A matter of importance

God, what an evening. Tonight I attended the famous ‘After 8′ meeting in Chelsea for the first time in a year, as I fancied a change to my routine of exclusively gay AA meetings. Last time I went to After 8 I really liked it and something told me that it would be a good idea to go tonight. Anyone can share there but the main chair is always given by someone with more than 8 years of continuous sobriety, and the general theme is ‘issues of later sobriety’. I can see how that would put some people off, but I find it fascinating. Whereas gay AA is a fairly young fellowship with most of the regulars being under 10 years sober, meetings like this one are full of people with 20 and 30 years of sobriety. So whenever I feel like hearing about what it’s like to have been sober since the 1970’s, I can go there.

Tonight it was no different to how I remembered it. It’s still one of London’s busiest meetings, with over 100 attendees. The sharing is on the whole positive; the real regulars usually have stories to tell about each other that go back years and decades. I like seeing fellowship like that. The main reason I go there is that I see hope there. Some of these people have been best friends since before I was born. Some of them have been sober since before Elvis Presley died. Amazing, isn’t it?

With such long periods of sobriety seems to come a degree of material success. A few of the regulars are obviously well to do people, with amazing jobs and a lot of nice things in their lives. Being able to see that is really another part of the attraction for me. Ever since the first time I went to that meeting I’ve had this dream that one day I will be one of those people in the front row with the posh suit and shoes, keys to the sports car in one pocket and keys to the Chelsea townhouse in the other. It is just a fantasy, I know. Just because God had that planned for those people doesn’t mean that God has it planned for me. And I shouldn’t be basing success in recovery on some sort of fantastical vision of the future where material things mean everything. But it’s quite possible that all of those people were just like me when they came into the rooms. And now look at them.

At the end of the meeting I mistakenly put the remainder of my week’s cash budget into the tradition 7 pot, so I had no money for the train fare home, meaning that I’ve just had to walk all the way across London. It took nearly two hours thanks to getting lost around Buckingham Palace, and I am now shattered. But I was looking forward to getting back so I could write this. When I had been walking for an hour and a half I got to Camden, the home of the alcoholic, or so it seems. There I was accosted by a dangerously drunk person who could hardly walk in a straight line but seemed determined to latch onto me for some reason. It took me five minutes to understand what he saying; to begin with I assumed he was after money and so I did my best to look away and keep on walking. But despite being so drunk he was able to keep up with me, and when I realised that he wasn’t going anywhere I had to stop to listen to him.

It turned out that he wanted to know where the nearest bus stop was. After I had told him he was keen to let me know how much I had hurt his feelings by trying to run off. “Why do you have to be so mean? Why wouldn’t you just look at me? Do you know the meaning of kindness, mate? I don’t think you do…” Finally he wandered off when he saw a bus coming, leaving me to feel ashamed of myself. In the beginning I had simply assumed that he was going to mug me, and when he wouldn’t leave me alone I thought he was going to push me into the road or something equally horrible. If he hadn’t been so drunk I would have been quite happy to stop and listen to his request. As it is I did what I always do when danger appears to present itself. Running away normally works for me, but of course it doesn’t always.

The truth is that this man didn’t need to know the whereabouts of the nearest bus stop, he needed help from another alcoholic, and I didn’t give it to him. There’s always been this unconscious assumption that I am better than people like that because I don’t drink any more, and anyone in that state can only mean harm. If I had been as drunk as that today, however, I could quite easily have found myself in his position, stumbling from one passer by to the next, determined to get someone to listen to me but so wasted that it takes me several minutes to get my words out. In fact I clearly remember being like that at times in my drinking, unable to get the words out of my mouth and scaring people off with what they possibly perceived as aggression. It wouldn’t be entirely unfair to say that at times I could be quite aggressive, if I was in the wrong mood.

So the only difference between me and that man is a few drinks, really, and there’s a chance that I could have really helped him. What should I have done? Given him the AA number? Taken him for coffee and told him my experience of alcoholism? Oh, I don’t know. Such attempts to twelfth step him might not have worked with him being quite so drunk. But his parting words to me did strike a nerve, because although I might not be a bad person deep down, I do fail to help others when help might truly be needed. In AA meetings I don’t speak to newcomers, I don’t pick up the phone, I no longer do very much service. I don’t know why after nearly two years of sobriety I still struggle to get going with any of those things. All I can say is that helping others terrifies me.

I’m thinking that this is the kind of skill I need to be working on at the moment. It’s unfortunate that I sacked my sponsees last month, but perhaps it wasn’t the right time for us to work together. There’s other service I can do. Getting a commitment in a ‘mainstream’ meeting like the one tonight might be really good for me. It would take me away from the small collection of gay meetings that I have firmly stuck to for two years, not that I want to discard those meetings altogether, but something is telling me that I need some balance in my recovery now between different kinds of meetings. I still have no heterosexual friends and thinking about that now, it does seem worth addressing. For some time I’ve simply assumed that getting a job is the only change I need to make in my life, but tonight’s events have made me think that there are other massive changes worth making as well.

