Last 100 Days Alcoholic

Back to School

2012-02-10T06:18:00.000+11:00

A full time Digital Media course for the next six months is sure to test my comfort zone. Going back to school certainly puts me out there and exposes me to a whole new world of experience.

At once it is a challenge to have mortgage repayments and meet the daily distractions of the modern family but also keep on top of the course work. So things are buzzing along at a frenetic rate around here, and keeping mindful and maintaining a positive grateful presence is even more crucial.

This weekend, just to add another layer of fuzz, features a wedding where my wife is one of the bridal party. So her exercise and preparations have reached a denouemont and she is leaving tonight for the big event. Today I have to get a haircut (it is longish and foppish to go with my student-look) and make sure I make the three hour drive to the little mountain village by lunchtime tomorrow for the ceremony. A big Italian wedding in the mountains - should be something impressive.

And being sober is liberating. Just that - i have time to study, have time to spend with the girls, have time to work on myself - like tonight, a house to myself and what would usually have happened would be a marathon drinking session, starting around eleven am.

Tonight I will rest and prepare, like all evenings are for these days. One time my wife had a conference and was away for five nights and I drank liters of wine and she came home to a blubbering wreck, my blood tests showed my liver was failing. I used to do that to myself - like put myself through a gruelling drinking expedition as though I was on some alcohol endurance test. It is not what life is about anymore. Stay sober and be good to yourself...

All the Unborn Chickens

2012-02-05T20:46:00.000+11:00

Sad news during the week - four one night and then, two days later, another three, leaving just one peep peeping chicken blinking at me from her perch. The fox is back.
Mercifully, I took her down to a friend's house and she is settling in just fine. Back here, things are quiet down the backyard and the weeds are slowly bending up towards the light.

Reminds me of one of my favorite songs, where there is the lament for all the unborn chickens from all those millions of eggs from the factory farms. As if the eggs would ever be born, or ever even be fertilized...

So it's back to the drawing board for a new and improved fox proof chicken house. I haven't made things any easier, I have let the chickens run free range everyday and although they have last nearly a year, all it takes is an errant fox or do and they are slaughtered.

Just being a bit sentimental, but it does really get to me when the birds are totally free and scavenging over such a beautiful, wide, area for so long and then they are simply disappeared completely one day. My heart would race as I ran through the undergrowth, and every other time they would be there, just scratching around, under some thicket of bushes.

The neighbor was upset too. They promise they will get on board and help fix the place up when the husband gets back from Afghanistan.

So there's still plenty to be grateful for. We have 18 eggs left from the girls and will eat them with gratitude knowing the next batch will be laid soon, but not just yet. Funny to be eating the thing you are grateful for, but what other way to show our appreciation?

Living Without Alcohol

2012-01-29T23:50:00.000+11:00

I would like to nominate Mrs D is Going Without as an insightful blog, regularly updated with her personal observations and day to day experiences as she moves away from a life of too much booze.

Mrs D puts her drinking front and center and relates her experiences as a mother, wife and student, and shows how her life has changed since she stopped drinking in the past year. I like her quiet honesty and genuine realism - it is hard not to be drawn into her unique New Zealand perspective. Take some time and catch up with where she's at if you get a moment.

Children are the future

2012-01-21T20:40:00.001+11:00

In all seriousness, considering the disgraceful nonsense that has virtually ended my family, it is time for a Whitney Houston interlude.

Let me set the scene. 1986. Taffeta, the heady intoxicants of hairspray and maybe some fog-machine smoke, and Whitney's exhausting and indulgent reflections on how the next generation demands our respect and attention. My memory is of my 12 year old School Graduation, where for some reason my mother had me kitted out in a little tuxedo, and I was dancing with girls with braces and pimples and we would sort of just walk away from each other afterwards.

After the show, we wet to the beach with the mothers and the other kids and as we drove down to the beach my other had Whitney belting out her solo on the cassette deck. The words about loving yourself and having a sense of pride were ringing in my ears...

And to think back just last week, my mother having her lawyer send over a four page document featuring utterly false nonsense.

What would Whitney say...

Fences and Themes

2012-01-21T19:38:00.000+11:00

Your favorite book or movie is brilliant because you strongly identify with the theme, and it has made an impact on you. And in some way you have made it a part of your worldview, so you carry that story, and the essential nuts and bolts of the theme, with you everyday. It has changed you as a person.

But in the nasty, brutish and instant reality of day to day life, that theme is tested and pulled apart often enough for you to question it. And as life thunders and rolls by each day, you move away from one theme, and closer to another.

One of my motif themes was the inviolability of family, a pretty basic theme, common across all cultures and throughout time. Without some kind of family kinship, you're up against the world by yourself, which doesn't do much good for your chances of survival. Plus, it gets lonely trudging through the snow all by yourself.

So the last few weeks, where my family has folded in on itself for the sake of petty rivalries, is a genuine world-view-changer.

Family, of course, is a lovely ideal, an institution worth fighting for, worth sacrificing for, worth sort of making your basic motivator for almost everything.

Just talking with the in-laws, and staying resolutely on task, (which metaphorically enough is pulling down an old fence and rebuilding a new one) whilst another part of the family seethes and schemes and sees to their twisted agendas. It is a theme shifter.

My old theme was a glorious mash up of Family Ties, the entrepreneurship of Cocktail (and the alcohol stuff was beguiling) and the studied modern non-conformism of Brave New World.

My new, evolving theme is a tinkling stream of clear water, birdsong silence and the pure humanist wisdom of the recovering alcoholic. With plenty of help from an invisible frog chorus of online friends and confidantes.

The old fence was a prison, holding me back from the quiet sober moments of revelation that life unfurls at the most unexpected times.

The new fence is light, thin aluminum, almost imperceptible against the garden, for security and reassurance, but not overt and threatening.

Themes. Lessons. The gist of the story. Not being attached too strongly to a theme, and letting it drift away, and a new theme to flitter in place.

Where's the White Fedora?

2012-01-19T22:22:00.000+11:00

There was a police woman talking to my wife in the driveway when I drove up this afternoon. Had a court order from my mother for me to stay away for 12 months and not contact her. If I had my way I would prefer 30 years of staying away. By then she would be 97 and I would be the age she is now.

Last time I saw her, last weeks ago or so, i hugged her and we kissed and i whispered to her that I didn't do what they were accusing me of. And of course I didn't. But how can I categorically prove I didn't? Like a scene from Catch-22.

So we have to meet in court this coming Tuesday. My wife is calm and confident. She maintains we are passing trajectories, us on the way up and my mother and my sisters on the way down. I am learning how to forgive in real time, although I would love to place a withering curse on the sour witches...

It's all about getting the job done around here and staying focused on what we do best - NOT getting sucked into the whirling vortex of family shit that is a complete timesuck with riddles and questions for answers.

It's all about moving forward and being present and, well, just cool. Plus, we went out and bought a white shirt and some taupe trousers for me to wear to court. I looked for a white fedora and perhaps a walking cane (maybe also in white) but there were none. Keep you posted...

The Fish Rots from the Head

2012-01-15T13:38:00.002+11:00

Ending is better than mending.

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

Busy dismantling our warehouse and preparing for a new year working in more flexible arrangements.

Is such a release to be moving on, with fresh vision and a completely new outlook for the year ahead. Packing boxes and making all the trips to the recycling center. There is a bit of grieving and letting go, knowing we are moving on but the general feeling is positive.

Our friends came around on Friday and we shared a fire in the backyard - nothing beats a crackling fire, sitting on a log, talking. Friends had wine and cigarettes, but there was never a compulsion or a feeling of awkwardness that I wasn't drinking. Not from me, but I definitely did recall times where this couple had felt in unfamiliar territory with me drinking ginger beer - like when their wine glasses actually ran empty and I was not constantly refilling it for them.

Meeting friends and not drinking is something that just comes so much more naturally now, we all sort of know I don't drink and it is just what happens. Like if I was gluten intolerant or diabetic I guess - there is the certain 'otherness' about not drinking that can throw people who only remember you as a drinker at first.

Like the old ideas that people who don't drink are less fun, or less open to risk taking, or simply dull. That is simply not true - it is quite clear that at "three quarter time" of the drinking session, everyone else tends to get sloppy, less able to clearly share what they are thinking and just plain sleepy - whilst sober me is pinging away on fresh air and just enjoying the moment.

The Huxley snatch at the beginning of the post is about moving on, how sometimes, dead things should be left to rot. There is no point digging up a rotting corpse and poking a stick up it's butt - then to smile and nod and pretend it's not a flyblown, fetid tangle of gristle.

Just leave it in the ground to do it's thing with the worms and all that. That is my relationship with certain family members, and I'm OK with that. All is forgiven and the cycle just has to take it's course. I have stopped poking the stick and waving fly spray and pretending.

From here, it's all about keeping the gratitude and being ever mindful that the fish rots from the head.

So let's all keep caring for what goes on in our heads. Every thought, every feeling turned into action, has an impact. So keep a measure of restraint and discipline with what you think, and breathe before you speak.

January

2012-01-07T01:10:00.000+11:00

I don't work in January. Just don't schedule any work, but have some vague plans for building stuff around the house, all the while knowing my real goal is to just drink myself into oblivion everyday. Get up hungover, slurp some wine or have a beer down the back where no one can see, and try to keep that buzz going all day without stumbling or talking shit. Walk the tightrope, until the afternoon when I can 'officially' be half drunk and be seen prancing around with a wineglass and purple teeth.

Well that's what used to happen, anyway.

So January 2012 is the first sober one. I'm prepared - I had six cubic meters of river rock and gravel delivered on my driveway (just before Christmas) so I can spend the mornings shovelling and wheel-barrowing and placing the rocks in the garden. Most of it is already done, and it has been a great way to get outdoors before the heat sets in and be productive.

So next is the fence, and building the new home office. And you must agree it quickly gets boring writing/reading a post cataloging my work for the month. But you get the picture.

Something about being productive and focused - 'sitting sober' is not a holiday for me.

Why I Will Remember 2011

2011-12-31T22:55:00.000+11:00

I will never forget 2011.

I stopped alcohol, and started working on myself.

Rediscovered that underneath all those years of blushing drunkeness, I am still a worthwhile, lovable human being who responds to encouragement and honesty.

Re-gifted myself time and the ability to calmly accept patience and humility as great personal learning forces.

Learned just to sit quietly and watch the chickens and my adorable daughters and simply let life happen by.

Accepted the power of forgiveness and accepted how powerful just surrendering to forgive others can be such a weight off my shoulders.

Revealed my innermost thoughts to a silent, intelligent audience online who share and support me even when I write things that might not be exactly on topic. The blogging friends are always there, just out of sight, quietly reading.

It is such a source of peace and satisfaction and strength to just know that as my thoughts drip from my fingertips - someone is reading and has been there too.

So thanks for being a huge part of my recovery in 2011 - it is such a powerful tool to have your support and encouragement. I simply could not have done it without you.

Thank you, for your comments, your time and your just being there, I swear I could feel it and it was such a warm sensation to have you share in my recovery and let's look forward to a sober, calm, and honest 2012.

Cruel Mother

2011-12-28T19:24:00.001+11:00

Today I was at the Police Station - my mother has told people I dobbed my sister in dealing drugs. My sister got raided and there is the tax audit of her indoor plant hire business. Things hit the fan. My mother would not open the screen door for my wife and my daughters and I. My daughter was sobbing as my sister spat obscenities and said she would bur my house down. And that I would get bashed.

A truly awful day - the worst day of my life for many years.

My sister has always been in the drug scene - always since 16, and always her boyfriends and the whole scene has always had drugs not far out of reach. So when they started renovating their home, putting on a deck and a swimming pool and buying caravans and 4WDs and motorbikes all the while saying their indoor plant hire business was failing - you get the picture.

So they were raided in early December and the tax office demanded their files for an audit of their tax history.

And where do I fit in?

Well, I have been blamed as the one who called the cops.

Completely fucking Bullshit. Not true. I simply did not do it.

So when my sister hisses she will have someone burn down my house, that men are coming to punch me out, that I better watch my back, I am seriously worried. That's when I left and went with my family to the Police Station.

Now, somehow, I have to prove that I didn't do it.

But what really kills me, what really hurts inside my heart, is the fact that my mother, Margaret, called me this morning to tell me what had happened, and that I was of course the sole suspect for calling the drug squad.

My own mother, calling me out for putting the police on my sister. And standing there, behind her screen door, blinking as though it is a verified truth. It is not. I did not do it.

At once I felt the sheer surge of red pulsing anger well up inside me, and as she bumbled through her reasoning, my heart trilled like fingertips on a drum, I breathed and came to see her for what she has become. A weak willed plaything to be manipulated by my sister at will. To be pitied. I wanted to hit out and cry all at the same time.

Minutes later I was dictating the incident through thick glass at the Police Station.

Christmas Rush

2011-12-22T17:23:00.000+11:00

It's over.
The Christmas Rush has welled up, loomed over us, and crashed over.
My wife and I have put out around 1000 hampers together.
We are both flat, exhausted and nearing hysteria.
It is a combination of sheer tiredness and at the same time pure pride that we have managed to do it again.
Oh, and there's no time for drinking or "celebrating" with drink.
This one's sober and just nice and quiet.

The English Teacher

2011-12-18T22:45:00.001+11:00

My English Teacher took me out when I was 15 and got me drunk. On Teacher's Brand Scotch, believe it or not, and I sat around a table with him, the corner store owner, and his wife, sipping searing hot nips of scotch like - like something out of a movie. Looking back it was borderline abuse, but being there I was more than intoxicated with my English Teacher's mentoring my writing and being a kind of confidante.

It all started when he marked my English papers - and left curled, scrawled notes in green pen with question marks - like "and you think he didn't actually mean it to be read that way?" The comments and notes grew longer and denser and were scribbled in some kind of private frenzy along the white of the margin. Lines and lines of commentary and analysis of what I'd written, as though I was some kind of boy genius.

And I have to admit that I lapped it up. Like any fifteen year old, suddenly swamped with the attention of the head of the English department. He would catch my eye during class so I would answer his question. Like I was saying the obvious. But his rapturous, table-thumping approval intimidated the other boys.

