enter the meditation.  The possibility for peace, and escape from the voice in your head is present for you now in this very moment.

6.  Accept that your mind is your home, and following your breath is a simple path to escape and freedom.

Patience

Now I'm a very impatient person.

I still decide my way home each day by which light is green, so I don't have to wait at lights.
If it's a green arrow, I'll go that way.  Each day has a different drive home. 

Impatient like not bothering to read fiction anymore, in case I spend time reading the first thirty pages and then it sucks.  Or hire a DVD in case it sucks, and have a late fee. 

Or fuck around trying to get drugs when I used to do drugs - I couldn't be bothered fucking around with all the organizing and the cash and the meeting and the talking to some dopehead as if I give a fuck.  So I went off drugs.  But alcohol - it was always there, easy, drive through, no need for a fridge, go to a different bottleshop each day, do it alone, no need to make smalltalk.

So impatient that having gone sober now for eighty odd days, I expect, no I feel entitled to some sort of revelation.  Like something should scream out to me and declare that my new sober life should be - ta daa! What?  Um, it hasn't happened yet. 
So I'm teetering on the edge of some midwinter blues, just to sully my sobriety. 
And I don't want to talk about it and I am sort of not giving a fuck.

It's just that I have a GOAL VOID at the moment.  That's what I call it, when I drank I used to have a daily carnival reward of sloshing glorious Hunter Valley Shiraz or South Australian Merlot or Coonanwarra Cab Sauv into big globular goblets and strutting around the house or my garden with some insane drunken thought process going on.  It was comforting and a reward in itself. 

So I looked forward to it each and every day.  Now, without that afternoon tingle, I am at a crossroads and the fear of making a decision is fucking paralyzing.  Like-lying-in-bed-with-the-covers-up-re-reading-old-books-paralyzing.

So I've been going around half pissed off at everyone and the world because I am too scared to jump and make a decision.  And my impatience is killing me for it.  I need a direction and a decision but fear is stopping me and the impatience is making it just completely fucking bullshit.

Weekend Away

Is the first time I have been away sober - and I made it through the weekend just fine.  Earlier times giving away drinking had come undone on occasions like this, where I would somehow rationalize drinking and find myself a boring drunk again.  But not this time.  As I explained when a friend asked "So, is it hard knowing you can't drink?"  And I answered totally honestly "Nope - there's nothing really to think about or discuss - the decision has been made - I'm sober - and that's it.  It's a done deal.  I don't drink.  Simple."

Christmas in July
8 children, 4 couples, 3 ducks, 2 chickens, 1 pork shoulder, Zero alcohol.
We stayed in a huge farmhouse - cool outside but lovely and warm inside.
Here's some of the pork shoulder we roasted on a spit - just delicious.

And she nodded and that was good enough for her.  So instead I busied myself with other distractions - cooking, tending the fire and taking photos - plus spending real time with my daughters and their friends.  It was easy - a couple of times I found myself feeling different for not having a drink in my hand, so I had a bottle of water to suck from, then later in the evening I graduated to coke to keep me awake.  Plus plenty of earl grey tea.  Just being sober and reading my book on the lounge was relaxing.

The Calm Sheer Terror

His death, I imagine, was like any other death  - a silence and a stillness.  Except he wasn't still exactly, R was dangling over the stair rail, his dirty, bare feet touching heels.  And after a spasm or two, he was still - a corpse hanging like some limp decoration to surprise whoever opened his front door.  It wasn't me.


It will be five years since my step brother R killed himself.  R was 29.  At this time of year, a few weeks after winter solstice, dusty, gusty gales wither your skin to wrinkles.  Distracted and irritable from the wind, R quietly retired from his struggle and made his final lonely decision.

R and I became step-brothers in the noisy confusion of our early teens.  R was two years younger than me, broad shouldered, sandy blonde, surfer, motocross rider, bit of a rebel hanging with the Led Zep and Surf crew.

R sometimes struggled with authority, or getting what he wanted without getting into trouble, or misunderstood, or into a fight or just plain walking out.  But in saying that, R was no different from the rest of us growing up and testing our boundaries.

I remember getting drunk with him many times.  I would see R every few months or so and R would have an injury, or have lost his job, or be moving house.  Always unstable or just not settled and getting on with it.

Times changed.  I got married.  R split with his high school girlfriend for the last time and spiralled into some drug fucked arrangement with a fellow user.  R's arm darkened with greenish black knots of tattoos and his cheeks hollow and flecked with pimples.  Last time I saw him, he was kneeling by the side of the road, smoothing concrete, his job.
"I've just moved in across the road," I said, "Come up and have a beer if you want?" i can't remember if I was drunk, but I probably was, or well on the way.
"Yeah, well I'm at work, don't finish till four," R said looking up.
"Oh, well, "  I trailed off, and waved to him - I wasn't waiting, there was drinking to do.
Almost not worth sharing how mundane and ordinary it was.

R's funeral was like all suicide funerals - a who's who of people who cared but watched helplessly as R spiralled down and eventually away.  We milled around heard a grainy playback of "And the boys light up" by Australian Crawl - so inappropriate I thought, but then...  we all moved onto a club and started drinking and blinking back tears - me jostling for room at the bar before the tab ran dry.


This time of year, I think of R, and his grim decision that afternoon to take action.  And the way he would have coolly planned the details, getting the rope ready.  How R could actually do this, knowing it was his last hour on earth, his hands working, tying, threading.  Testing the knots to see if it would hold his weight.  And R nodding to himself,  and standing up one last time, and the calm sheer terror of ignoring his inner voice, and instead stepping up on the chair with forensic certainty, and balancing for a final breath,

fog just on sunrise from my bedroom

Getting Drunk an Australia Rite of Passage

Is Getting Drunk a Australian Rite of Passage?  No.  It isn't.  Simple.

Getting drunk as a youth is something most of us endure.  But is has nothing to do with Australian-ness or our national identity.  Sheesh, who came up with that stupid fucking idea? 

The sooner we stop making "excuses" and "covering up" for being drunk the better it is for everyone.

I'm sure Canadians or Californians or Glaswegians or Greek Cypriots have some sort of drinking experience in their youth, and I'm sure it hasn't somehow become entwined in their identities.

Let's separate simply getting drunk from any other connotations and call it what it is, getting drunk.

There, said it.  Whaddya reckon?

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