If challenged before today I might have said that once I’ve got a job I’ll have all the confidence I need to start making these changes, start giving back to AA and the world again. But with the interminable delays that I have encountered in my job search, it’s crossed my mind that there would be no better time to change my approach to everything than right now. I don’t quite know if or how I’m going to being of service in AA again. Perhaps all I need to do is do as much as I can.

Facing the facts

Tonight’s home group was very interesting. It is my only home group now, as I am no longer in charge of the Saturday meeting at Notting Hill and I feel like a break from that one will be good for me. So tonight at my new ‘primary’ meeting there was a lot of talk about childhood, and it got me thinking. When talking about the pain and horror that can be experienced in childhood a couple of tonight’s sharers burst into tears. When talking about my own experience of youthful trauma, I still cannot cry if it is in front of people. Even people who know me. I was talking the other day about this problem; my therapist brought it up last week when I hadn’t thought about it before. Tonight I really wished that I could share in that emotional experience with the room, but as usual I was automatically mechanical and matter-of-fact in my sharing. I don’t even know that I’m doing it unless I happen to look closer at what I am saying, like I am now, and I realise that these things should be producing some kind of emotion in me, but they just don’t.

I can get in touch with my feelings perfectly well when I am alone, but with others in the room it happens very rarely. I wouldn’t know how to begin making myself open up in that way. Somehow the link between the words I’m saying and the emotions behind them has been blocked off. It’s no wonder I can get so down when I am alone with my pain. The emotion that I should be expressing in the rooms automatically gets saved up for those times when I’m lying in bed and I feel safe to let some of it out. I have no choice in the fact that this happens. If I could break that block and cry openly in front of friends I would, but I don’t know where the block is. Avoiding emotion in my sharing has become so unconscious that I wouldn’t know how to share any other way.

What people were saying about their childhoods tonight gave me further food for thought. The old cliché that “my traumatic childhood didn’t make me an alcoholic” came out a few times. I have inevitably asked myself over the years whether the fact of my faulty upbringing, the shame around my sexuality made me more susceptible to alcohol dependency or not. I know why people in the rooms are so vehemently inclined to deny that the past had anything to do with their liking for booze: if you admit that the past played a part then you have to admit that overcoming the past might allow for ‘normal’ drinking (if there is such a thing). My own personal take on it at the moment (and this might well change) is that coming to terms with the past doesn’t necessarily mean that I will ever be able to drink like a normal person. After two years of not drinking I’m not sure I would ever want to go back to it, even if at some point I manage to achieve my dream of living at peace with the past. My ideal vision of the future would include living peacefully with the past whilst remaining sober forever. That may or may not mean that I accept my past played a part in my addiction issues.

I can’t think of a single person I’ve met in AA who had a peaceful, undisturbed childhood. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that any human being who says they had no issues whatsoever in childhood and adolescence can’t be a real human being. Surely it’s the experience of pain in our early years that makes us truly empathetic and wise? Anyway, it’s taken me many years to get the point where I can admit without reservation that I experienced trauma in my childhood, and with nothing much else going on in my life I am faced with all these feelings that I never dealt with properly whilst drinking. The drinking was a way of escaping from the pain, a band-aid over the wound; it was not the cause of that pain. The pain I am talking about started when I was very young, before I could even talk. Alcoholic drinking caused its own pain of course, which is why I had to stop drinking. Did the pain and problems stop as soon as I had put the pint glass down to get sober? Of course not. Occasionally you’ll hear in meetings the idea that getting sober is all one needs to do to have a wonderful life, usually from relative newcomers who haven’t experienced true sobriety yet. My experience has shown me that this idea is a fallacy. Sobriety can be truly wonderful (at times); it can be tough as shit (at times), as I have expressed here very honestly.

No matter how much I would like to run and hide from the pain, with all my sophisticated and unconscious ways of avoiding it, I can’t run from it by saying that my childhood didn’t make me an alcoholic. Perhaps it would be fair to say that it didn’t give me a preference for certain liquors over others, alcohol over drugs. Those specific preferences weren’t decided by any experience that I could pinpoint, not that I would want to waste time looking for such experiences anyway. What my childhood did make me is over-sensitive, neurotic, needy and prone to depression. These are mental states that I have to deal with on a daily basis now; it’s unfortunate that some in AA would dismiss them by saying that they have nothing to do with alcoholism. I’ve heard it said on a couple of occasions that if one wants to talk about depression one should go to another fellowship. AA meetings should be reserved for alcohol talk, according to these ‘fundamentalists’.

It’s not that I wish to take over every AA meeting I go to with talk about depression and other mental states that don’t directly relate to drinking, but I certainly don’t believe that depression is an ‘outside’ issue. I think it has everything to do with my propensity towards drinking heavily. I actually think it can go some way to explaining why I crave alcohol so badly from time to time. I don’t want to hurt or upset people in the fellowship, and I certainly don’t want to come across as someone who takes life far too seriously (as if!) but I want the truth about sobriety to be known. To thine own self be true, they say – and this is what I am doing.