Let's not forget it was an all boys boarding school, where we wore blazers to breakfast and went home once during term. Totally immersed in the gothic architecture, dripping with eroded statues and bronze-green plaques and sepia frames of rugby teams in oversize clothes.

"I know you smoke," He said one time after class. "I'll be down by the rowing sheds after supper."

Intrigued, I duly materialized out of the dark after nine. He was leaning against the shed, smoking already. He handed me one and I awkwardly lit it, making sure the spark light was shielded from the eyes of the dormitory. He said something about what I had written and how he was compiling everything. Keeping it for later.

Weeks later I was in his car, then out into the night and following him in behind the counter of the corner store, to sit at the table with the Teacher's Scotch. I drank it eagerly, (I already knew I was alcoholic, that alcohol was my thing) but with the confidence of knowing I would not get too drunk.

Things were definitely not what I had expected.

Grains of Sand

2011-12-15T04:34:00.000+11:00

Being sober has all the slow burn of the getting of wisdom. Most days there is nothing dramatic or mind blowing - just the steady, cold reality of yourself and the world. Without the get out of jail free card of knowing you can have a drink later on and it will all be fine.

So the revelations come thick and fast early on, when you are learning all about yourself as though you are something new and unexplored. But then after six months, you reach regular roadblocks where your internal dialogue comes up tired and flat and almost ready to submit.

The once seemingly indefatigable enthusiasm of your new found personal insight seems a little over the top. You feel like a bit of a born again virgin and it becomes like you are just another recently sober know it all. But you are really just a grain of sand.

"Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential."
William Thomas

And suddenly it is like you are back at the beginning again. You are humbled and alone and vulnerable and terribly exposed and just seeking all over again. So you have to work harder and delve deeper and try to penetrate beyond, and it is all your own mission.

"It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age."
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

Like learning to become left handed in old age. That awkward moment of expecting respect and seniority but knowing your glaring weakness is exposed like a plump pale belly. Looking at your left handed fingers like they are foreign, willing your brain to grow connecting neurons so things just happen naturally. It takes time, and another 'left hand' - patience.

Foiled, you have to walk away, and look at the problem from another angle. Eying it up and down and across ways as you pace around it, like a fox at the hen house, nudging, touching, feeling. It is right there in front of you yet you can't get it, not yet anyway.

Morris Townsend: For God's Sake! What do you think I am? I'm not good enough for you! Not nearly good enough! What do you want me to do?
Catherine Sloper: I want you to love me.
Henry James, Washington Square

Maybe that is the answer. Maybe you are good enough and maybe you do have to just do the obvious. Stop being distant and critical and rejecting and embrace the fear and Love yourself back.

Dead Chickens

2011-12-09T05:38:00.005+11:00

Pools of feathers. When a chicken dies in free range, often there is just a pool of feathers on the ground. Fluffy, delicate feathers with the white downy edges vibrating in the breeze. It is silent, too. No homely cluck or eager waddle through the undergrowth of fat-rumped birds coming up to meet you. It is pretty devastating to lose your friends to just a quiet nothingness.

On Thursday, one chicken was missing. Then on Saturday we lost another, so we were down to four birds, scratching nervously and looking around with their eight collective eyes for danger. Then on Monday the last four girls disappeared leaving nothing but swirling pools of downy feathers behind. I ran through the bush, ducking through the trees, and nothing but teasing trails of feathers. And of course silence.

As an active alcoholic, this would be an ideal trigger for me to withdraw and nurture an elaborate getting-even scheme against all the imagined perpetrators. As a sober, calm alcoholic, I narrowed it down to two suspects, and by dinnertime we were sitting at the kitchen table of one of them, talking muzzles, new fences and apologies.

Now those amongst you who don't have chickens can be forgiven for underestimating the gravity of the situation. Chickens aren't just birds - they are diligent weed controllers, gregarious garden mates, and generous suppliers of brilliant yellow yolked eggs. It is hard to imagine how much a part of my lifestyle chickens have become, and how much a part of my relaxation and release being in the garden with the birds is. So, they are not just birds and although you can replace them, you don't quickly forget the girls and their habits.

It was agreed the dog had been less judiciously supervised than was usual, and that it had indeed been wandering through the bush. As had another dog, a border collie, black and white, identical to marlan, called star. So there were in fact two culprits. I spoke with Star's owner and she offered to 'reimburse' me immediately. Great. Money is fine, but more important was for this to not happen again.

By lunchtime I was helping catch another 10 pullets at a chicken farm half an hour from here. Ungainly, ochre-orange teenagers with crumpled feathers and gawky gangly legs - shy and skittish and not familiar with human handling - yet. These were the new team. I was in love again and before long, the yard was warm with the gurgle of contented chickens.

Thinking not Drinking

2011-12-05T14:47:00.001+11:00

The Christmas rush is here and everything is busy and orders are flowing and the place is buzzing with activity.

I have been buying truckloads of wine and unloading it into the coolrooms, knowing I will not be drinking any of it. It is a big difference to know that all of the stock will be sold instead of whatever is left that I haven't drunk. Shows how a little restraint is good for business. Which is a funny, strong feeling.

Here comes the first sober Christmas, and I'm feeling fit and functional for the first time in forever. Confident but not complacent.

Fathers

2011-12-03T19:44:00.002+11:00

One ninja was called Mak Deme but I can't remember the other one's name. The ninjas were tumbling through the moist ferny forests of medieval Japan and after five handwritten pages or so had the ultimate final fight - and the story ended with the two ninjas lying dead. Until one of them flicked open an eyelid.

So goes my early writing effort inspired by some movie or book I had been reading at the time. I was about 11 and used to write stories all the time. (One story for my class was about a quokka that became and abbott and went onto to change religion for the other quokkas - inspired of course by Watership Down. A quokka is a rodent like animal from off West Australia FYI).

Anyway, I wrote the Ninja story and pencilled a title page and stapled it all together. Then I left it out for my dad to read - and he read it burping beer from cans (I never drank beer from cans - EVER) while he lay on the lounge. He finished reading it and put it aside and said nothing.

I sat forward, elbows on my knees, waiting for his response. Nothing. So I played it cool and ignored it and went on with whatever I was doing, walking away. The next day, I sort of casually asked what he thought of the story.

"Oh, the one about the Japanese?" He said, nodding his head slowly and exhaling, "I couldn't say their names - what were they called again?"

"Mak Deme and (whatever the other one was)" I said quickly.

"Yeah, well, I dunno about having names like that, they're not real Japanese are they? And you can't really write about stuff that you don't know." He started, and said other stuff but I got the general gist of it.

...---~~```^```~~---...

So I didn't present much of anything to my father over the years. It was brutally honest feedback that, looking back in all fairness, was probably not far off the mark, but for a novice, feeling out my first attempts at things, it was all about rejection. Pretty soon I stopped showing him anything and our conversations became less wordy, more nods and eyebrow raises, until today where we haven't spoken for years.

A huge part of being sober for me has been healing my ability to forgive and to accept that people will not ever change simply because I want them to. People are just people and have their own shit going on and my wanting something from them is way down their list.

So it is about my healing my ability to forgive. Not forgiving was a great sport when I was drunk and sitting looking out at the view, but being sober and finding the ability to live with myself has meant I have to be able to forgive. So I can forgive my dad for being vigilant and critical and having a keen eye for faults - that's what he does. It is about seeing him for who he is, and me for who I can be.

As Good as it Gets

2011-11-28T07:56:00.003+11:00

"When you've given up the drink,

And those nasty cigarettes,

Now I leave the party early, at least with no regrets,

I watch the sun as it comes up, I watch it as it sets,

Yeah, this is as good as it gets"

Just a short one tonight. With apologies to Colin Hay.

I used to hear this one on the radio a couple of years back when I was full on drinking and it sounded like my kind of sobriety. Simple, outdoorsy, using your body, and an honest clarity.

"I like swimming in the sea...

Two Bite Test

2011-11-24T20:37:00.000+11:00

You're sitting in a restaurant - you've just taken up your knife and fork and a couple of bites from your main course to your lips - and the waitstaff hovers over.

"Everything OK?" She smiles.

You have a mouthful and most likely nod and smile and look towards your date for approval - she nods too.

"Great" the waitstaff nods too, "Let's know if you need anything.." and she drifts away.

So today the guy on the radio said that this interchange was formally acknowledging that the meal was satisfactory for consumption and that you would fulfill your obligation to make payment without complaint.

He called it the 'two bite test'

I thought of my unspoken, implied contract as an alcoholic - and how I was beguiled into believing the gentle fantasy of 'getting towards drunk' was a promise of happiness and, quite possibly, happiness plus. Or Super Happiness. Like getting an ice cream, but a double, or instead of a standard holiday, a first class holiday.

Like there was a way to upgrade happiness to a higher and even more thrilling and satisfying emotion.
Or to intensify moments like relaxing Sunday afternoons to a higher plane "Wouldn't it be great to have a beer now?" or other times "Imagine watching this stoned?" - Always thinking that the spice of drugs or alcohol would be just what was needed to add that something extra to the experience.

And it sort of worked - fuck, I had some awesome times and no one can take them away from me - but as a way of life, it just is unsustainable.

So here I am, unplugged, raw and living it real.

I've taken the two bites of sobriety and nodded to the waitstaff that yes, it is fine, and I am ready to proceed.

Curse of Expectation

2011-11-23T14:13:00.000+11:00

When I was a kid they had high expectations for me. You probably know the stereotype; immigrant Irish, thick-fingered father and doting, over protective mother? I showed potential and studied harder than the other kids and was groomed for university and a professional career. Even got academic entry to a boarding school. Then won a place in law school.

Before long, I allowed my preference for drinking and drugs to flourish and soon after allowed depression to fester. I chose not to pursue my degrees. I stepped off of the career conveyor belt into the unknown.

Now, at 37 and 218 days into sobriety, I am able to take stock of where I am at and take full responsibility for my life, and the decisions I have made. It is just where I am at. And it feels pretty fucking good!

But still, there are times when it feels like I should have been something else or that my life is not as good as it might have been. Like I have somehow not lived up to expectation. Expectations of family and peers - that I should have turned out as some sort of career professional at some point. And that any shortcomings or misgivings in my life are a result of that. Like I cannot go back and change what I decided, but that the present situation all stems back to those fateful decisions.

Expectations can be a curse you live with, popping up in the back of your mind at the worst possible times for the rest of your life. Like even today, when a certain thing happens in my business life I can think to myself about what I could have been or what I am not and criticize myself for it. Like the wishes and urging of others was right and what I knew I wanted for myself was wrong.

It is a terrible cancer of self-doubt and analysis paralysis. I catch myself thinking a key moment in my university career over and again as though it is chiselled in stone. The point where, when I was simply exhausted and strung out from drink and drugs and I made the walk to the building to withdraw from the courses.

It is a curse of failure and missing out and not getting the job done. And although it truly was the right decision, and has led me to discover so much about myself, it lingers as a black curse over me. The curse of expectation. Of unfulfilled dreams of others and all that shit.

So my recovery, and my sobriety is to finally settle that curse. To extinguish it and eradicate it from my mental library. It is no longer a key feature of my life montage. It is an episode, or a chapter, for sure, but it not the defining moment.

The curse is now lifted.

Old Paperbacks

2011-11-20T20:12:00.001+11:00

I bought The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when I was a teenager fumbling through a secondhand bookshop. It was probably midwinter and I was probably using money I didn't really have before I would scurry back to my flat and read and drink and smoke rolled cigarettes. There is something about the title that is enough - I never really finished the book - but I can say I have picked it up many times and read parts of it, or it appears on my bedside table at times.

“Next to music beer was best.”

Carson McCullers is the classic alcoholic writer. Dying at 50. An androgynous name. Titles like The Ballard of the Sad Cafe. Stories about 'the south' and 'mutes' and 'blacks' and 'loneliness'.

“I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about -

but just what this real want was she did not know.”

I would sit and read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as if it would reveal something to me. But nothing happened. What I needed was to get out and travel and live and fall in love and get lost and somehow find myself. Instead of sitting on a old mattress reading a musty yellow paperback. Smoking and drinking and nursing my depression.

"The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone."

Drinking was a real prop in those lonely days - a reason to go somewhere, to be somewhere and to motivate me to work. Sad, really. There should be something profound here, but all I can really share is that it was a way to spend the time and grow and experience towards my being sober. As though everything that happened up to this point was all part of the journey of becoming sober.

And not wasting that experience equity - it is far too valuable and hard earned to be simply dismissed as time wasted getting wasted. It is common to all addicts - thrashing against the addiction, stretching it, bending it, pulling away, tearing it up, embracing it - over the years we have all done all of these with our addictions.

Now, let's hope with sustained vigilance I have arrived at some sort of steady truce, and silent understanding that drinking is an awesome ocean that needs respect. And I am powerless and helpless in it. So I don't dare even dip my toe. Just watch from the shore, and watch others surf knowing I can only sink.

"When a person knows and can't make the others understand,
what does he do?"

He is patient and shares his musings in a blog, that's what...

Your Story - Your Turn

2011-11-20T18:54:00.000+11:00

What's your story with drinking?
Share some of your stories here, anonymously if you wish, and take the five question quiz. You can answer as long or as short as you wish, and I'll post all the interviews here so people can read them for all eternity.

1. Have you stopped drinking?

2. How long ago?

3. What was the final straw?

4. How are you feeling right now?

5. What works for you staying sober?

As you can see the questions are very brief and give you as much room to move as you need - maybe a short answer, maybe a longer answer. It is your choice and your answer will reflect what you feel/ think as much as you wish. I will send you a copy before I publish so you can proofread.
Thanks
or you can email here...

Guilty of being Grateful

2011-11-15T19:01:00.001+11:00

Walked 10km along the beach today, had a swim with the girls, then went to a cafe for lunch before plopping the girls asleep into their rooms by 1pm. Perfect weather - 27C, gentle sea breeze, girls in great spirits, simply a beautiful experience all round.

I looked at the girls, eating fish and chips and slurping chocolate milk and caught myself almost repeating something my father would have said at a moment like this. A 'perfect moment' where everything was calm, peaceful and we had experienced a lovely day.

My father would have said something like "You kids don't know how lucky you are," and shaking his head slowly as he looked over at my mother, "when I was your age we used to get fish and chips on special occasions." It was his way of teaching grateful.

