Blogging Friends

Two of my blogging friends have gone cold - they haven't posted in nearly a month now, which is very unusual.  I hope they aren't drinking again -  I hope they are just busy with other stuff, but I have a funny feeling.

It's not like we got to know each other outside of the blogosphere, but I still felt there was a connection, what with living with alcohol issues and sharing our thoughts online in this most intimate way with basically strangers.  It is a curious feeling listening and reading all about the struggles of moving away from alcohol when you have no real chance of over meeting in real life.  But it was a connection regardless and it is a loss of connection now that they have stopped updating.

It is remarkable that I will lie in bed at night and quote the name of the blog (for example I would call me Last 100 Days as an Alcoholic if I was talking about this blog) to my wife when i bring up what was written in conversation.  I'm not sure if this is a sad indicator of something, but there you go...

So it is a little disconcerting that a couple of the crowd have fallen silent.  I hope they come back, there is nothing to hide, just being honest and present is such a big part of the journey.


This is an image of the little mouse that has become part of our family - called either little whitey or snowflake depending on who you ask.  He is very tough and handles being carried around like a toy whenever the girls get the chance.  That he is still with us after four weeks is testament to his resilience.

80th Birthday

My wife's grandmother turned 80 on the weekend.  Betty is a beautiful, resilient woman who is still a vibrant, contributing member of the family.  We had a simple spit roast without any gourmet touches, as per Betty's instructions, as she isn't fond of 'fancy food'.

The Harmonica Recital before Luncheon!

Most people were drinking and Betty made a point of sharing that I have gone past six months without alcohol.  Betty's dead husband was alcoholic, so she still looks at me warily as though she can imagine what I am capable of.  It is a cold reminder of what I am moving away from.

Last time we had a get together, of course I was drunk and it seems I was singing(?)  Betty fancies herself as a singer, always has through her life.  After Betty's 82 year old sister finished her harmonica recital (!! - I had tears in my eyes when she said she had to play before she ate otherwise food would get caught it the harmonica) - Betty invited me to sing as well.  "Come on, there's only a few of us who sing, let's show them" Betty said conspiratorially.

And I couldn't remember if I could sing or if I had with Betty before.  But obviously I had, when I was obviously drunk.  Like that time in Ireland when I got up to sing in front of the whole wedding party and sort of just fell over, a drunken mute.  Without the alcohol I was frigid and I said something about not singing today.  Another sad example of being so drunk I can't remember even singing with my great grandmother...

Betty sang Sinatra's 'My Way', and we all clapped and everyone kept drinking and I was occupied taking photos and cooking the spit roast.  So the urge to drink wasn't there, but the memory, or maybe the imagined memory of me last time I saw 80 year old Betty, singing, was enough to keep me focused.

The Simple Honesty

Waking up and gripping the side of the mattress with both hands
"I'm sober?" and thinking for a second "Yeah, well...
slowly recalling that I'm sober,
for like SIX MONTHS now.

Such a luxury to just lie in bed for a silent minute,
without the taste of acetate,
without the dull grind of a hangover headache,
without the urgency to jump up and piss out all that urine first thing in the morning.

The simple honesty of being alcohol free, knowing I will never let myself
down again, because I don't drink anymore. 
The simple honesty of being able to talk to people who are
drinking beer and say without blinking that I have had my life's share of alcohol.
The simple honesty of not hiding alcohol, or making excuses for buying it, or stopping off at places to drink.
The simple honesty of simple honest living - playing with the kids, feeding the chickens, going to the library.

It is such a relief to be going in the right direction, one simple, honest day at a time.

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

too old to cry, too young to die

What's the matter with you?
You've been down all day
What happened to you
To make you feel that way?


Just heard the news that Urge Overkill will be playing some festivals in Australia this summer. Don't get me wrong, I won't be going, but it does give pause for some reflection. This song was an anthem for awkwardness when I was nineteen.

I was full of bravado and headstrong and I distinctly remember saying to myself "I can handle drinking as much as I want, I can handle drugs as much as I want - I'll be fine, I'll get back on track, I'm just having my drug / drinking stage." So I ignored the warnings and the hype and fell away from my more cautious and sensible friends and dived headfirst into the dropout counter-culture.

Like they say in the classics, there are some things you just can't un-see, and I guess that would be what I will share from this period. The highs, the loneliness, the searing depths of severe depression, the shameful humility of being a no-one.