How to get stuck

It is nearly 2 o’clock in the morning and I cannot go to bed. The reasons for this inability to get up from the seat in front of the computer and move to my bed two rooms away are multiple but simple. I dislike the thought of going to bed without feeling as if I have achieved anything in the day just gone. Although I could not have achieved very much more than I actually did on Monday, I still do not feel very ready to call it a day. In the day just passed I’ve written and read quite a lot, I’ve meditated, done some healthy food shopping, even applied for a few jobs. Yet the sense of lack in achievement remains with me at this late hour. An hour ago I was lying on the sofa in front of the TV, exhausted and stuck in an old pit of fearful melancholy about the lack of change that I have seen in my life this year. The most significant thing about this year is that I’ve survived a series of severe depressive attacks. I want to be proud of the fact that I am still sober, still relatively sane after all of that, but it’s not going to be one of those nights where I go to bed feeling proud of myself.

My mother was in a really bad mood earlier this evening . She’s in a bad mood at some point most days, but this evening it went on for longer than usual. She berated me a few times for having my music up too loud (I really didn’t think it was that loud), and when I challenged her on it she threw one of her childish fits, as I knew she would. Later she had the TV on in the other room at full volume; it bothered me a lot but I didn’t see the point in challenging her again. All I felt able to do was lie here in my part of the flat and wish for another life. A life where I live in my own place, where I don’t get picked on for living in my own chosen way. I hesitate to describe my current situation as unfair because I don’t wish to make myself a victim of it any more. But I’ve done all that I feel able to do to get myself out of this situation, and it hasn’t worked. I’ve done two degrees, spent a year applying for jobs nearly every day. In spite of my best efforts I remain stuck in the same place that haunted me at the age of sixteen. This small flat, my home, has felt like a prison for the past twelve years. And I don’t know how to get out of it.

If I say the serenity prayer a few times will it help me to accept this thing that I cannot change? I highly doubt it. I’ve had enough time to accept my situation; I am astute enough to know that there is no use in resisting it mentally. If sobriety has done anything it has enabled me to see how things really are. The more sober I am the more incongruous this place is with the person that I want to be. I have been sick of this place for so long, it hurts. The meditation that I have been doing for the past week or so has only served to make that sickness clearer to me. My heart is telling me that I have to go. But there is nowhere to go! I’m putting the footwork in by looking for employment which will enable me to afford a space of my own, yet the results are not coming.

I’ve lost count of how many different application forms and CVs I have sent off this year. Every application I send is like a prayer for independence. I pray every single day for this change but it is not coming. It is exactly one year and five days since I finished University and became unemployed. Is this really the place that I am meant to be in? If it is, why is my heart telling me that it’s not? Obviously the global recession has put paid to a lot of people’s dreams this year. For someone like me with next to no work experience, being given a chance by any given employer is unlikely at best. And I am not saying that to be pessimistic – we have to be realistic here. It’s no use trying to comfort myself with platitudes and clichés about positive thinking. The recession may be over but its effects are here to stay. I may have to put up with this prison for a while longer.

Why is independence so important to me? Why can’t I find a way of fitting more comfortably into my present surroundings? If it wasn’t such a small space, if my mother’s ‘isms’ weren’t so loud, fitting in might be more possible. So many ifs. I have lived here for long enough to know that the environment isn’t going to change. Five years ago when I was forced to return to London I specifically told mum that things were going to have to change. By that I meant no more telling me what to do, no more waiting up for me when I’m out late at night, no more shouting and tantrum throwing. There was significant change for the better, but it wasn’t enough for me. I shouldn’t be expecting her to change any more than she already has. It’s her flat, not mine. Having no rights over my own home doesn’t help me to feel very secure here.

Every time she shouts and throws a tantrum I get a very strong fear of abandonment in my gut. A fear which comes from the distant past, when a young boy experienced the tragedy of conditional love from its mother. She didn’t mean to create that tragedy. She was (is) just a sick woman who will never find the inner strength to seek help and change. The only person I can change here is myself. But I do not want to change myself any more. It’s my surroundings that need changing. When we live apart we get on much better. In the three years that I lived in Norwich I actually missed her at times, something I would never have thought possible in my previous life. Living back here makes me resent her to an extent that is less than healthy. I need and want to move back out into the world. Yet I get the sense that God is keeping the opportunities from me for some reason. Does God think that I’m still not ready for the change? If it’s God’s will for me to remain here forever then it’s God’s will. But I don’t think I can cope with this confinement for very much longer.

Tomorrow I will step the job search up a gear. I will start using the phone to call employers directly, if appropriate. I’m not yet at the stage where I feel comfortable walking into shops and offices with my CV uncalled. I think that is something only an exceptionally healthy economy brimming with jobs would call for.

I really can’t afford to let my life stagnate in this flat any more. It has haunted me and troubled me for twenty six years. When I was eighteen I miraculously managed to get away for a few years, aware only in the slightest way that the break was necessary. After that it’s like I was pulled back, by fear as much as anything else. For twenty six years this place has been home to my worst nightmares. It is a trap that only a gargantuan amount of effort can pull me out of. Once I’m out, there can be no coming back. I don’t know what it’s going to be like out there. With freedom I know there is responsibility, which could be as scary and painful at times as imprisonment in my childhood home has been. But I yearn so much and feel ready for that freedom now. How could I not?