One time he even said "You kids don't even know what it's like to be hungry - to be really hungry." As if we were meant to make sense of what he was trying to convey. Of his feeling of hopelessness and fear as a kid with a drunken father who had blown his wage the afternoon he got paid.

It was a curious situation, sitting after a meal with a glowing, satisfied feeling and then the sharp jolt of guilt that came with not knowing how lucky we were. It took me a while to unhinge the idea of guilt and allow myself the sublime pleasure of feeling quietly grateful instead.

Going Sideways

2011-11-13T13:28:00.001+11:00

Jack: Just don't give up, alright? You're gonna make it.
Miles: Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. I'am thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I'm a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage.
Jack: See? Right there. Just what you just said. That is beautiful. 'A smudge of excrement... surging out to sea.'
Miles: Yeah.
Jack: I could never write that.
Miles: Neither could I, actually. I think it's Bukowski.

from Sideways (2004)

Now I loved that movie when I was drinking.

It was about how sometimes life comes and smacks you in the face even when you just want to go on drinking and feeling sorry for yourself.

One of those romantic-drunk movies where the hopeless drunk somehow struggles through and it doesn't all end as a complete and utter tragedy, but near enough.

I used to see life like that - as though we were all trapped in this spinning existential vortex where we were all victims of our desires and that there was not much we could do about it. So getting drunk was a natural and perfectly logical thing to do - hell, we could all be dead tomorrow or something like that. And anyway, it all doesn't matter, so who gives a shit? Let's drink!

...---==*^*==---...

Now, sober 200+ days and working on myself, I don't see life as a sad tragedy where I stumble from one disaster to the next, a victim of circumstance or birth or geography or whatever, endlessly pushing it uphill like Sisyphus. No, I can take responsibility and make positive, affirmative steps that can change my world.

From the banal basics like getting a plumber to change the cisterns so they don't leak (took five years drinking for no action, five months sober to make the call and just three hours to actually fix).

Or stopping my incessant mind chatter on negative ancient history and changing the playlist.

So half my life may be over,
But I do have something to show for it,
And I'd love to share it with you.

There's Something About Friday

2011-11-11T10:44:00.001+11:00

Fridays are different for some reason.
You can drink on a Friday as though it is a sport and talk of drinks in terms of scoring points or kicking goals. You can borrow a drink, or give away drink - the whole drinking culture has it's own economy.

Every Friday.
You can drink a days wages, stay out and stumble home at some hour having forgotten half the night.
And spend Saturday morning gulping water and swallowing tablets.

Every Friday still has the tantalizing open ended promise of drinking. And I don't say no anymore. I just know.
Just know it will have some broke, soggy ending with me being embarrassing...

Just like There's Something About Mary is a comedy, take a look at this trailer re-cut to be a thriller.

Being Normal

2011-11-08T14:44:00.001+11:00

Two ears, one mouth - right?

Part of being a member of the blogging community means I read a lot of other blogs and get close to other people's thoughts and musings by reading through their blogs.
It is great being able to post here and have a loyal reader base who leave comments and follow where I'm at in my own journey - but it is even more important to be out there reading and leaving meaningful and insightful commentary on other people's blogs.

So I've tried to stick with the rule of leaving two comments out there for every post I write - that way I am giving what most bloggers want - some FEEDBACK for fucksake (it can be shockingly lonely poring over a post for hours, not self censoring your most private revelations and then - once you publish it and put it out there, there is like 0 comments sitting there after a few days. Absolutely deafening who-gives-a-shit-silence)

Then there's being an alcoholic blogger as another sort of massive room silencer - you can see me popping up in a crafty-mother-frugality blog or a killer-abs-guy-doing-extreme-exercises blog and the readers going who is this stupid drunk? Is he drunk when he wrote that or what?

Anyway, there are some other blogs out there and I would like to share with you a recent comment I left. It was just fitting and I somehow scraped it out of the ether and it is - three great letters - apt.

This is the comment

Albert Camus noted "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
Addiction is something that privately curses you until you overcome it.
It is always devastating to see someone worn down by addiction.
Here's for all those struggling to survive with all sorts of addictions and hoping they can come over to sobriety and see it's not such a bad place.

You can read the post here

Globally Grateful

2011-11-05T05:47:00.002+11:00

I work with crazy people, all the time. Not crazy as in zany or plain stupid - the real motherfucking crazy people - like dual diagnosis challenging behavior types with intellectual disabilities and psychosis. Rainbow tic tac boxes full of medication tablets and inch thick behavior plans and one on one monitoring and - you get the picture. It can be, as the name suggests, fucking challenging. Like about three hours ago.

The Waiting Game

Right now he is lying asleep, dozing fitfully with the obligatory snail's sliver of silver dribble on the corner of his mouth. And I am cowed over the laptop, typing this in the darkened kitchen. Last night just getting him to sleep was a test of my patience, my thresholds, my mindfulness. He has demolished rooms and furniture with his strong arms and, even though he is deaf, blind and unable to speak, he can communicate in his own overt way how he is feeling.

And the consensus is he is terrified. Living with a catalog of diagnoses, feeling a parade of fumbling support workers and staff each try their particular style of care, and all the while being effectively de-sensitised to it through his crippling disabilities. His receptive senses are restricted to his soft fingers, and his feel of vibrations and surfaces.

So it is hardly surprising he gets frustrated and struggles to have his needs met. And as a young man he has a volatile temper and the vigour and strength to communicate it in his own special way. So last night (or three hours ago) from 1230am until 0345am, I was there, next to him, living his private, special needs hell. And it is a real test of character and endurance to sit with him whilst he 'settles' into his drug induced sleep.

If we learn to open our hearts,
anyone, including the people who drive us crazy,
can be our teacher.
Pema Chodron

Not sure what I have learned tonight. But I am sure I have seen just how all consuming and intense and overwhelming our minds can be, and how learning to settle the noise in our heads is half the challenge of this life. No matter how often I see it, there is always a moment of mindfulness, a moment of reflection when the window is open for us to be grateful for some very simple things. Like not living with an intellectual disability.

Maybe I did learn to appreciate and be globally grateful my daughters are healthy, strong willed, inquisitive little monkeys and that I feel immense gratitude for their simple health and, dare I say it, normality.

To Sydney and Back

2011-11-04T10:14:00.004+11:00

I had a big delivery to Sydney in the middle of the CBD yesterday. It is a challenge parking my black van somewhere and piling out gourmet baskets - especially when it is raining. And the sombre, expressionless faces of all the business types waiting at traffic lights in the rain - always reminds of why I live where I live.

Sustainability is all about living within our limits and being mindful of what we consume, which is something I have been leaning towards over on my other blog Merewether Life. I write about living simply by the beach and having chickens and gardens and all that. Sitting in my garden is a profound pleasure of mine.

My Garden, (you can see my bedroom window)

So where is this heading? As I drove around the city traffic, driving like all the other feckless, reckless dirty van drivers, I thought how unsustainable most of the inner city lifestyles are - being dependent on an employer, on transport, having no way of growing much for yourself, or being able to walk in nature. This makes you disconnected from the simple ebbs and flows of life. And when I was disconnected I would find myself seeking the most convenient source of connectedness - alcohol.

And how there are pubs on every city block. And watching the drinkers tumble out for a cigarette, 10am, the tingle of alcohol seeping through their veins like spidery rootlets of numbness. And how I was always 'stopping by' or 'popping in' or 'just going over to' and having that first drink again and again at a half dozen pubs across the city by lunchtime. Treading into the vinegar-carpet darkness and asking a different bartender for a beer as though it was insignificant, or minor, or inconsequential - 'just a schooner of VB'

And back in the traffic, flowing with the ebb and pause, the van my shuttle, zig zagging through the other cars, stopping, starting, homeward bound. The city morning yawning, baring it's teeth and me flitting by, like a bird on a crocodile and safely home and sober...

Secondhand Shops

2011-11-02T16:35:00.005+11:00

At the counter of a second hand clothing store and the too-skinny, (bony-skinny-like-a-drug-addict) girl with a baby on her hip says "...and I can't drive, and my boyfriend doesn't have a license, so we were just thinking..."
And she looks at the volunteer staff, two grey haired ladies with floral aprons, biting their lips and looking at each other like they'd heard versions of this story a thousand times before.

"Um, we don't drive either," One of the ladies finally says, "So we can't really help you" and shrugs her shoulders.
The skinny girl, almost as though she expected to be turned down, shrugs too, "Thanks anyway" she says without looking back, out onto the street.

I raised my eyebrows in that smug middle class way that only us smug mortgaged middle class middle manager types can do, and snorted a smile,
"Just after a Pirate shirt if there is such a thing?' I said, making it obvious I was not in the store for real, just as a lark, as an expedition into the secondhand world. Doing the quotation marks with index and middle fingers in the air when I said pirate, like it was all terribly au fait and de rigeur and all that mock well to do bullshit.

_--**8**--_

It is no secret round here that but for some exceptional good luck and sheer hard work I could quite easily have been 'the boyfriend waiting outside' and my secondhand life could be just plain bald faced reality.
It is such a load of bullshit that I can contrive to be 'normal' and expect to be treated differently from those so obviously still in the midst of addictions.
Is this why I can't go to AA meetings yet - becuse I have this Hollywood style concept where the room is full of either down and outs or failed salesmen types, or hookers?

It is such a convenient ruse to hide behind the dignity and respect of having some sort of status and clinging to it when in situations like that.
But deep down I have a curious sympathy for the pathetic addict, and how, in the throes of addiction, it really is possible to just drink shit alcohol sitting in the rain at a bus stop.
And feel as though the present was somehow bearable, because I was drunk.

In Depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future,
and the present as the present no longer exists at all

Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon.

Blogging Friends

2011-10-28T20:08:00.000+11:00

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

2011-10-27T13:08:00.000+11:00

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

2011-10-20T11:33:00.002+11:00

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

2011-10-17T12:46:00.002+11:00

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

2011-10-13T14:46:00.004+11:00

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

2011-10-12T10:11:00.001+11:00

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

2011-10-07T12:02:00.001+11:00

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

2011-10-04T17:25:00.001+11:00

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

2011-10-03T21:30:00.001+11:00

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!

Exercise for Alcoholics

2011-09-30T08:42:00.001+10:00

Exercise as an alcoholic was always a wonderful conflict.. On the one hand I was genuinely interested in being healthy and focussed on maintaining a fitness regimen. But on the other hand I knew in the back of mind I would be drunk before days end and in that state resistance to 'non-preferred' foods was quite low. Not forgetting the completely unpredictable calendar of drunk / hungover / asleep making it virtually impossible to schedule anything outside of work. And the pathetic tendency for a drink to materialise in my hand at any hour of the day, even whilst tying my laces for exercise, making the actual exercise event far too infrequent.

But I joined the gym and went through boot camp sessions in the early morning darkness with the others. No doubt panting acrid alcohol breath all over them. But they didn't say anything - like no one ever did , ever. (Maybe that is why my alcoholism progressed for so long, and I allowed myself the indulgence of "it's not really that bad" for the last few years especially.) And I counted walking home from drunking bouts as exercise, as though pounding the pavement smashed was actually doing me good.

So now, I walk/run six eight and ten kilometers around the beach and it is nowhere near as difficult or painful as it was with a dry mouthed hangover. So inspiring, I have bought some shirts and socks and other exercise stuff for the spring. And have been sticking by my commitment for a daily half hour minimum - no matter what. After all, if I could always manage to squeeze in a bottle of wine, no matter what, surely I can squeeze in a half hour's exercise, no matter what.

The Backstreets of Naples

2011-09-26T11:29:00.002+10:00

I remember the backstreets of Naples,
Two children begging in rags
Both touched with a burning ambition
To shake off their brown tags, they try

We landed in Rome after ten days of drinking in Ireland. Rome is sticky and crowded and I had a burning hangover that drinking throughout the flight hadn't numbed. So we made our way to the hotel and barely opened the suitcase before I was leaning out the window, smoking, with a glass of wine in my hand..

That afternoon we walked around Rome in sandals and made a booking for dinner at a restaurant. Pasta with Black truffle. After a few days meandering through the cobblestone streets we tired of lining up and buying tickets to touristy things. The garish opulence of the Vatican City was simply overwhelming

Naples is a crowded, greystone city we drove down into, stopping lost a few times as we circled towards the center of town. Finally after asking for directions we made our way to a hotel that had rooms in our price range. We parked the car for three nights and paid, and as I watched the man drive it away I hoped it would still be there when we were back.

The streets of Naples were quiet and narrow. Our hotel looked over a plaza and we were woken each morning by a garbage truck squeaking outside our top floor window. It was voyeuristic to watch the other windows and people going about their business with the lights on. no blinds.

Just across from our apartment we saw all the locals and the market where they were selling fish and vegetables. Walking down the street, looking at the fish and produce, we were met with looks of disdain from the locals. As though we were inspecting their products and, when we didn't stop and buy anything, rejecting it. But the truth was we had nowhere to cook or prepare or store food, so we had to eat out every night. But the looks of almost contempt was what I remember. Maybe it was our new clothes, or something, but we definitely felt their gaze.

But still ever the alcoholic, we got home from an evening of eating and drinking, and I couldn't lie down and admit the night was over. So I crept out the apartment and went down the stairs, out onto the street. It was around midnight and I was clearly drunk, looking for some cigarettes or something.

And walking along I saw the local younger men standing by the cafe as it closed, and I just felt something, somehow, that told me not to go any further, and that I should actually go back upstairs and go to sleep. Like a feeling or danger, or fear. Out of my depth. So I slowly turned on my heel, and tracked back to the hotel, and closed the door behind me. Deserted of all that drunken bravado when faced with some street toughs in Napoli.

Let's Drink to that...

2011-09-23T11:20:00.004+10:00

For someone who has to drink all the time, it can become quite routine and, frankly, tedious, so there is a whole book of socially acceptable ways to legitimize drinking for each particular day.

Like saying "Let's drink to that" when a life event happens and you are with people who are looking for an excuse to drink - that's what you do - drink. Even though pretty soon the actual event you are drinking "for" becomes completely secondary to the actual end of drinking.