But would I change it all?  Phew, I am so grateful for where I am today...

Fitter Happier More Productive Checklist


Have taken a quick self assessment of my life against the Radiohead Fitter Happier More Productive Index, and here are the results.  The Lyrics are in bold with my report next in italics.  Makes for some sobering reading.  PLay the music and read my self assessment.  Have a go for yourself with your own song.


more productive (I have always worked two jobs and this hasn't changed since I stopped drinking.  If anything, I am of course more productive because I am not hungover and sullen all the time.  So yes, I am certainly more productive.)
comfortable
not drinking too much
(Of course, not drinking at all makes a difference...)
regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
(Well I walk/run for at least 30mins every single day)
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
at ease
(My pervading sense of self loathing and anxiety has subsided, So I am more at ease)
eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)
a patient better driver
a safer car (baby smiling in back seat)
sleeping well (no bad dreams)
no paranoia
(Check, yes, yes and yes, all's well in the domestic department, am being very conservative and calm and considered around the house - my wife doesn't know what I have become - she says she doesn't know the man I am today compared with the man she married.  Not sure if this is an entirely bad thing...)
careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)
keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)
(Nope, no drinking, and while we're here haven't been in contact with old friends because I don't like talking about how I have stopped drinking as the only conversation - it's boring and possibly highlights what a drunken dickhead I may have been at times)
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in wall)
favours for favours
(Is this networking - where we pretend to be friends and interested in someone's kids for the sake of an order?  I can feel the vomit gurgling in my throat...)
fond but not in love
(Funny, this is something quite distinct from stopping drinking - more the comfortable familiarity of time that has leaned our relationship an steady acceptance, but in love, still. Aren't we? I think..)
charity standing orders
on sundays ring road supermarket
(Walking around the mega-hardware store with my daughters at the traditional peak drinking times of Friday afternoons or Sunday afternoons - and thinking to myself - do these guys get it?  It beer o'clock!!  But they don't care and are buying gadgets and screws and stuff like alcohol was never invented.)
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)
car wash (also on sundays)
no longer afraid of the dark
or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
(But trying to keep some youthful spontaneity)
nothing so childish
at a better pace
slower and more calculated
(I was always so horrified of becoming a staid, reliable middle aged man with mortgage and two perfectly groomed children - so I thought drinking was somehow caught up with this idea of the flawed creative soul.  It wasn't - I was kidding myself and terrified of taking the next step.  So I am taking the next step, sober and aware and basically a bit out of my comfort zone but it's not that bad once you have a good night's sleep and work out your plan of attack)
no chance of escape
now self-employed
concerned (but powerless)
(I have resigned myself to this, and am at peace with being another unit in suburbia.  I can make my difference in other ways)
an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)
will not cry in public
less chance of illness
tires that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)
a good memory
still cries at a good film
still kisses with saliva
no longer empty and frantic
(More calm and at peace and content knowing that I am a brittle human with deep scars and flaws and that that is just who I am - no changing that anymore, I am sort of at peace with it.  And it's not that bad to me anymore anyway.)
like a cat
tied to a stick
that's driven into
frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness) (
But not scared, in awe at the epic scale of life and how imperfect it is, but at peace and accepting of it.)
calm
fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics

The Alchemy of Suffering

If there is a way to free ourselves from suffering
We must use every moment to find it.
Only a fool wants to go on suffering.
Isn't it sad to knowingly imbibe poison?
Seventh Dalai Lama

Have been flipping through Matthieu Ricard's Happiness A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill  (I bought it in 2007 and it appeared on my bedside table every now and then like I was reading it).  I didn't actually read it and still haven't.  So I guess you won't be getting a review here.  There are plenty of other places to read about it.

But what I will do is use it as a catalyst and inspiration for this post.  Especially this snippet and what it means for me.

Understanding that suffering is central to life, and without one there is not the other is a fundamental launch point for my gratefulness practice.  In other words, if you are alive you must come to know suffering, no matter who you are or what you have done.  Suffering is the human condition.

And drinking is a way of coping with suffering. Although drinking does nothing to alleviate the suffering long term, it actually goes a long way towards increasing your suffering.  So the alcoholic deludes himself that the short term release from the strains of suffering is worth the long term locking down of suffering.