Pride on the 4th of July

Yesterday saw the annual gay pride parade in London. In the world of AA, pride is a character defect to be discardedl; in the gay world, on the other hand, it is a good way of showing the world that we have no intention of hiding ourselves away. I have watched the parade in London without fail for the past few years. It is an experience that I usually look forward to for weeks in advance; it is the sort of thing I could never imagine myself being part of in my childhood. If nothing else it is a good day out, attended seemingly by every gay person in London. For this reason I normally expect to bump into most of the gay men I’ve ever met and slept with when I go to Pride. London is a very big city, but when it comes to the gay scene things are still on a relatively small scale. Yesterday I planned to spend most of the day hanging around with Neal and his mates. Neal is a good, trustworthy friend who doesn’t drink very much, even on occasions like this. Unfortunately his friends tend to drink a lot more, and I don’t particularly like or get on with any of them. As Neal was the only person I knew planning to spend the whole day at Pride I felt obliged to stay with him. To begin with the day was good fun. The run of good weather that London has enjoyed for the past fortnight continued; all day the sun shone down on the drag queens and the semi-naked men. The atmosphere was great, as it always is.

When the parade was over Neal and his friends wanted to walk to Soho where a cabaret stage had been erected. Because of the massive crowds on the street it was difficult for the group to remain together whilst walking. From that point on the whole group was never together at any one point. Neal was clearly stressed out with trying to get everyone back together at the cabaret stage in Leicester Square; he was barely off the phone to them all afternoon. The entertainment at this point was surprisingly good – a surprise appearance by Boy George made one of the day’s highlights, as he sang his spiritual hit ‘Bow Down Mister’. Later on Neal wanted to try out the Old Compton Street bars; I wasn’t averse to the idea, although when we arrived on the famous stretch of road I found the crowds slightly overwhelming. It was still hot and a lot of people were sitting or standing in the road, which had luckily been pedestrianized for the day. I knew it would be busy, as it always is for Pride, but getting from one end of the street to the other was almost impossible, it was so crowded. We ended up in Comptons bar, a place I’ve never been particularly fond of, but it was the only place where we could find seats, and at that point I really needed to sit down.

While Neal and his mates got drunk on cold beer I sipped on diet coke, and anxiety about the night ahead began to creep up on me. We were hoping to see Lady Gaga perform at G-A-Y – to stand any chance of getting in we would have to start queuing outside the club by 9pm at the latest. I didn’t mind the thought of queuing for hours, having done a similar thing when Madonna made an appearance at the same club in 2005. Neal however was uneasy about the thought of being on his feet for so long, and until the very last minute was reluctant to commit to joining me. Needless to say I found the idea of going to stand outside G-A-Y nightclub on my own for three hours wholly unappealing.

Fortunately the promise of an amazing performance by one of the world’s biggest pop stars was too tempting for Neal to ignore in the end. None of his friends were interested in joining us, thank God – they were far too busy getting drunk in Soho to move. Neal and I turned up at Heaven at 9pm as planned and the queue was already long. There was a buzz in the air, though, which made the time pass surprisingly quickly. Very soon it was 10 o’clock and the doors were finally opened. I remembered the night I went to see Madonna at the same club four years ago – it was an equally remarkable experience, though perhaps not as fondly remembered because I was on my own and drinking. This time I would remember everything, and I was with a good friend. From then until 2 in the morning we had to do a lot of waiting. Being a big star, I guess Lady Gaga can afford to keep her fans waiting. By 1.55am I was tired, overheated and in pain, thanks to being on my feet all day. The main dancefloor in the club was packed like a tin of sardines, and I was beginning to feel sick from the smell of sweaty armpits. Having started to take the idea of meditation seriously this week, I tried in vain to get myself into a meditative space so that I could accept the tiredness and the pain more easily, but the physical messages were just too strong. I was on the verge of walking out when the music was finally turned down and the stage lights were switched on. Lady Gaga emerged from underneath the large stage and launched straight into her latest hit, Paparazzi. It was an exciting moment, marred only by the thousands of arms waving in front of me and blocking my view.

She was on stage for an impressive hour and sang most of the songs from the debut album. I didn’t live to regret my decision to stay out so late last night. For hours my body had been telling me to go home, but in my heart I knew that this was an unmissable opportunity. It’s not very often you get to see a world superstar perform for such a low cost. On my means, it’s the kind of thing that only happens once or twice in a lifetime. Earlier in the year I was cursing my luck for being so unemployable and poor. This weekend has shown that I can do just about anything I want, as long as I remain sober. Had I been drinking yesterday I wouldn’t have had enough to cover the entry cost into G-A-Y. Thankyou, sobriety!

As soon as the Lady had finished her set I was straight out of the club, desperate to get home to bed. When we emerged back out on the street there was a moment when I thought about my lack of plans for the rest of the week, and it made me feel sad. No more fun things appeared on the horizon; I imagined having to stay at home for the rest of the week just to stay within budget. After happy experiences there is always a bit of sadness, coming from that great fear that nothing could ever bring such happiness again. I don’t know if anyone else gets that, or if it’s just me with my relentless negative outlook on life. I’ve always struggled with this problem of making happiness last. Of course it doesn’t last, thanks to life’s tendency to be an endless, oscillating dance between happiness and sadness. What I would really love to do is find a peace of mind which lies behind the fluctations of pleasure and pain that are caused by life’s events. According to the book I’m reading at the moment by Kabat-Zinn, a few years of daily meditation should do the trick. That possibly sounds sarcastic or flippant – I’m starting to think that it’s good advice.