The drinking cues and prompts in day to day life are everywhere, it is no wonder that alcohol has become so blurred with the whole concept of having a good time and relaxing. I'm still not sure if I can categorize a gathering as 'fun' unless there is alcohol or the chance of alcohol, even though I'm not drinking. They even call it Social Drinking, or say, when everyone is drinking it's a "Social Event" or she's not addicted, she's just taking drugs "socially"!

Only stopping drinking altogether has given me the space to see these officially sanctioned drinking times, (like Fridays, or Sunday afternoons, or when the game is on, or around a barbeque), for what they are, insidious triggers to get drunk.

Sure, the romantic ideal of having a frosty glass of beer after toiling in the garden is almost erotic to me, but being an alcoholic the sad reality is me slinking around the tree ferns glugging from a bottle of red wine first thing in the morning. And smiling that pathetic merlot mouth grin before any work has been done.

Now we have months like Dry in July and Sober October and Feb Fast where it is a novel challenge to go without alcohol, and a slew of media personality types writing about how challenging it was, or how mundane it is. But whilst these promotions advocate abstinence, the underlying implied message is that everybody drinks all the time, and we're just stopping "for fun" cause we could stop at anytime anyway.

"Like it's not a problem or anything," they reassure themselves, "just for charity, you know?"

I Might be just starting to see some financial effects of stopping drinking - you know how sometimes money just gets sucked up by other 'needs' when it is sitting in accounts? So just checking the other day and noticing that I haven't spent anything on alcohol for over 150 days adds up to around about a month's mortgage repayment. Which is nothing to sneeze at, or wait a sec, should I be saying, Let's drink to that?

Sober Observations

2011-09-19T11:13:00.001+10:00

Being sober is a million little things. Without the noisy confusion of alcohol, my eyes are open to see those minute moments where the meaning of life is in simply being.
*
I was sitting in the morning sun and my daughter walked over and flopped in my lap, and nestled there. Just lay there, and flicked her hair from the side of her cheek and looked at the trees without saying anything.
A casual moment of trust and confidence that would never have happened when I was all blustery and drunk and too agitated to allow a moment like this to evolve.
She is beginning to see me as something other than a bumbling, scary man, and I am coming to terms with the awesome responsibility of being her father.
*
Giving in to alcohol and accepting that it could no longer be a part of my life has been an awakening for me. And those unsaid gestures of my daughters underline how much of a changed person I am without it.
*
Friends over for dinner and we shared a couple of smoked trout and bottles of rose. Of course I am not drinking and without noticing no one mentions my sobriety anymore, it is just part of the furniture.
And having the inner confidence to say aloud what I think is funny without alcohol is an entirely different headspace to being drunk and just putting it out there.
So I tried my sense of humour and it got a few laughs, which is different for me, as sometimes my irreverent humour takes a bottle or two to kick in. Or I should be saying that finding the platform for humour without being drunk is certainly unfamiliar - as I was so terrified of being a sober bore.
*
Here's to posting more often with more sober observations.

Last 100 Days Fat

2011-09-09T19:00:00.002+10:00

Since the 100 Days theme is such a powerful tool for motivating me, I have decided to harness it to focus on weight loss this time. Reading Life is Too Short to be Fat, which is filled with basic truths about losing weight, and why making excuses and simply waiting for a trigger is not good enough reason to stay fat.

Like not reaching for that first drink (or stopping by the pub, or ever buying alcohol i the first place) - there is a certain time when you can stop yourself and consciously choose not to eat the wrong food. And not to make excuses or add emotions or some sabotaging context to the food. It is a biscuit - bad, simple as that. It is not 'deserved' or 'because I am tired' or 'a special reward' - see where the alcoholic thinking has some cross over here?

I found myself finishing a project or late shift and coming home via a liquor store, buying two or three bottles of wine, a sixpack of beer and a couple of packets of potato chips for some savoury 'balance'. Then I would start on the beer around nine am, and graduate to wine before eleven am. By five or six that evening I would be asleep in bed, or stumbling around outside staring at the chickens. This was my 'day-off' reward, or so I thought.

In a similar way, I have been eating chocolate like never before in my life - and it is a sad reality that some people have remarked they thought I would have lost more weight stopping drinking. I probably have, but the chocolate has not helped at all.

So, here we go with a new list of commitments and the next series of challenges...

Only Waiting

2011-09-03T17:46:00.002+10:00

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Driving around town this week I was conscious of not driving like an alcoholic. Like tailgating or being impatient or taking extra risks. So I deliberately repeated "there is no rush" to myself, even when I was delivering eleven Father's Day gifts on Friday afternoon. And home with plenty of time for an afternoon nap before my wife and kids returned. My old alcoholic Friday afternoon was a heart-bending rush to get that first drink in around lunchtime.

In a great place today - calm, walking around the beach with my daughters, tending my tree ferns and chickens, and just soaking up the first Saturday of Spring. Saw myself last weekend saying I would never drink again, and compared drinking to something you sort of retire from as you get older - like eating greasy food or smoking or playing computer games. Said this to a beer-drinking friend at a barbeque, thinking "Am I being arrogant - or just sensible?"

Had a haircut and the hairdresser said it was nearly 'wine o'clock'. Said I'd stopped drinking four months ago. She crinkled her nose and caught my eye in the mirror as hairdressers do. "So what do your friends think?" And I lied a little bit, 'cause to be honest I don't care what my friends think. I just don't drink from here on. Simple.

Father's Day is a meal out on Sunday night with the in laws who I haven't sat down with since stopping drinking. Which will be refreshing for them. I remember the mother in law having a half bottle of sweet dessert wine on stand-by as a way of delicately 'turning off the drinks' the last few times I was drinking in their presence. A tried and tested way of slowing down alcoholics in that family without conflict.

My father and I haven't spoken since my step-father's funeral five years ago. He was tanned and fit - back in Australia briefly from his home in the foothills of Thailand - and I was a distracted, red-faced drunk. He taunted me in front of some other relatives and I waved him away, dismissing whatever he was saying and heading outside to smoke and drink some more. We hadn't talked for about five years previous to this. His father was a cruel, old drunk.

Have made some big decisions with the business and am ready to commit to going back to school and starting a new career. Have reconciled with myself that at 37 I have a good 25 years to offer in my new career. So here comes landscape architect and there goes small business owner. Is a paradigm shift for sure, but this is what will challenge me and I can't think of a better way to grow older than working with plants and the built environment.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Beck's Burro

2011-08-26T11:42:00.000+10:00

This ditty reminds of slushing around a pool party with gazillions of litres of beer and wine and drugs and girls and skin and sleeping overnight and waking up and doing it all again and not having to work much at all. The upside of being a drop out.

And now sober, I can look back at it as some of the great times of my youth, and it is the sound of spring, which is cheekily peeking out from behind the dowdy skirt of winter.

The Meaning of Life

2011-08-26T11:04:00.000+10:00

Purpose
this could be living happily ever after, going to heaven or even (whisper it) found at work.
Whatever it is, meaning in life comes from reaching goals and feeling fulfilled.
Even though fulfillment is hard to achieve because the state fades, people need purpose.
Values
people need a moral structure to work out what is right and what is wrong.
There are plenty to choose from: some come from religion,
others from philosophy and still others from your friends and family.
Efficacy
people want to make a difference and have some control over their environment
Without that, the meaning of life is reduced.
Self-worth
we all want to feel we're good and worthwhile people
We can do this individually or by hitching ourselves to a worthy cause
Either way we need to be able to view ourselves in a positive light.

Baumeister and Vohs (2002)

Kneeling Elephants and the Pain of Being Alive

2011-08-25T15:20:00.000+10:00

Had a four o'clock with my GP today and went in and said everything was going fine, 120 odd days since I last drank. I sat forward in the chair and said I was quite confident I wouldn't drink again, and that with all the spare time on my hands I was looking at going back to school. Then I mentioned the federal government incentive of five free pyschology visits with a referral from a GP, and asked if I could get a referral for a life coach slash career counselling sessions. He wasn't impressed and suggested I ought to focus on what had me drinking before I went into life coaching or anything like that. I emerged from the appointment feeling deflated and flat.

"The government incentive isn't there for everyone to go and get sessions for trivial things - it's about getting assistance with acute metal illness in regional Australia, they've had to adjust the benefit because so many Eastern Suburbs mums were abusing it for therapy." I nodded, and looked down at my hands, "So I can refer you for your alcohol issues, but not for career guidance"

I felt as though I was pressuring him for some morphine or something - it was really embarrassing to be chided for 'trying to exploit a loophole' as he put it. I wasn't exploiting anything - I was just being honest and saying what I was at the appointment for. So, access denied...

Thing is, I've been thinking a lot and am seeing my frustrations are coming out because I have so much free time and it is not put to best use. And it is further frustrating when I feel I am so far behind after having been drinking for so long. So it's a game of catch up, and I want have some pretty high expectations and I am ready to commit 100% to get a result. And I thought some positive guidance and support would be as effective as sitting down and nattering on about all the crap from growing up and shit...

I am sort of seeking a life coach, to help with some suggestions and tips on making a career transition (moving from small business to self employed tradesman) and it is all helpful considering I haven't got a mentor or anything approaching that in my life. So why can't I outsource it?

For how long do I have to douse myself in this alcoholic crap without trying to actively get started on something positive and new? I admit and accept I am alcoholic, but like a survivor of sex abuse said, I am not going to let this episode colour my whole life.

So have five appointments lined up for a psychologist to discuss my alcoholism slash career change. But I so desperately cannot see myself blathering on about parents or childhood or adolescence... Fuck, I want to let all that shit slide - forgive and forget and buried forever.

Reflect on the benefits of a loving heart. [Buddhist texts say]: Your dreams become sweeter, you waken more easily, men and women will love you, angels and devils will love you. If you lose things they will be returned. People will welcome you everywhere when you are forgiving and loving. Your thoughts become pleasant. Animals will sense this and love you. Elephants will kneel as you go by—try it at the zoo!

Forgiveness involves perspective. We are in this drama in life that is so much bigger than our ‘little stories.’ When we can open this perspective, we see it is not just your hurt, but the hurt of humanity. Everyone who loves is hurt in some way. Everyone who enters the marketplace gets betrayed. The loss is not just your pain, it is the pain of being alive. Then you feel connected to everyone in this vastness.

So here goes for the next leg of the journey. I am just realising how much of an advocate I have to be for me on this process. I remember the same GP wouldn't prescribe me champix to give up cigarettes - so I got the script from another GP and gave up (four years ago now). But he resisted and I proved his reluctance wrong. It is tiring though having to go around him, thinking he is some kind of roadblock to my progress. But I guess I am open to forgiving him for that...

Procrastination

2011-08-19T10:01:00.001+10:00

So I got out of bed eventually, as the wife and girls were getting dressed, and I put my breakfast on the table as the girls tumbled out the door. They waved as they went down the driveway and I chomped on baked beans on toast.

This morning I am free until a 3pm shift in the afternoon, and it is a perfect opportunity to go for a bike ride around the beaches and harbour. But I know I probably won't.

It might be procrastination on my part, or being lazy, or just feeling depressed and lethargic. Not sure but is just not worth worrying about yet, so I think I'll go back to bed for a bit of sleep and try again later like at noon. At least I'm not hungover.

Alcohol Free Songs

2011-08-17T11:22:00.000+10:00

Just got back from my walk around the harbor and today I was whistling (for some unknown reason - I've been to paradise - but I've never been to me) and I changed the words to

I'm living in Paradise,
ever since I went alcohol free!

So there's todays challenge, build an 'alcohol-free' lyric from an established song and see how it goes.

Sometimes you have to skip across the words to help squeeze them into the existing lyrics.

So, yeah, I'm still sober, and just a little bit sad for content. I guess this is called being vacantly happy, where I am content with things by and large and am letting out my frustrations on business suppliers/ associates instead of taking them home with a bottle of wine. Is so much more satisfying actually nailing a business associate when they screw up there and then instead of being half absent and directing my frustration at the wrong thing (ie alcohol).

Have cut ties with two business associates this week who feel entitled to offer poor service/ business practise over months and months and then expect me to reciprocate at 100% professional. Not good enough so have edited my business website and they two suppliers "no longer appear" associated with us. Was a long time coming...

Generational Alcoholism

2011-08-14T09:09:00.000+10:00

There comes a stage for all recovering alcoholics to do the big reveal and share with the family that "I am indeed an alcoholic" (as if they already didn't know, but more on this later). I imagine it will be a mighty humbling experience. I have been rehearsing ways to do it and where to do it but so far have come up with not much. I have thought of ways to do it where they might think I am coming out ("Dad, I guess you always sort of knew in the back of your mind, but didn't want to confront it - yes, I'm .... alcoholic!"). They know anyway, it will be just me saying it that will be the big buzz.

Maybe just wait until Christmas Day and be sitting there without a drink and without some devil's-advocate-considered-yet-provocative-opinion and let them all notice for themselves. That is the best case scenario I have at this stage, to say I have not had a drink for like 200 days will be pretty impressive and demonstrate my commitment.

In my family alcoholism is a generational curse and all the older members have clear memories of alcoholic parents themselves and grandparents have endured life with alcoholics and so on. For them I hope my honesty and openness will be a sign of moving forward and that they can look at me through a different lens. I appreciate how heartbreaking it must be to see grandchildren develop into alcoholics and display the behaviors they have all seen before.

For me there is the story of my own father - as a boy trying to lift his father up off the street where he had fallen down drunk, and not being able to. Of rifling through his pockets for coins to give his mother to buy food whilst he lay blacked out. Or the story of the drunken uncle and his inappropriate behaviors - the real reason why he was fed before everyone else and lived 'down the back' away from the rest of the family.

Or the current batch of alcoholics, me front and centre but not nearly so desperately without hope as a sister without a home and two children to an alcoholic father, a brother in law lost to meth addiction, a step brother's death, a family culture where drugs and alcohol are never the problem, just always there. Like an episode of Brothers and Sisters, walking around with a glass of wine, arguing.

So it will not come as a big surprise to most of them that I am alcoholic, once word gets round that "B stopped drinking" - more surprising that I admitted it and stopped. They all knew quietly that I had chosen drink and deception and they would have seen the cracks appearing, and noticed me just as quickly struggling to maintain some impression that everything was normal and ok. They all knew about my depression in my early twenties, and how I emerged more assertive and outspoken. And how I have always 'loved' a drink...