Whilst I used to feel I was 'doing something' about relieving my suffering by drinking, I was actually making things worse.  But there is the instant reward of drunkenness and the busy, active side of drinking that is so alluring.  Despite knowing you are taking poison.

Then you have the shame and self loathing of knowing you are stupid for drinking in the first place, and you are slowly, almost without noticing, sucked into the swirling negative spiral of drinking and beating yourself up about it.  And that's where you'll stay for as long as you let yourself wallow there.

oh, it shits me just even thinking about it...

Sober 170 Days

No matter how you say it, it's basically up to you to make it true...
 Sober for 170 Days - who would've thought?!

There is a lot to be said for being positive and having a clear, calm outlook.

And exercising everyday for the last fifteen days, this is the latest thing I am sticking to.

If you are just starting out off the drink, or have been struggling, keep at it.  The rewards are there.

Teenage Drinking

Every morning before school all the crew would meet by the bike track and smoke cigarettes.  Bikes skewed against the fallen tree trunk and tart smoke first thing in the morning, spitting on the ground between our shoes.  Holding the cigarette like it was a dart, between middle finger and thumb and listening to Farley, still chubby even though he was older at sixteen and always had stories of how his brothers had been doing stuff.  Farley with the fat tongue, slobbering as he spoke his rehearsed story that was mostly pure fiction.

The third last day of school was a crowded rush of last classes and empty classrooms, with chalkboard notes Year 8 -Video in Room 22 leading whoever did turn up to a darkened room with a National Geographic wildlife documentary on replay.  Evidence that even the teachers were off school a few days early.  So it might have started with a whisper but by morning break it had gathered some momentum and a half dozen had agreed to skip class tomorrow.

The girls were coming too, which was a major coup - like skittish deer they were intrigued and curious but would scatter at the slightest change of plans or other offers.  So to keep the tension there, I suggested my mother's house as the venue.  A smallish house she had just bought with her divorce settlement.  She gave us the choice of a microwave or a VCR, and my sisters outvoted me 2:1 for the VCR.

That afternoon I hunched over my sister's boyfriend's car, wrangling a deal out of him.  I had a fistful of five dollar notes, and a handwritten list in girlish script - pregnant a's and doe eyed e's.  We drove through a bottle shop and emerged with a two clinking bags filled with liqueurs and mixer drinks and little spirit bottles of bourbon and vodka.  He took $10 for doing the favour.

On my way to the bike track the next morning, I watched my mother's car go by and, once she was out of sight, turned and rode back home.  Soon after, some friends were helping empty ice bags into coolers and unfold deck chairs.  And then, like a herd of cats, the girls arrived, said a cursory hello and unpacked their drinks and snacks and sat around the backyard.  By ten o'clock, there were fifteen of us, drinking and smoking and getting stunned with early morning spirits.

Welcome to teenage drinking heaven, 1989.

Steps to Simply Grateful

The Grateful List.  Spent the three days of the long weekend enjoying family and on a road trip to the mountains.  No alcohol for the first time in twenty years - this is like living another life.  Was fresh and walk/running each morning.

1. Grateful to have friends who lent us their house at short notice. 

2. Grateful for friends who have children a similar age to ours so the toys were perfectly relevant (and prompted one of my daughters to whisper "How come we don't have as many good toys as Kira?")

3. Grateful for the chance to walk the city and buy a couple of signed prints from two artists at the markets.

4. Grateful for taking the time to catch the monorail (I know it's a tourist trap, but the kids love it) and seeing the city through the eyes of a visitor.

5. Grateful for the chance to share Indonesian food with my family, and the kids for trying it.

6. Grateful for walking around the Botanic Gardens in the mountains, and for bearing with the chilly air.

7. Grateful for seeing my stairs, which I just completed in the backyard at home, compare with the stairs at the Botanic Gardens.
My 'recovery steps' literally built with the free time
from not being drunk/hungover on the weekends
Stairs at the Botanic Gardens, with my little pink daughter.

8. Grateful for eating out on a public Holiday and not having everyone have to watch me fill up on alcohol.  Grateful for being able to drive on the weekend, without worrying about being pulled over.

9. Grateful for watching the Grand Final sober, and going for a walk afterwards.

10 Grateful for being able to share my sober experiences with a loyal bunch of followers through this blog - it is such a great support, so thank you, you are officially part of the team!