A few days or weeks of sitting quietly for ten minutes every day isn’t going to undo the years of conditioning that have trained me to cling onto life’s unpredictable events for happiness. I’ve managed to remember to meditate mindfully every morning this week; incorporating anything new into my routine is never easy, so I’m pleased with the progress. Sometimes I will inevitably forget to take those ten minutes upon awakening – a fact not to be used as an excuse for berating myself or giving up immediately. Having sat down to meditate when I got out of bed this afternoon (I allowed myself the extra sleep to recover from last night’s exertion) I felt very little sadness or frustration at having to stay indoors today. So I look forward genuinely to the benefits that a few decades of such practise might bring me.

The daily task

Yesterday afternoon I searched for an honest and fair way to tell James, last week’s fling, that I didn’t feel able to fit him into my life at the moment. He wasn’t happy about the news, logging straight on to facebook to tell everyone that he felt ‘used’ but was ‘back on the market’. For an hour I was angry at his reaction, and I wanted to retaliate by reminding him how hard it had been for me to come to my decision, that my life was difficult enough without him creating more friction. I resisted the urge to retaliate, deciding it would be better for both of us if I left him alone. It wasn’t at all easy to rein in my tongue in such a way. My feelings were telling me that a great injustice had been done. The thought of all the negative assumptions that his facebook friends would be making about me, the idea that he could go away thinking of me as a using bastard, nearly drove me mad. Instead of acting from anger and fear I made a decision to walk away from the whole situation, and I’m sticking to my decision. In my new spiritual life I have to walk away from things instead of making them worse; I have to treat others with unconditional kindness rather than reacting with vitriol when I feel as if I haven’t got everything I expected from them. Enough experience has shown me that living in this spiritual way is vital to my inner peace.

I can no longer hide from the important work that needs to be done in my life, and unfortunately sexual relationships have to fall by the wayside for the time being. They require too much hard work in themselves, and as I wrote the other day it’s clear that I don’t have the mental or physical space to do that work yet. The really important work that needs doing right now cannot get done when I am distracted by men! I am slowly getting back to the task of spiritual enlightenment that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago, listening to podcasts and reading books which contain highly useful lessons. I’ve gone back to Eckhart Tolle and Buddha because they know about what really matters in life. I want to go deeper into myself, past the distractions of lust and resentment and insecurity, down into the place where I find out who I really am. In that place there is a lonely child who I have spent so much time talking and writing about but never really given compassion or love to.

I am starting to ask what is truly essential in life, what my priorities need to be, and in doing so I’m leaving behind very comfortable unconscious ways of thinking, and it feels like I’ve jumped off a cliff. Five years ago if you had asked me what I really wanted more than anything I would have told you about the perfect TV boyfriend, house, bank balance and job. Today I have a very different understanding of what I want: I know that inner peace and contentment are closer to what I really want and far more achievable. But accepting that those are the things I should be striving for is a very tough thing to do, because there remains a very strong part of me that does not want to let go of old dreams. The more spiritual work I try to do, the louder and urgent that doubting voice gets. I have talked about it with my therapist for the past two weeks, and he finds it very interesting that my doubts and fears actually seem to have a voice that speaks. Perhaps the voice is shouting louder now because I am getting closer to the core of the problem, closer to the final answer that will silence it for good.

Last week for homework I was supposed to practise meditating with my perfect nurturer in mind, to try and make that image more real and get in touch with the healing emotions that it can bring up. I wasn’t very successful in this assignment partly because most days I struggled to get out of bed before midday and felt as if I was catching up with myself the whole week. When explaining to the therapist why for the first time I had been unable to complete a homework assignment, I naturally mentioned that doubting voice in my head, the voice that asks endless questions and never finds satisfaction in any of the answers. Every attempt at meditation is dogged by this irritating narrative which simply refuses to believe that the work I’m doing will make any difference in my life. Although I know that logically I should get better with sustained and purposeful meditation practise, the voice of the illness (in other words, my sick ego) is determined not to believe it. It’s like that part of me just doesn’t want to get better. Everything I have done in the past two years to improve my quality of life has been met with these endless repetitive and rhetorical questions. At the very bottom of it is the unshakeable belief that I can’t get better, that I am not meant to be happy because I am irreparably damaged. The part of me that should be able to answer all these doubts and fears with trust and faith is seriously underdeveloped.

So next week I am going to partake in an experiment with my therapist. It will be our penultimate session and therefore probably quite important in determining the success of the whole run. We are going to revisit the past; go back to a specific experience of my choosing that causes powerful emotions whenever it is recalled. I will describe the experience in the first person, as if I am there experiencing it all over again. Instead of leaving that memory as it is, we are going to bring a new narrative into it – the voice of my perfect nurturer, who will comfort the little child in that memory and hopefully produce a positive emotional response. The therapist has stated that I need to be completely in touch with my emotions during this exercise: I cannot run away or avoid the pain like I usually do. If we can put that caring, loving mother figure that I imagine as my perfect nurturer into the memory and change my pain into love, then perhaps a breakthrough will be reached.