One thing I do know is that I won't be revealing that I am writing all my progress down in a blog. There is one sure fire way to trigger the self-censorship mode and that would be it for me, having to write and then edit for family reading purposes. For sure it would be ok if they read it like you do and left a comment, but not if they are going to read and then expect to discuss face to face each thought and detail. It would be exhausting.

So here's to sharing deep dark secrets with family, but only so far. There's some things that they just don't need to know...

Dead Friends From School

2011-08-08T13:05:00.002+10:00

Just found out a school friend died of a heart attack at a rugby game - way back in 2008! So we weren't that close obviously. We were in the same classes through school and I would always beat him in every test, no matter how hard he tried - and it infuriated him. Drifted apart when it became clear I got my kicks from being naughty and taking shit and he was a 'responsible leader' or whatever that was.

He was the total straight arrow, I remember having an argument with him and he walked away because I wanted to go out and get drunk and lie about going to the movies (as 14 year old alcoholics do) and he just wanted to actually watch the surfing movie and then go home - like a normal person. We had a stand off and pushed each other, I held him down, but nothing happened. We didn't go to the beach together any more.

Later on he made partner at an accounting firm and was best man at all these weddings and played 1000 games of rugby and was the club president or something. I was sneaking around getting drunk, being anonymous, being a lone wolf.

Oh well, he's dead now - I get this curious feeling and want to stick my finger up at him for some reason. That feeling of rejection from him when I wanted him to come along and be drunk and his strength to say no, or back then it was probably just a stupid risky idea and he was being sensible. Like finishing his degree and being a suit and joining clubs and being a team player.

But that's not me, never comfortable with that fawning adoration of people I hardly know in teams and stuff.

So awful as it sounds, I feel sort of vindicated - me at the start of a lifelong recovery compared to safe-white-bread-athlete-accountant rotting under some rocks in the ground. Hmm, don't know if that is right but it's definitely the feeling I have.

Friday Drinks After Work

2011-08-05T13:26:00.002+10:00

Yeah, they don't exist anymore. So here's to feeling fresh on the Saturday upside and getting stuck into those family things sans hangover. Have been very busy at work and that's always a bonus, except for when I butchered this Lichtenstein pop art - might've been funny if I had any creativity left.

Which reminds me of that delightfully indulgent phase I went through when everyone was a drunken genius - so I soaked up a few more buckets of booze being a bohemian artist. Wrote pages and pages of tense love lorn juvenalia about no one in particular or if it was about someone it was Maia from film school who I sat near and talked to but never actually got to - you guessed it - go for a drink with. Probably because I was drunk already (not probably, I actually was, a speechless drunkeness where I was too embarrassed to actually say much because she would see I was already drunk and it was like only 5 in the afternoon).

So a total failure to launch...

Alcoholism Myths

2011-08-03T17:48:00.000+10:00

As an alcoholic, almost everything you choose to believe about alcohol is bullshit. Completely, utterly, bullshit. There are so many ways you have manipulated the events and how you interpret them that you can almost make yourself believe that you did turn water into wine or whatever. Here's my top ten with some help from Doug Thorburn's Alcoholism Myths and Realities.

The Chemistry of Alcohol
This was a real eye opener for me. Simply put, alcoholics' only partly process the alcohol so we only get the 'fun' feeling, not the 'eww' feeling straight after. This is part of the reason why we can drink so much poison willingly.

The human body converts alcohol first into a poison, acetaldehyde, and then into acetate, both of which find their way to the brain. While the former substance - in the same class of chemicals as formaldehyde - perversely makes the drinker feel good, the latter causes feelings of nausea, hangover and sleepiness. Now think about it: if a person experiences a quick conversion into acetate, he feels lousy or sleepy and is unlikely to keep drinking. If on the other hand, the body blocks the conversion of acetaldehyde into acetate, the former works its magic and she feels good. It shouldn't be surprising if this person, experiencing a buildup of the acetaldehyde and little or no increase in the latter, continues to drink. Therefore, the speed at which the body converts alcohol into acetate determines a person's predisposition to alcoholism. p.8

So the body is getting all the good feelings and none of the bad. Sounds like trouble to me. Or like getting things on no deposit credit...

I Never Had a Hangover
I never got hangovers for most of my alcoholic career. It was like burning the candle at both ends without any of the negative feedback, so I could go even harder and longer than most and not worry about the consequences. It was something to be proud of, like I was a genetic freak for drinking.

Researchers found that 50% of the subjects of a study of alcoholics reported no hangovers within the past year or more and 23% reported that they had never experienced a hangover, despite heavy drinking. P.17

So drinking again is without the feedback, and of course it is like access all areas with no credit limit! Later in my drinking I did get an awful eternal hangover, which I took was my body screaming back at me that it was clogged with the detritus of twenty years of abuse and was seeking some easy filtering with just water and tea. Each morning I would wake up and the first hours were Ok because I was most likely still buzzing drunk. But then, in the afternoon, the credit would fall due and I would be weak and dizzy.

Drug Free -except alcohol
I would tsk tsk with the best of them at others drug fucked escapades. Plus, I had gone drug free for so long myself, so I wasn't totally 'weak' like them. And given up cigarettes, so, yeah, i was pretty much a straight arrow except for being a raving alcoholic...

Alcohol is not only a drug capable of causing distortions of perception and memory, but it's also the first drug of choice for most addicted persons. If not, it's almost always one on which an addict will fall back if nothing else is readily available. And, it does more damage than all the other drugs combined. P.23.

Just like my sister, who when the supply amphetamine dried up, was always philosophical at the bar, prosthelytizing about 'you can't always get what you want' and other nonsense. When there was no gear, she'd revert to alcohol in a snap.
And me, when in my drug stage, used to always have some wine in arm's reach.

Loves a drink, but no, she's not alcoholic, always loved a drink.
People often make excuses for other drinkers so the alcoholic tag is kept out of sight. Like I was described often enough, as great for someone to have along to a dinner party because he brings five bottles of wine (sometimes I'd just bring a case of 12 bottles and have them in the car, and keep going out to get fresh bottles and putting the empty bottles in the car so no one knew how much had been drunk. Well that's what I thought anyway.)

alcoholics dream of drinking non-addictively while experiencing the unparalleled pleasure from alcohol that only an alcoholic can feel. However, while they can sometimes drink without observable adverse effects on their behaviours for a period of time, there are few if any reports of instances in which alcoholics have been able to continue to do so for more than a few years. P 28.

I became alcoholic because I had low self esteem
I had low self esteem, or I had such grandiose designs on where I should be, reality was always a deflated let down. Whatever the case, my completely fucked behaviour whilst drinking soon lowered what esteem I had left so it was low all round, no matter who you asked.

I've stopped drinking a few times now and never had withdrawals.
So what? Do you expect some earth shattering withdrawal like on trainspotting where you are crying and climbing the walls? Forget it. Not that dramatic.

...decades of active alcoholism are usually required before physical dependence occurs and that such dependence is but one symptom of latter stage alcoholism p 30.

Poor environment, upbringing, divorced parents, no pet ponies, etc
I was top of my class all through school, we had international family holidays, I saw Disneyland, I spat off the Eiffel tower, and got lost on a Fiji Cruise before I was twelve - but then my parents divorced. So I was shipped off to an elite boarding school to finish my education. And then I landed in law school. But we never had a pet pony.

Many alcoholics remember their first drinking occasion, while non-alcoholics rarely do. P 42.

I still remember my first drink, Jim Beam bourbon from a 150ml hip flask gulped nervously behind the cinema a few miles from my house. The burning, the sense of power, the tingling throbbing in my head. I was an alcoholic right then and there, and the funny thing is, I knew it too.

Moderation
This just doesn't work - it's like giving me an ice cream cone and saying stop when you hit the cone. You just can't do it as an addict.
I hope I haven't been to harsh here, but there are so many myths and hushed tones when speaking about alcoholism it is best that I explode some crap right here and now so we can all go forward.

Please add your experiences of these myths and how they have shaped your experiences with alcohol.

Reasons to Stay Sober

2011-08-01T09:54:00.000+10:00

My daughters are beautiful, clean, innocent, and un-complicated little creatures and it is in no small part due to them that I have stopped being a drunken dickhead. I just can't stand the thought of me being drunk and bullshitting them ever again. Or telling them to be quiet or to go away. Never been so busy as mincing around the house with a globe full of wine in my hand. Or seeing my daughter pick up an empty bottle and say 'daddy'.

On the weekend, down the beach at the end of winter

Drinking for breakfast

2011-07-30T21:29:00.002+10:00

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

2011-07-29T11:19:00.000+10:00

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

2011-07-26T06:45:00.000+10:00

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

2011-07-15T12:59:00.000+10:00

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

2011-07-11T13:35:00.000+10:00

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

2011-07-04T19:50:00.001+10:00

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

2011-07-03T15:46:00.001+10:00

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?

Read more here

Ten Weeks Sober Today

2011-06-29T11:44:00.001+10:00

Ten Weeks Sober Today!

Since I made the decision and committed to sobriety, sitting here at ten weeks I feel pretty confident that I will not be drinking again in my lifetime. If that sounds a little arrogant and complacent, I'll just say "I do not function effectively when alcohol is a part of my life" so I can't drink. But the truth is I can finish a days work and drive past a liquor store and think "I could drink three bottles of wine and get smashed just like that, right now, tonight" But I don't. Knowing that prison of being trapped and drunk all the time. And ruining my burgeoning sober days count (70 is such a source of pride for me!)

I have revealed to people at work or in business that "I do not drink." This is a little step for me, people I would otherwise talk about drinking in a positive, "Yeah, I know wine" manner I now talk to in terms of "I don't drink" and "It's amazing how good you will feel." I said it like that instead of saying "I'm an alcoholic" or "I can't drink" as I know the shame and status issues that go with being other of those tags.

I've switched from selling wines to warning signs of alcohol, and how it is basically poison dressed up with French phrases, some half baked crap about "tastes of avocado and burnt boysenberries" and bottled. I am aware of the ex-smoker syndrome, so I don't go overboard, but I am passionate.

Never drinking again in my life. That is a big statement, but I have so much other shit I want to do other than be mourning my life away drunk. I can't wish back the times I had beautiful days or opportunities to do things and I chose to go and buy alcohol and sit around and drink it. Such a shame, such a waste.

In going ten weeks sober I have been through my birthday and a few nights out so have been able to test my resolve and more importantly demonstrate my resolve to people close to me. Also, I have revealed this blog to a couple of people and let them in on my innermost thoughts and ramblings so that has been a revelation as well. There is nothing so brave as revealing a blog filled with personal feelings and sometimes embarrassing anecdotes. Letting someone pick through my blogposts and share what they know of me with what I reveal here is very confronting. But I have done it and it is not the end of the world. Please share your thoughts below.

Drinking Water

2011-06-28T05:32:00.002+10:00

Yesterday I drank four bottles of water between lunch and dinner. Sure, I was thirsty but then I got that 'full of liquid' feeling and started pissing crystal clear. So I refilled the water bottle and drank it empty again, even though I was full.

Fire and Heat and Anger and Alcohol

Funny how a full feeling in my bladder has such strong associations with relaxation and partying and, well, just being a drunk bastard. I can walk you around every place I have lived and show you the spots where I used to piss when I was drinking.

Just standing there, hanging out in the wind, sometimes no hands so it would look like I was not pissing but in fact looking at something, or about to pick something up. And if you walked past you would probably guess that I was drunk again and pissing next to the bamboo, but I wouldn't think that you would've known, so to me it never happened.

"See, no hands, just um, stretching or rolling my shoulders. Or about to walk over there and - um, do something." I would lie to myself.

Before I could move on I would have to bend down and pick up my glass of wine or bottle of beer from the ground. Other times I would be so drunk I would just walk off and leave the drink there - to be found days later with a dead insect lolling in the liquid. I never drank it after a few days, it was gross... (Except for one time, and I gagged on the cockroach or whatever it was and was hacking out a terrible cough of spittle and mucous and bits of arthropod.) And besides, I'm sure the alcohol had evaporated or something, so yeah, I never drank 'garden wine' again.

And then, when I was drinking wine straight from the bottle, I would place the empty delicately against a tree trunk or nestle it in a shrub so as not to make that giveaway tinkling sound. And you would never know. Except that I did the double step stagger at the top of the path and you would blink to confirm you just saw me nearly fall over at just past eleven on a Saturday morning.

So drinking water is now a flushing pleasure, imagining all the toxins and salts dissolving and taking with away the anger and heat of yesterday. I still have a love of liquids and the mouthfeel of wetness and moisture, not sweet or cold or hot, just liquids in general. That's why I put the image of the fire - it is quenched by water, fuelled by alcohol.

thirty seventh birthday

2011-06-12T01:38:00.001+10:00

Thirty seven today and I'm sitting here at 1am in between working a night shift.
This is the first birthday I have had since escaping alcohol, and I'm stripped bare of all that hostility and anger and arrogant bravado that went with it. Instead there is a kind of quiet optimism that I am finally functioning on some normal level. There's a dream montage with the lights coming on after the party, and I'm standing alone in the smoky room, with empty bottles knee deep around me.

With this clarity and calm there's no better time to make some decisions and choices for the next three years leading up to turning forty. So I'll start another list. But first some thoughts on how I will get to the list.

1. Healthy. Basically I'm still a fat bastard so there is plenty of room for improvement. Maybe I should jump on the triathlon bandwagon - after I get sorted out and can actually finish one. So here's for starting a plan and sticking to it. Here's two embarrassing confessions - I eat fucking biscuits and I don't eat fruit. That has to change today.

2. Wealthy. Being drunk all the time I made some ~~brave~~ stupid decisions and they don't go away when you're talking banks and debt. So I have to front up and just pay them off like everyone else - there is no magic escape clause, and ignoring shit doesn't help anyone. So, yeah, paying off debts. Simply live within my means.

3. Wise. As a know-it-all drunk I made a great course dropout. So I will re-kindle the life-long learning thing. Will start small with a photography course.

4. Career. I have a job, and a mortgage to pay, so that will be steady for a bit longer. But I want to explore online writing further as that is where I would like to be in three years. So I need a plan to get there. Any ideas?