The problem is that I avoided accessing those painful emotions for a very long time. They’ve been coming up a lot recently while I’ve been moving towards this therapeutic goal, but never in the appropriate places. When I’m talking to my therapist or sharing in an AA meeting I tend to be matter-of-fact about it, successfully detached from the painful reality of the past. Only when I’m on my own can I cry or feel anything. The therapist tells me that this detachment from emotion which I practise every time I’m not alone is the problem that has allowed the critical, doubting voice in my head to arise. Before I came to AA, I never accessed my emotions at all, not even when I was alone, and so the negative voice of the illness didn’t have to shout too loud at all.

I am heading towards that pain for the first time in my life - I can no longer accomodate the belief that there might be another way forward. I have to go to those dark places; I am already going to those dark places. I have to keep going there, again and again until the fiery furnace of pain burns itself out or I die. On a practical day to day level, there are many different ways of facing that pain and fear. Meditation is not the only tool to be used in this quest: it is simply a way of creating space and love around the pain that is inevitably going to come up in the multitude of life situations that cannot be avoided. No matter how much I would like to run away from everyday life and spend every moment practising meditation, I can’t. I was talking the other day about regaining my independence: practically moving towards that by finding employment is a task that meditation and other spiritual/therapeutic work has told me I need to start engaging in. I don’t want the task – it will be boring and repetitive and I will probably hate it for years. But I have to start engaging in it sooner or later.

If an AA newcomer was to ask me what I’ve learnt about life in sobriety, I would answer that life is a series of a million daily journeys. There are countless links and relationships between what happens from day to day, of course, but every new day is essentially separate. What you learn one day can very easily be forgotten the next; a routine that you manage to engage in for one week can be lost ever so quickly the next. Progress in any life challenge involves accepting that you might have to apply yourself equally to the challenge every single day for the rest of your life. In my early days in AA I learnt that there was no miracle cure for alcoholism, only a daily reprieve; at this stage of the journey I am starting to learn that there is no miracle solution to any of life’s big challenges. To succeed in the task of living I have to start doing the same things every single day. I have to face the same problems every day and accept that they might never go away. What I have found in accepting this harsh truth is that small miracles start to happen. Things do start to get better, in small and barely noticeable ways. For a year I have partaken in voluntary work at a gay helpline; the work terrified me at first; only by going back again and again to face the fear I have slowly been able to find enjoyment and reward in the work. It’s taken a long time and the fear is by no means gone. It might always be there in a small way. But it has become a lot more manageable.

The funny thing is that I’ve only been able to come to this conclusion by accepting the possibility of fear always being present in the work. I very quickly had to let go of the old and naive assumption that a few goes at the task would be enough to eliminate that fear completely. The truth about life is that fear has to be lived with: it involves a very long learning process. I was able to say ten years ago with some conviction that I knew there were no miracle cures to my problem, but I was in no way ready to accept this truth, because I had barely begun to experience it. Now I am experiencing it on a daily basis because I am living an adult life that forces me to face it. I am being forced to let go, little by little, every day. And the pain that comes with being forced to let go is totally and utterly necessary. And…I think…I could be grateful for that.

Here’s a song…

…that seems to sum up how I feel this week. R.I.P. Michael.

Back on the road

I met my sponsor today for the first time in about a month. The meeting was arranged last week and at first I believed I would only be with him long enough to sack him. As tonight got closer I was less sure about doing such a drastic thing, and by the end of our hour together he was still my sponsor. We talked honestly about my difficult month; I didn’t think he would have a clue how to respond to my problems but he was quite understanding. He was angrier than I expected when I told him that I had sacked my sponsees and given up one of my service commitments. He can see that I haven’t been in the best frame of mind to give others advice, but he is definitely of the school that says I need to help newcomers to aid my recovery. I agree that I was selfish last week in my actions, but what’s done is done now and we have to move on.

I’m still not entirely happy with his sponsorship. After separating today I knew he would be going straight to meet his partner who would be hearing all about the questionable decisions I’d made. I don’t want Clive to know anything about my recovery – I don’t like Clive and I don’t think he is well placed to judge me. My sponsor and Clive have been together a long time and there’s nothing I can do about the fact that they talk. Clive is the main reason why I’m not happy with my sponsor, and I don’t know whether I will be considering sacking him again in a month or so. For now I’m holding off from making another dramatic decision. I can’t promise that I will pick up the phone and make more of an effort with my current sponsor, but I will try.

Funnily enough in the café this evening we were two tables away from a group of people I knew very well. There was Dean, Colin, Amanda and Andy, the little clique that has nearly driven me away from gay AA many times. A year ago I was right in the middle of that clique. Since then I’ve felt so many different things about all those people. It’s swung wildly from love to hate, jealousy and envy to admiration and pride. I don’t know quite how I feel about them any more. They’ve never done anything wrong and probably have no idea how much their behaviour has affected me this year. They always were and always will be ‘the cool people’, and I don’t believe I will ever be one of them again. They can cope with looking and sounding good all the time – I can’t. As I was leaving the café with my sponsor Colin asked if I would be coming to the meeting later. I said ‘no’ automatically, to which Colin responded with mild disappointment. Perhaps he is really concerned about not seeing me in meetings any more, but I have moved on. I stopped going to that particular meeting after I finished the tea commitment there in January as I simply couldn’t cope with it any more. It’s one of those meetings where the crowd and the sharing is exactly the same every week. Clive practically owns it. I felt that it was threatening my sobriety, and since I broke away I haven’t looked back. In a similar way I’ve broken away from Colin and Dean and all those former friends who I used to idolize. This is what life is about: change and moving on. Friendship groups come and go. Thankfully there are meetings away from that little coterie where I can go and see different people that I like better.

Over the weekend I saw James again for our second date. This time I went back to his place and we had a long night of fun. He’s good in bed, as am I: I’ve learnt a lot in a year. The next day was mostly spent recovering. We sat on the sofa in front of the TV with his cat and two dogs until the evening when he cooked a delicious roast dinner for me and his flatmate, who had just shown up after a full night and day of clubbing. The flatmate was not the friendliest of people. He was noticeably tense and very quiet, probably due to a comedown from the cocktail of drugs that he’d taken to stay at the club until Sunday afternoon. Before he arrived I was getting on very well with James; after that there was an atmosphere in the room and I started to want to go home. After dinner I finally left, unsure what was going to happen next with us. I still liked James but upon examination I couldn’t remember the spark that had initially attracted me to him. A lot of reasons not to see him again suddenly popped into my head, his smoking habit and my dislike of his flatmate being the two biggest reasons. Back home I remembered that I was trying to think less about things so I firmly put it to the back of my mind, deciding to think about it again only when absolutely necessary.

Since the weekend James has stopped writing about me in his facebook status updates, a worrying thing. Last week he couldn’t stop raving about me to his friends. I knew that excitement wouldn’t last – in a way I’m glad he’s stopped telling the world about me because it means the world doesn’t know my business any more. But it could also mean that James is losing interest. Let’s face it, the sharp drop in attention that I’ve been getting can’t mean anything good. For a while on Sunday night I was upset about the sudden change, before remembering how many times such a thing had happened in the past with different men. I know the pattern now, I know that this is the way things go for me. I don’t need James to be in love with me – my life will carry on just fine without him should he choose not to be a part of it.

Of course it’s a shame that I’ve wasted yet another weekend on something that probably isn’t built to last. A week ago I really liked James. I guess what’s happened is that we’ve got to know each other and found that we’re not so compatible. To be honest, I think I’m getting to a stage where I don’t want to waste any more time finding guys that I am compatible with. There are so many other areas of my life that need sorting out, I think dating and relationships may need to take a back seat again. If I could somehow date without all the worrying and obsessing then it would probably be fine, but such a best case scenario is highly unlikely, isn’t it? All that time I spent with James over the weekend I could have spent at home writing, reading, meditating, praying, even looking for jobs. Having a boyfriend isn’t going to get me out of this rut that I’ve been in for five years, I’ll still be stuck at home with no money and no freedom. At the end of the day, to stand any chance of really changing my life I need a job. I’ve known that for a very long time, but this week I think I’ve come a bit closer to accepting it.

When it comes to writing I know I have talent, but simply relying on that would keep me here at home for years. Realistically I have a much better of chance of regaining my independence with a normal paying job. So I have to forget boyfriends and throw myself back into the career search properly. I’ll keep writing for the evenings, but job searching has to be a daily priority. As ever, I can’t do anything about the fact that I lack the experience most employers want. It’s an extremely tricky catch 22 situation, because of the global recession and the insane competition that I face with every job I try for. But I don’t have the luxury of being able to relax and give up the search. I am sick of being dependent on my mother at the age of 26 and so I must put my heart into finding anything that will change the situation. If that means I have to go back to long term celibacy then so be it. I’m certainly not going to miss all the anxiety that romance has brought me this year. When I’m in employment perhaps I’ll be able to look at SLAA again. Until then, AA recovery will be the easiest kind of recovery for me to do. I have my two or three weekly AA meetings that I like and feel comfortable in – finding that base in SLAA is going to take more time and energy than I can afford to give at the moment. I wish it didn’t have to be so but it is.

Thought-less

On Tuesday I went to my home group planning to quit my commitment there so I could be free either to try other meetings or leave AA altogether. When I got to the room I saw my friend Billy and we had one of our great chats, and I started to feel less like abandoning the meeting completely. I sat through the meeting listening intently and managed to share about my dramatic weekend near the end. Afterwards I felt significantly better than I had for several days, and decided not to hand my literature commitment in after all. The group were going for coffee as always – I declined their invitation, knowing I was still potentially shaky. I’ve started to think that it’s going for coffee religiously after meetings which has caused so much of the problem. Not that there should be anything wrong with routine socialising, but for me I simply think it’s always going to be difficult. Perhaps this means I will be ‘isolating’ more than I should be, or perhaps not going for coffee every single week doesn’t have anything to do with isolation, but is rather a decision to look after myself. Only time will tell.