Tha Marijuana Post Part Two

2011-06-11T17:48:00.001+10:00

Life moved on and marijuana came and went like fast food - it was just sort of there in the background. We mustn't forget alcohol was my first true love and she always stood by me day in day out. But smoking pot and having a lust for alcohol truly blossomed into a habit when I was at university.

I drank and I drank and I got stoned in between. Just that I wasn't going to that many lectures and I was losing motivation and momentum in my studies. So I left law school and just did philosophy and some history, but then that started to slide so soon enough I was suspended from study. That winter I just faded away from the university scene and dropped out altogether.

I lost touch with all the university up and comers and found myself tooling around with some other people who were basically at a loose end like me. It was the lost weekend time, where I was at an age that it was still sort of OK to be finding myself and in between jobs.

I was living by the beach in a narrow terrace and made sort of friends with some of the neighbours.
Long haired me riding a pushbike around town with a four litre cask in my backpack. Doing odd landscaping jobs, just spending time without having to study and be somethings.

The Marijuana Blog Post

2011-06-10T19:38:00.001+10:00

Pot, skunk, mull, weed, green; whatever - you get the picture. When I first met Marijuana she was a beguiling mystery - today I know her as a broken-down whore. From the dizzying teen highs of summer bushwalking to the cold and lonely Tuesday-morning-whacked - I have done pot to death just like alcohol. Now, we have a long distance relationship - if we bump into each other at a party, we are polite, but we don't swap numbers.

Growing up marijuana was on the periphery of my circle - I was always in the top class and busily reading and wasn't really exposed to the drug dudes. So when my sister moved in with a pot smoker, I went around for a smoke. I was sixteen.

It was a bright and airy upstairs flat with high ceilings in the middle of town. We took turns having bongs. We whispered and were polite and inhaled and lay back on the bean bags and time stood still. Then we cracked up into girlish giggling until our stomachs hurt. It was like looking at the world through a quirky, nonsense lens.

Imperceptibly, I began making adjustments to my life so I could have more access to pot, or have somewhere to smoke it once I had it, and just as gently, I moved away from those who did not do it, and towards those who did.

The Nicolas Cage Blog Post

2011-06-09T21:10:00.005+10:00

As a drunk you populate your world with people who won't interfere with the most important thing - getting drunk. So eventually you end up alone (Leaving Las Vegas 1995), and facing death full of regrets (Adaptation 2002). Along the way you have manipulated people, let down people or left people. But always there were people - those who will get drunk with you; those who quietly tolerate your drinking; and those who avoid you.

The first group have seen you at your worst (or near enough) and how quickly you deteriorate from quite drunk to borderline arrest material. They know you can be an entertaining, ebullient dinner party guest, but have noticed how you start searching the pantry to drink anything after the good wine has gone.

The second group tolerate your drinking - they smile at your drunken jokes, or sit through Christmas lunch with an untouched glass of wine just so you don't feel uncomfortable. They either quietly despise you or pity you. This group is wary of you. They have seen a drunk before and identify you as one, but just because you keep it together when they are around, you think they don't know, just like the third group. The third group simply avoids you.

At some stage, you recruit a close friend who would never, never ask you to stop drinking. It is an unsaid contract, so it is likely this person will be alcoholic or have addiction experience.

Ben drinks and drinks and drinks and Sera is there with a bemused devotion, knowing her flaws, and accepting Ben as flawed too, except he his just a drunk. Sera consummates his ultimatum with her vow "I do". The voiceless soundtrack is fitting as you can imagine what utter bullshit is coming out of his drunken mouth.

My wife has watched as I spilled wine in a restaurant in Italy, and waited anxiously as I stumbled around for somewhere to buy alcohol late at night in Budapest. Watched as I have gone to bed with a half full glasses of wine, to drink on waking in the morning. Or kicked me as I lay drunk on cold kitchen tiles passed out, not waking. Just being there and, more importantly, still being there today is a fucking miracle of some sort.

But even with her love, you are still a stinking alcoholic, and on those occasions where she does have the temerity to "ask you to stop drinking" you react. It is outrageous to even consider taking away your alcohol - after all, without the illusion of drunkenness, the life you have been avoiding is just drudgery. There is no magic without alcohol, because you are fearful of giving anything meaning or passion because then you might feel pain or loss. Even simple emotional stuff is totally off limits.

Because you are so closed to all your experiences they are bundled up in little pockets of resentment, bitterness and non forgiveness. And this limits your life, because you have given away the power to take charge and interpret what happens in your life, the way you want to.

In Adaptation, Donald "I'm gonna be a screenwriter - like YOU!" Kaufmann owns his emotions, even though it is misplaced, unrequited, or simply wrong. The emotion exists nonetheless - it is a flutter in his stomach, or a tingling up his spine. And by owning it, Donald has the balls to harness powerful meaning from what others would dismiss as awkward fantasy. And it makes his life richer. Simple.

Instead of self censoring the love, Donald Kaufman identifies it, has the balls to go up to the girl and say it, and takes away an experience that is truly his.

Like today; I was delivering parcels with my wife. I jumped out the car and the woman who answered the door was D, the older sister of the girl I never asked on a date in when I was fourteen! Un-fucking-believable! I looked at D and saw her sister's eyes and felt that flush of missed love, a missed crush. An episode that never quite happened. But it is my moment, and I can cherish that beautiful, innocent me and the potential love that wasn't realised.

Status Anxiety - or - Just a Casual

2011-06-06T15:01:00.005+10:00

This is the place I'm in - working all the time, coming home mildy fatigued and seeing the kids and wife and then falling into bed. And then doing it again. Not drinking, totally off drugs etc except asthma meds. At least I have a pleasant day job and am able to pick my hours as a casual and say no to work when it suits me. So I am grateful each day and am able to reflect that I am "doing okay"

But nestled alongside the yin of the casual freedom is the yang of lacking security, which means things come our way a little slower, and our things aren't as shiny and new as others, and we mightn't be headed off on overnight trips as often as we would like. Or be pulling out kitchens and bathrooms. Which, as I said, is all fine. I'm sober, exercising etc. Life's good, but, y'know.

This is fine for my day to day life, but it comes undone when I am introduced as "name, occupation". I find myself caught between fumbling to add a fittingly impressive postscript, or just leaving it at that. So some people see me as below them, and others see me as, ahem, below them. It's a status thing.

"Every adult life could be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love... is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale..." writes Alain de Botton.

He continues "status is hard to achieve and even harder to maintain over a lifetime... a high position hangs on what we can achieve; and we may fail due to stupidity, or an absence of self knowledge, macro-economics or malevolence."

(If you listen quietly, you can hear the alcoholic me skipping from 'working hard, and being grateful for the little things,' to failure being inevitable due to the four excuses of 'stupidity, lack of self knowledge, macro-economics or malevolence' - found another way to justify getting drunk!)

I catch myself lowering my future expectations of myself because of my current status. I guess it is something to do with momentum and also has something to do with confidence.

But there is such a sting to being quietly ignored or not acknowledged by a new acquaintance once they have assessed your status and deemed it unworthy of their time. And then the alcoholic me chips in "Well fuck you too" and I pull away further, ensuring the interaction is over.

And it has nothing to do with being alcoholic or unlucky or not recognized - I recall often making choices to lead me away from the safe, well trodden path of career and qualification. I chose not to earn a label and become a "something" people could easily identify and apply status.

Just that now, in middle age, I appreciate how comforting a label would be, and that I could just exist as a "something" and be self satisfied - going off fishing or something. Instead, I am living out there and re-inventing myself, and facing the next chapter in my life sober. So it is fucking scary and I am having to ~~fake it~~ keep it real until I make it.

So at once it is exhilarating and fresh to be looking forward to whatever I choose to be, it is also mourning a little that I am not becoming a expert, or senior partner or making the move into management in my chosen career that I didn't have. And enjoying the privileges the status would bring. Just being me.

One year Anniversary

2011-06-03T13:02:00.000+10:00

So its one year since I started this blog. Might be time for a little reflection and assessment of where we are at.

In the past year I have

1. Gone sober for a week around September 2010, then crashed on the Saturday afternoon, and found myself lining up at a bottleshop on the Sunday.

2. Just basically drunk even crazier than normal all summer, so I was drinking from like waking up when I didn't have any other commitments (read - work).

3. Hit crisis point or rock bottom again and stopped drinking on April 20th. For the final time. That's 44 days ago! Quite a tally and honestly the longest I have gone without alcohol for twenty years or since I was in school, or since I was under the legal age.

4. The Sadness of Beer this storyis where I have come from - thinking buying cheap beer was saving money! What the? Buying beer is never saving money. On that note, at my drinking levels I have not spent about $500 on alcohol by going sober for 44 days.

5. I feel calmer, more motivated (have finally finished the chicken coop) and am going to bed at 8pm and waking up around 5 or 6 am. It is how other people live - and it makes me wonder whether I should regret all the years I wasted being hungover... But that was my decision and hey it wasn't as if I was in a prison or anything.

6. Just writing on my other blog I am learning to be grateful and appreciate that things are what they are and I could be in a whole lot worse shape but for some very lucky bits of providence.

7. So here's to celebrate the sober blog and how it works even if it did take a year to get finally sorted for me. Oh, that's another thing, sobriety has taught me to recognise and just appreciate it for what it is - patience.

Momentum is Everything

2011-05-30T09:39:00.001+10:00

Kid's Toys. Noticed how children's toys are totally over-packaged? A big rattling box, colorful glossy printing, plastic moulds to hold the product in place. The toy is clearly visible, yet still wrapped up and untouchable. Maybe you can touch a tiny little part of it, and there is a hole for you finger with "TRY ME" and an arrow pointing - so you touch it and there is a noise or reaction - but you still can't REALLY have it. Not until you buy it and unwrap it. But within 48 hours of purchase, the toy lies on the floor, ignored.

So what has this got to do with sobriety? Well, I was just over at another blog Sober For a Year and was inspired to write about momentum. How momentum can flag and pale and become that ignored toy on the floor.

Just like drinking. Now I have worked pretty much flat out for the last eight days, and have set aside a day or two to recover. So I'm walking to the beach after this, even though it is only 19C and I have just come off a night shift. But if I don't go for that walk, I will lose a bit of momentum. And that is not a good thing.

Writing in the blog format as a therapeutic tool to assist in my staying sober requires plenty of momentum, and me to diligently maintain that momentum. Out in the blogosphere there are a multitude of blogs that have lost momentum and quietly wither from lack of new thoughts. And the author eventually returns to the blog and prefaces her entry with something along the lines of "sorry not to have posted for so long, but..."

Just like the new toy that loses appeal by the hour, or the blog that isn't nurtured with fresh reflections, sobriety can be quietly lose momentum just as quickly. For a friend's birthday, or a family funeral, or an unexpected ugly - whatever that is - but you know what I mean.

It is my role to maintain that momentum, even in the face of (0) comments. Keeping that momentum rolling is the difference between staying sober for good and being on that exhausting tightrope that they benignly call moderation.

The Little Things (grr)

2011-05-27T19:29:00.002+10:00

"Fuck it all," I would have said, "There's wine and beer organized for tonight so who gives a shit?" That's where you would've found me tonight - retreating into my alcoholic haze. The easy option would be to drink and drink until I passed out.

See, it's the little things that get at me. Like today it was not exercising this morning (grr), an unfair comment at work (grr), not knowing an address and driving around in circles (grr), having a stupid dumped dog kennel in my van (grr), missing a call, and then calling back and finding the job has already been taken (grr), not having asthma medication (grr) and something else - probably ruminating over my estranged father and mother relationship (grr).

I won't bore you with the list above, except to share the old dog kennel was a spur of the moment thing - my father in law suggested it would make a great chicken house and against my better judgement we lifted it into the back of my van. The stupid thing is mouldy and festering with long white dog hairs. But it is too heavy for me to move by myself. So it is still there, like a week later.

And there it is - some little things from daily life that just weeks ago would have me reaching for the bottle are now opportunities for reflection and accepting and tolerance. Just a little mindfulness and self awareness has me looking at things in a different way, and seeing an inconvenience as just that - not some big fucked up conspiracy where the whole world is out to get me and we are all doomed!

Yeah it's almost funny isn't it - how me not finding a car space at lunchtime can somehow be rolled together with some cheap shot from a work colleague and rolled into an excuse for getting drunk. Sort of pathetic in a way.

It was satisfying to step back and see it for what it was and know myself a little bit better. Know that my quick to fire temper can easily be confused with a tendency to sook and have unreasonable expectations. Know that it is an old habit to slip into ungrateful mode and be a bit of a princess.

Learning tolerance, funnily enough, of myself. Tolerating how fucking over the top my expectations and standards are in some areas, whilst being so damn low in other areas. Tolerating that since I am now sober ALL THE TIME without the option of escaping to drunkland, I am seeing myself and my stupid little habits and I don't like a lot of them!

So I have to change those little habits, one little annoying habit at a time. Like getting steamed up over no parking - suck it up, live with it and shit - take a deep breath or something!

And more importantly, accept that there really is no excuse. Nil. No excuses whatsoever.

Here's some Helen Keller to send you on your way...

The highest result of education is tolerance.

also

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind

Sober on The Radio

2011-05-23T19:49:00.002+10:00

"because maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me,"

Fifteen seconds of airtime. That's all I got after all the planning. Barely enough to mention the business name and product. But it was enough to have me anxious at times over the weekend, wondering what to say.

This morning I was booked for a short grab on local radio to promote my business, and after a restless night on the lounge, woke up at 3am still ruminating on what to say.

When the DJ called sure enough I mentioned the product and some key features and the business name, and the host was gracious and complimentary and as soon as it started it was all over. Phew - and there I was standing outside with beads of sweat on my brow - all worked up about fifteen seconds - almost ~~famous~~ embarrassing.

So I went off whistling to the warehouse. Then, whilst listening to the ABC Newcastle in my van, they played a half-second sound grab from a song and challenged the listeners to identify which song it was. I knew straight away - it was Wonderwall by Oasis.

Still high on the endorphin rush of live radio (!!) I made the decision to call and put my answer to the producer - who put me on hold and before I knew it I was talking live on air.

"So we have Brendan here from M, and he thinks he can identify the song from the half second sound clue"

And I put it to her and she confirmed i was correct. Flushed with confidence, I began to talk a little.

"So are you a big fan of Oasis?" She asked.

"Yeah, well, I have the Oasis CD in my van and I have been playing it a little too often lately I guess - It is an anthem of mine you could say."

There was a split second of silence, so I took the opportunity.

"And since I stopped drinking alcohol on the 20th April, the words are a sort of a mantra of mine - not to be too sentimental and just get on with it"

"And not drinking on Friday and Saturday nights?"

"Yeah, I avoided some situations early on, but getting up fresh and calm on the weekend is such a change to be tired and hungover all the time."

"So you were drinking pretty heavily then?"

"Yeah, they say I was drinking for Australia, and now I'm clear headed, less angry, more patient, I'd recommend it to anyone who's listening - not to be too evangelical about it - but not drinking makes such a difference."

Then the host ended the conversation and I was back standing there, with a couple of beads of sweat on my brow. Two radio gigs in one day - in one HOUR! What a media whore!
In the following minutes two other listeners called in and gave messages of support and congratulation to Brendan from M.

So there was a delicious irony in that the seemingly inconsequential fifteen second business grab had me anxious whilst the far more personal and honest interaction was spontaneous and natural. It was an awesome high to admit I was confronting my alcohol issue with whoever was listening and at the same time not really care what they thought anyway.

This is another incredible paradox of being a recovering alcoholic - at once the shame and indignity of conceding I cannot control and am powerless to alcohol BUT also, at the same time I have the self knowledge, awareness and strength to just not have it. So the first part is the bit that the neighbors whisper about, and the other parents at school meetings tut tut about, but the second part is the where the pride and strength comes in, and that is far removed from being a slurring, stumbling drunk.

And back to Wonderwall, by Oasis. The brothers famously had their experiences with drink played out in front of the media. The poem is a masterpiece of indulgent reflection and of almost mournful pleading with an unnamed other about shared experiences, words left unsaid, and opportunities lost. It is reaching out to an idea of perfection with hope, but knowing that you have no control over what the result is - whether the other will accept it or not. Vulnerability.

For me, Wonderwall holds a beautiful naivete in that maybe, just maybe, the 'unknown other' might just want to help, and in that glimmer of hope the singer, might be saved from himself. In reference to the alcoholic - that unnamed other is sober you, and the pleading, hopeful one is drunk you. When you are living the spiral of drunk/hungover/irritable/drunk/hungover/irritable you are wishing for your sober wonderwall self to pull you out - and only you can pull yourself out. (I hope this isn't degenerating into much psychobabble)

"there are many things
that i would like to say to you
but i don't know how"

Smells Like Rock Bottom.

2011-05-20T13:16:00.001+10:00

This is unpublished from September 9, 2010.

Just bounced off 18 days straight drinking and am feeling low and exhausted. Can't even think of anything positive.

So this is the bottom of the cycle.

Fat, lethargic, irritable, seething, short of breath, depressed, ashamed...

Dozens of brown, green and clear glass bottles clinking in the garbage bin, under the bed, in the bushes, under the lounge, in the garage behind things, in drawers, cupboards - everywhere I look.

And strips of paracetamol, three tabs for waking, two more an hour later, with a skull from a bottle of cheap merlot hidden behind the fridge - nearly coughing when the dead fly in it tickles my throat - but gag, my eyes watering, gag, and make a choking, strangling sound as a I force myself to swallow.

And just sit there and feel disabled - like I am sort of waiting to be a bit more sober so getting drunk will be 'fun' again. Here's the cycle - get drunk enough, but just drunk enough to feel 'alright' and try to walk that tightrope between drinking all the time so as to stay just at that 'alright' feeling. Fucking exhausting.

Walking Clears My Head

2011-05-17T14:55:00.002+10:00

10.81 kilometres! Or 6.71 miles! Not a bad walk for a fat drunk who hasn't had a drink for a month!

Walking is a great exercise during this first month of sobriety as I am learning patience one step at a time, literally. Even though I feel like I could run and go faster and get the exercise over with, I have to walk and just take it one step at a time. More importantly, as I walk further and for longer periods, emotions and thoughts bubble to the surface and I can confront them instead of denying them or avoiding them. Here is the subtitle to this blog post, which one do you prefer?

Walking brings up old resentments and regrets which is an opportunity to re-process the event so I no longer hold on to the event as a negative, instead as an experience, without a positive or negative bias.
-or-
Walking Clears My Head

Whilst I am walking, it is amazing how frustrations and old regrets come to my conscious mind. (Like how I am a fat drunk and 36 next month and how I haven't really got a career or a trade and had a wife and two kids to support.)

Here's today's trigger... I was about twenty minutes into the walk and was going past the entrance to an independent coffee roaster, a place where artsy types and students lounge in the sun but also business types meet for the good coffee. And there was my next door neighbour (A we'll call him) from when I was about nine years old, standing there shaking hands with obviously a business associate. A was wearing a chambray shirt and trousers with his surname embroidered on it, for example Johnsons Building and he was fit and healthy looking.

And that was all it took for me to go into a negative self-talk spiral, looking at my reflection in the shopfront windows and saying things to myself like "look at A, he was never a smart kid or that good at school, and now he has his own building company and he isn't a fat miserable drunk" or "yeah but his father would have helped him out getting started and my Dad has never shown any interest," and stuff like this as I trudged along the pavement.

But then, a funny thing happened and I caught myself in the act of doing this, and I made a conscious effort to stop it. I just said to myself.enough - no more. And kept walking, looking up and around and trying to find a positive thing to think about.

And the positive thing I thought of was A appears to be doing well, and good for him. For me, I have been living with an illness called alcoholism and it has influenced me to make some poor choices, which I am living with now. Where you are today is the result of all the choices and actions that you have made in your life It is just the way it is. I am a fat drunk who goes on long walks for exercise, and I know and accept this, and I am working towards being better and improving. And that's all I can do right now, right here, in this moment.

Have an appointment with the doctor this afternoon so will be a bit anxious to see if I can get a new prescription for antabuse. I am hoping I can as it is invaluable during these first few months.

"Hey - It's Saturday Night - Let's Get drunk!"

2011-05-16T15:09:00.001+10:00

Sunday Mornings?
Drunk Me. > Hungover, anxious and gulping down water and paracetamol, walking around the house with a throbbing headache, bursting bladder, dry mouth and feeling irritable and tired and wanting to roll over and go straight back to sleep for a few more hours.
Sober Me > Fresh, rested, tying my shoelaces and walking over the hills to the beach. Refreshed, clear, observant and positive about the day and the week ahead. Stretching in the morning sun and sweating but with that early winter chill cooling me. Just simple, being grateful and calm and being present - that is all there is to it - just be there, breathe and experience the moments.

As I approach a month of sobriety, I appreciate how much of a spoilt drunk I have been over the years - always bringing out alcohol and drinking as a prop for any event - whether it be a birthday, or even as trivial as the day of the week - like every Thursday was "Payday - let's get a few beers at the pub" and Friday was "of course, it's Friday, let's get drunk" and every Saturday was "Well, it is Saturday night, everyone else is drinking" and every Sunday was "Well, it is nice to have a bottle of wine on a Sunday" and on and on it goes. Then on the weekend "Hey, who wants a beer" at anytime of the day. There was always the perfect excuse and occasion to have a drink.

Now, after my Sunday morning walk and lying on the grass watching the girls play on the swings in the morning sun, it is so obvious that my drinking was holding everyone back as we all had to endure me staying up all night drinking and then being a fucking wreck the next day - either watching me mope around the house or letting me buy more alcohol so I could stay drunk for the morning and avoid the hangover.

Saturday Night at The Pub - Sober

2011-05-08T10:24:00.001+10:00

Spent last night sharing Mother's Day with the in laws and some family at a beer barn drinking diet ginger beer. Don't get me wrong - I was looking forward to the ribs and seeing some of the relatives, but sheesh, listening to all the drunken babble at the bar was a new experience.

I bought a couple of ginger beers at the bar and the smell was over bearing of alcohol and sweat - plus how everyone's eyes seemed bloodshot and glazed and half shut. I just watched, trying not to stare as they leaned over each other's shoulders shouting above each other, and rocking back and forth from their spots against the tables.

Then an old guy tapped me on the shoulder and told me about his spot on the end of the bar, as though he was part of the furniture. He went on about how the management had moved the bar stools out of the bar area and it was standing room only at the bar service area.

He tapped on the sign "service area, no standing" and the glass partition that had been built around the end of the bar so patrons would not be able to reach over and access the till. "This is where I have sat for the last twenty years," he grinned, tapping his fingernail on the bar, "And they have take away the barstools, put up these fucking signs, almost made it impossible for me to keep my spot here, but I still keep coming back - this is Jim's End, I tell em!"

He was all pleased with himself and I smiled and nodded back to him. It made me think - here's management totally disregarding a regular customer's established position and taking away his identity as a "positional" drinker like on shows like Cheers and others, and this guy still keeps coming back regardless.

What other business could treat a regular client like this, yet still get such compliant, gushing endorsements from the client it has so obviously overlooked? Unless the client was an alcoholic.

A Brief History of Time as the Sober in 100 Days Blog

2011-05-07T12:55:00.001+10:00

Some of my favorite posts.

Typical Saturday Night

Starting to See Clearly Now

Watching Late Night TV

Is Blogging Just Another Addiction?

Drunk as a Skunk

Just a glimpse of what I have been blogging about this past year - well it is getting up to that time and amazingly have made some very positive progress.

Found a half drunk bottle of wine on the back shelf

2011-05-05T16:29:00.000+10:00

Found a half drunk bottle of wine on one of the shelves at the warehouse - the wine had turned to vinegar and I couldn't even dare smell it - I just threw it in the bin with a sense of sort-of-pride that I don't do that anymore.

Remember the days when I would work late with a bottle of something hidden in the drawer of my desk and every now and then I would top up my "coffee mug" with some more wine. Just like they do on Letterman isn't it? Or do they really drink coffee?

Anyway, is another small step away from what I used to be and towards what I want to be. Here's to nothing hidden anymore...

Two Weeks Sober - Can See Clearly Now...

2011-05-04T18:25:00.000+10:00

So many little achievements being sober - it is almost as self absorbing and engrossing as sneaking around planning and hiding booze for my next bender! But without being too complacent, it is timely to appreciate simply be grateful for being clear headed, calm and alert.

Have been doing some business research and compare the struggle for sobriety with the board and CEO of an organisation - not performing properly at the head of the organ means the staff and frontline workers are bumbling around inefficiently and basically chaos ensues. This translates into relationship breakdown, employment struggles and financial difficulties.

So it could be said that making the decision to go sober, and remove alcohol from my life is a 'clean out' of the executive and a fresh new focus on day to day living. It may be presumptuous and jumping the gun at this early stage, but like my giving up smoking three years ago, I just feel strong that I will never ever drink or smoke again in my life.

It is too much stress and commitment to be juggling getting drunk enough during the day and then being sober enough to present as straight when required and still being organised enough to get stuff doen in business, career and on the home front.

It is just not possible and 'little cracks' were starting to show and they have not magically healed without my stopping drinking, getting sober, straight and having a few weeks decent sleep.

Take the time to get it out of your life if you can, I recommend it.

Last 100 Days as an Alcoholic: When did I realise I was an alcoholic?

2011-04-29T12:07:00.000+10:00

Last 100 Days as an Alcoholic: When did I realise I was an alcoholic?

When did I realise I was an alcoholic?

2011-04-29T12:06:00.000+10:00

Well the story goes that I used to go up to the movie theatres with a few mates and we would pool all our money and then buy like 150ml bottles of Jim Beam or Southern Comfort. I was fourteen at the time. The person who bought the drink was most usually me, as for some reason I "looked older" or more likely the woman at the bottle shop simply turned a blind eye.

So we would scurry down away from the theatre and with a can of coke or sprite drink our bourbon in horrible burning gulps followed by cooling slurps of soft drink. My eyes would water, my mouth would sting, but I would have this overwhelming feeling of warmth and strength and like a lighglobe had gone off in my head like a PING!

Some of my mates would vomit soon after, or stagger away and vomit where they would not be seen, but not me. I would keep the whole stinking mixture of bourbon and coke in my stomach and breathe shallow and pant so that it would stay down.

After a cigarette or two, I would be ready to stand up; I was even careful to not spit out a single drip of the stringy saliva from my mouth for fear of losing some of the impact! Then, bolstered with a flush of dutch courage, we would tramp up to the theatre and try to coax other young teen girls into fooling around with us.

It was a crude, rushed introduction to sex and was more about the deception and trickery than the actual getting some sexual action. Looking back, it was quite disappointing and basically brazen stupidity. But hey, I was an alcoholic just learning the ropes.

One Week Sober

2011-04-28T10:55:00.000+10:00

Well, phew, one week sober, can't say that I haven't been counting the days at some points, but it is indeed one full week without a drop of alcohol of any sort.

And just to prove the point, I have committed to antabuse daily so even if I do succumb and have a drink I will be violently ill as the alcohol will process into some sort of acetylene (like nail polish remover) and I will feel an urge to regurgitate it. So that's a pretty strong incentive to not drink.

Only, over the Easter weekend it was my wife's birthday and we all went out to a fine restaurant Bistro Tartine and I watched as they drank Reisling, then Merlot, then Shiraz. It was odd at first but I loosened up when I took a valium (these were prescribed by my doctor for anxiety and delerium tremens)and we all managed to have a good night. I even went along for a cocktail afterwards (chai tea) and then to the nightclub where it is always weird to be sober.

Then, the day after that, it was Anzac Day, a traditionally big drinking day where everyone gambles on two up and drinks copious amounts of beer. Instead, I was down the backyard digging holes for the new chicken house. It is amazing how much productive work I can get done when I am not hung over or starting drinking mid morning.

Next day was another public holiday, so was up early and had concreted the footings and the wire into the ground by lunchtime. I hope there is enough security for the chooks so the fox can't get to them.

Had so much energy, and had that curious feeling of strength that I went over and cleared the pumpkin and watermelon patch that had started to go off seeing it is the beginning of autumn. There were so many little froglets and legless lizards in there it was amazing! Now I need to find something to plant there for a winter crop - any suggestions?

Went to the library yesterday and borrowed heavily on alcoholism and addiction recovery - will be featuring a few of the most salient points I get from the articles over the next few days. In the meantime, here's to being clear-headed, calm and sleeping a lot.

Oh, I forgot - I am having 5mg of Valium each afternoon at four and am having the most relaxing deep sleeps I have had for literally decades! Just last night I slept from 730pm to 11pm, woke up on the lounge, then went into the bedroom and slept through until 7am! For sure i have been doing a bit of physical work in the garden, but these nearly 12 hour nightly sleeps are exactly what I need.

It is like I am catching up on all those nights bumbling around the house at 1am trying to screw the cap off a bottle of vodka quietly so my wife wouldn't hear. Sheesh. Sleep is such a better option.

Is Antabuse The Answer to Alcohol Addiction

2011-04-20T19:40:00.002+10:00

Well, had an invention-style meeting with my GP and wife today, with the kids running around the office as we talked alcohol addiction. Very confronting but also very real, I know what I wanted, my wife knew what she was there for and the doctor was open to listen to our experiences.

I have been thinking about my abstinence and relapse cycles and this time approached my alcohol experience with my previously successful smoking addiction. I appreciate that they are completely different animals, and that smoking and alcohol have all their peculiarities and differences - but for me i was trying to strip them back to what they essentially are - an addiction.

And my understanding and experience of addiction is stripped back to a fundamental chemical reaction that pings in my brain and acts a triggers behavior to continuing smoking or continuing drinking. It is a chemical, physical compulsion at its base level, even thought of course there are other "higher" layers of psychological and emotional need driving it as well.

So I asked for a scrip for Antabuse, and I have thirty days supply. I will be treated with nausea if I consume alcohol. Simple as that. So there's that strong negative in place, which takes care of the weakness and deceit of my drinking; no more just having a beer on the way home, or knocking back the half drunk glass of wine from the night before first thing in the morning.

So here goes and I am very positive and confident that with the power of a deterrent like nausea I will be well equipped to deal with the other triggers that I use to drink. It is amazing how often I rationalise the fear of being sober and tired and irritable as a reason to buy a few bottles of beer and wine "just in case".

And all the things I said nearly a year ago at the beginning of end 100 days to go still apply, just that I have wasted nearly year going through the motions to arrive at this point.

Now we are at day five

2011-04-16T13:16:00.000+10:00

Is getting better waking up each morning feeling fresh and alert and not tonguing for liquids.
Have been feeling a lot calmer and more patient which is also another sign of losing the heat and anger of alcohol from my system.

There is the major issue of finding something else to do with my time - as for example usually on a weekend I would be drinking around lunchtime at keep going until Sunday night. Now, with the whole long afternoon and evening stretching out in front of me, it is sort of overwhelming. But that's not to say it is not something I should embrace and enjoy - I mean after all it is not as if I have to dig holes or shovel shit - it is just that I have to stay sober and be with myself for that time.

Funny how being sober shows how unbearable I find myself - even for ME!! Like, I should be able to tolerate myself and just be normal but it is genuinely a new experience. I can only imagine how frustrating and infuriating I must be for others who have had to operate around me.

Anyway, I am trying not to over think this and be simple and straightforward - it is not an impossible task, it is just not drinking.

Read somewhere in regards to giving up cigarettes, if you look at it as a huge insurmountable personal issue, then it soon becomes that and you virtually set yourself up for relapse and failure. So, whilst being aware and definitely not complacent, I am just going to work on it myself daily.

I know my weak time is driving home; When I am tired, and my attitude can slip and I can fall into self-pity and just drop by the bottleshop and buy two bottles of wine, or three bottles of beer and some wine.

I can slip into an autonomous state where I just go through the motions of lining up, paying, driving home, and then quickly pouring myself three or huge goblets of "affordable" wine, and then, with a grimace on my face, slurping them down before I do anything.

Urgh! Can't believe I have done this for so long. It is a testament more to good luck and fortuitous management than hard work and dedication that I still have a business and a home and a few relationships left.

Anyway, more soon...

Still going have had three days off

2011-04-14T18:16:00.002+10:00

Took three days off alcohol as had drunk seven bottles of red over Saturday and Sunday.
Shameful.

Happy Freakin' Valentines

2011-02-14T23:12:00.001+11:00

Yeah well what a rainy piss up - of course....

Still a stinking Wino

2011-02-13T02:25:00.001+11:00

Still escaping from the boring silence of sobriety.

Sleeping Sleeping Sleeping

2010-09-16T11:27:00.000+10:00

Am sleeping so much better since I stopped drinking. I have been going to bed at 8pm and sleeping through to 6am! It's like I am recovering from all those lost hours of sleep when I was up walking around the house with s full glass of red wine dripping all over the carpet!

And on a personal note, my bowel motions are becoming more regular and less off a tar-like science experiment. If you needed to know...

So I am building this bank of sober days so that I am even more determined not to have a single drink again. It is so positive to be clear headed, alert and almost chirpy without feeling that "angry blood" feeling of being slightly hung over all the time.

Ok so I made it sort of

2010-09-14T14:16:00.000+10:00

Well I've been sober for nearly 48 hours and it couldn't come too soon. Now I feel as if I have a weight lifted off of me and I am able to concentrate on giving my life a red hot go.

After drinking whenever I could basically, since I was a teenager, I have retired and made the decision that drinking is not for me. Not even having a "few drinks with friends" is for me. It has never been that, I would have a bottle of wine or a sixpack of beer before I met up with friends for a few drinks, and then come home afterwards and drink another bottle of wine or as many beers until I passed out asleep.

It was a curious combination of pure greed, of feeling I might be missing out, of making alcohol an integral part of life as though celebrating and having fun was nothing without it. And it was always chasing a hangover - the dumb sting from the night before would linger through the morning until early afternoon and I would finally get the chance to gulp down some more beer or wine or whatever was available.

To my eternal shame, I can say in the past week I have even drunk Japanese rice wine one morning when I was running away from a hangover. It is 18% alcohol but tastes like, um rice? Didn't matter, a few long gulps and I had downed half a bottle and I felt OK to go out and face the bright sunny Sunday morning.

But life wasn't that bad after all, I was just accepting this second rate, exhausted, poor diet, always feeling lazy and disinterested and trying to cut corners with work so I could get home early to get on with drinking in the early afternoon.

And that anxious feeling of knowing that you have drunk 12 bottles of wine in five days without wanting to or enjoying it. Just that I had a few gulps in the morning, a few gulps istead of lunch, and then drank solidly for the evening.

And crashed out at 9pm on the lounge, only to wake at 2am with a bell-ringing hangover and a bursting bladder. To gush out clear urine with a sandy partched mouth and be simultaneously gulping water by the bottle, and popping painkillers, and then lying back in bed to lay there watching the infomercials or re-reading a true crime book for the 11th time.

Night after night. Week in week out for months and years and just feeling fat and sloppy and ashamed of myself.

Not long now - still broken

2010-08-19T20:15:00.000+10:00

Am still grinding through 2+ bottles of wine each and every night.
Now I have the benefit of a quart of 5mg of valium - it knocks me cold and I am snoring....
but still addicted and all that as much as ever...

Grinding Eating Chewing Waiting, ....

2010-08-07T22:02:00.000+10:00

Again. The tedious tension of waiting and counting down the days.

Keeping my options open

2010-08-06T16:57:00.000+10:00

Have been off drinking now for four days straight and am feeling clear headed and fresh.
Will keep off it over the weekend to as am working so will rport back on my progress on Monday

Not Many Days to Go

2010-07-17T22:05:00.000+10:00

Yeah drunk again.
Went for a walk and did heaps of cleaning this morning.
But still thinking about getting pissed the whole time
Focused. Obsessed. Or just addicted?

Drunk as a Fvckn Skunk

2010-07-16T22:07:00.000+10:00

Yeah well had like a good five days of quiet time available after a weekend away with the family and have blown it drinking sparkling semillon each afternoon (sometimes just warm from the bottle). Then throw in a lovely bottle of hunter Valley Shiraz, at a booming 15% alc/vol and you have me snoring pretty soon - or waking desert-dry by 3aM and fumbling for a book to read while the hangover comes in.

Life is a shit grind at the moment.

I crave the sober stability of not craving the booze, and then gizzling so quickly my bowels collapse.

Happy holidays---

Campfire Confessions

2010-07-12T16:22:00.000+10:00

Spent a weekend away from the home with some friends. Was the perfect setting for drinking around the campfire. Made myself into a nuisance drinking everything in site then stumbled across a full bottle of vodka and, yeah, the rest is history.

Always delightful waking up the next morning and trying to judge by the looks of others what actually happened between drink 30 and the time I actually passed out somewhere. By all accounts I was compliant and went to bed when I was told to, without falling into the fire.

Shared some meaningful moments during the day with the kids and friends, walking through eucalypt plantations and exploring the rockpools at Seal Rocks. Water was cool but startingly refreshing and cleared the head. Always love walking through a rainforest trail being told by my wife how much of a dick I was the night before. Even though my cheeks were burning with shame, I knew I would do it again the next night, and sure enough, I did, although on a smaller scale.

At some point during my nightly lectures I let slip that I actually have this blog and that I am writing on it about my struggle to move towards sobriety. The first time I have had crossover from the blogosphere to the real world. So if you are reading this, from the wekend welcome...
More on that next time.

Blogging is just another addiction

2010-07-02T19:24:00.001+10:00

A bit unfortunate but funny nonetheless.

Day 78 - Why Are Real Estate Agents Nearderthals?

2010-06-25T21:03:00.004+10:00

Have dealt asertively with my real estate agents who are supposedly supporting me in leasing my apartment.
Can I mention names? Century21-Newcastle? Ahem? OMG what a mess...
And can i personally thank the president of the New South Wales Real Estate Networking Group, ormwhatever he chooses to introduce himself as, so quaint, so bloody smug and boastful....?

Day 80 Dry-July-Abstain-drinking-for-the-month-of-July-2010

2010-06-23T06:49:00.001+10:00

Have commited to staying dry - such a quaint, inoffensive term for not getting smashed - for the month of July 2010, have a look https://www.dryjuly.com/profiles/last100days

Sounds simple enough.

Still extremely tired and virtually hung over from late nights and drinking whenever I have a spare moment.

Day 84 - Watching-The-World-Cup-2010

2010-06-20T23:54:00.001+10:00

Since last Post: Have been drinking solidly and completely up to my old tricks, unfortunately. Almost too embarrassed to write or reflect on my behaviour and choices.
Have been spending my nights drinking wine and watching the football games from 9pm until I fall asleep.

Not being at all conscious or attentive to my drinking problem. So I deserve to feel like shit - and I surely do... and tired during the day.

My wife is almost 'enablingly' understanding of my patheticness, but just taking a pic and leaving it to me to discern is another gentle(?) reminder that this drinking caper has to end.

Hope is just bullshit without firm commitments.

Day 92 - The Before Shot

2010-06-12T15:08:00.001+10:00

Since Last Post - Have just closed a marathon working session and am feeling justifiably proud of myself. Have been working round the clock for the last week and I am looking forward to going out for a meal and some drinks with some friends.

Day 92 - The Before Shot - Anticipation and Preparation

Have booked the restaurant and and although we failed to get our preferred fine dining experience, have nonetheless found a decent enough place. Have bought a case of premium Boags Lager 5% and am just finishing the first 375ml bottle as I write this without a hint of irony.
Please staty tuned I will fill you in on the night and how I handle drinking after having a good four days off the drink. As is standard after a hiatus, I am feeling fresh, clear headed and my thoughts are quick and coherent.
Happy Birthday to me. The Last drinking birthday, 36 years old today.

Day 93 - Drunkenomics - the-economics-of-alcoholism

2010-06-11T19:07:00.000+10:00

Since Last Post - Keeping out of trouble, just working and staying free of the booze. Haven't had much time to do anything but work and sleep. Have been quite direct and assertive in the workplace, which colleagues have noticed is out of the ordinary. Perhaps since I am mentally fit and not half-crippled with a thumping hangover I am more confident and less vulnerable to being manipulated in the workplace?
Day 93 - The Economics of Drinking...
1. Opportunity Cost
I have noticed how my constant hangover means I have to almost hang my head in shame and be invisible when with most work colleagues, for fear of being exposed as stinking of alcohol or having bleary bloodshot eyes.
In practice, this means I am compliant and obedient and will suffer almost any directive to avoid being exposed. It has cruelled my career, as when an opportunity is present, my hazy hangovers have meant I have had to literally take a raincheck; wait until I am fresher or more clear headed, and then hope the opportunity presents again. But too often the moment is lost - or more likely even if it does present again, I am hungover again - or in too much of a rush to get home and get on it - to take action.
In economics, this is called Opportunity Cost, ie the cost of taking one path is the lost opportunity of taking the other path.
2. Hidden or External CostsHidden costs are items not quantified directly in the cost of the good. Like greenhouse gases when we drive our car. Or Oil spills in the price of buying fuel. Or ear damage from going to a rock concert. Or not having meaningful conversations after about 5pm when you are an alcoholic.

Far and away a greater cost involved in being an alcoholic are the externalities like poor health, chronic tiredness, low frustration threshold, inability to plan or schedule beyond the point of "starting drinking for the night/day"> Here's my exepriences one by one.
Poor Health - Even though I run around the streets for 4km a few times a month, my health is entirely a charade as a heavy drinker. Thickset middle, cherry red cheeks, easily falling into junk food when hungover.
Chronic Tiredness - I used to laugh that we should have siestas and that a little doze in the afternoon was a luxury that I deserved. But it was all really bullshit to disguise the fact that I couldn't put myself to bed before every drip of alcohol had been drunk in the house, no matter what the time. Sometimes it was enough just to get the last wine into the glass so I could spill it over myself - at least the bottle was empty.
Low Frustration Threshold - When I'm tired, with a headache and I know it's only an hour or so till I can start drinking, watch out if you delay my progress. It gets my heart racing and I can be almost road rage worthy should someone stumble in the way.
Inability to Plan beyond the first drink - The evening plans are basically get alcohol, some savoury snacks perhaps, and them, well, just let me be and stand clear....

The Economics of Drinking, forgetting the actual financial costs, is depressingly real and unfortunately has been a part of my life for over ten years...