Therapy on Wednesday was great. We used up half the session talking about what had happened on Saturday to make me consider throwing sobriety and my life away once again. The therapist conducted a fairly detailed interview with me about the particular incident after my second home group at Notting Hill, where I was at the café and felt left out of the group for one reason or another. My beliefs about myself and my friends during that incident were examined thoroughly, and it turned out that all the old assumptions about people not really caring for me were there. Not for the first time I lapsed into this old mindset where the world seems to hate me and I hate the world and I can’t interact with anyone or anything or a normal level. I was heading into that mindset before the meeting started and at some point some kind of event triggered the full onslaught of depression.

Once I am in that mindset it is very hard to get out of it: it’s like being swept away by a tidal wave. Realising that it’s the depression tends to begin the process of getting better, but it always takes a long time for the feelings to entirely wear off. All the work I’ve done in AA has caused a shift in perception, of course, so that I can now see it more clearly when it happens. And therapy has provided a forum for me to go deeper into it; the causes are clearer, as are the solutions. In the second half of the session we talked again about the ‘perfect nurturer’ that I am supposed to envision every time depression or anxiety comes over me. I was able to see the benefits of this technique as soon as it was suggested to me, but it has not been easy to begin implementing in my life. This week I am supposed to be visualising myself being protected and soothed by this perfect nurturer as part of my meditative practise; on day two of the regime I am already experiencing heavy doubts, feeling like there’s no point in even trying any more because my negative brain keeps getting in the way.

At the very end of Wednesday’s therapy session we briefly talked about the doubting voice in my head that seems to be present nearly all the time, especially when I am trying to do things that stand a chance of improving my life. That voice has been louder and more present than usual in recent weeks; every attempt at meditation has been dogged by it. This is the voice of my experience, of all that pain and misery, the voice of so-called reason that tells me nothing can ever get better for me because I am just a sad, angry person with too much baggage.

After therapy the voice was in top form as I went to meet a date called James in Islington. We’d met the night before on a gay dating website and felt a mutual attraction which urged a prompt real life meeting. James is not like most of the guys I’ve dated in the past: he has osteoarthritis and has to use a wheelchair most of the time. I did not find this offputting in the slightest as I was more interested in his looks, which I found very appealing as soon as I got there. We drank coke and chatted in a pub for a few hours, and I wanted to rip his clothes off for most of that time. I found him fairly easy to talk to as he did most of the talking (this has always been the case with most people I meet). I would have quite liked to go back to his place that night but he insisted that we wait until the second date, which I found refreshing.

Since Wednesday the doubts have slowly crept in – of course they have. We’ve talked most nights online and he seems very keen to talk about what we’re going to do in bed tomorrow night after we’ve meet again. We’ve linked as friends on facebook and at least five times he’s mentioned how amazing I am in his status updates. I wouldn’t mind if I’d known him for a year or something, but it’s only been a week. I suppose I should be grateful that I can actually have that effect on someone, but something about it doesn’t feel right to me at this stage. I so want the kind of encounter that’s going to last; already I have a feeling that this one is going to be as short lived and pointless as all the others. In a month’s time when he knows what I’m really like he isn’t going to be posting romantic compliments in his status updates every day, is he? I know he’s not because I’ve seen men do this before. They get excited in the first week or two, then after that once the dust has settled and they’ve got to know me it’s like I never existed. I’ve seen it happen so many times.

I shouldn’t be surprised or upset that yet another encounter is heading the way of history’s dustbin after burning way too brightly too quickly. I knew there was a chance that this would happen given that I chose to find a date on the internet again. Unfortunately there isn’t any other place where I can find dates so easily. And I’m not ready to stop dating yet. I’ve met some great guys on the internet in the past. Not many, but some.

I know I’m overthinking this tonight. Tomorrow might be great. It might last after tomorrow. No one can know. I’ve written about it endlessly, time and time again over the years, how relationships baffle me, and they continue to do so. There’s no formula or set of rules to determine whether an encounter is going to be a success or not (I refuse to use the word ‘relationship’ when I can avoid it now - I think it’s been far too overused where I’m concerned). I’m worried that James is way too keen on me already, but is that really a reason to give up on him? I’m concerned that he might lose interest after he’s been allowed to shag me, but I can’t know that for sure. Perhaps what should really matter is whether I want to see him again or not, and at the moment I think I do. The doubting voice in my head, which comes from the place where my illness is, wants me to worry about James all night until I hate him and then I hate myself and decide to stay in tomorrow and drink again. That’s what the illness wants. I have only recently realised how cunning and clever it can be. What I’ve struggled with for a very long time is the question of how it can be me and not me at the same. How can I hear this voice which speaks with my voice but is not actually telling me things that are for my own good? How on earth did it get there and become so powerful, so convincing?

The crucial thing is that I’m doing something about it now, I’m listening to it whilst keeping my distance from it for the first time. I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to approach AA from now on, but I will be going back. I still have friends there and they still mean a lot to me. I imagine that some of those friends who were unfortunate enough to read the things that I wrote the other day might be quite upset with me now. That worry is one of the reasons I feared going back to AA, because people might be angry with me, they might be thinking that I have no right to be in meetings any more. Again, I’ve overthought it to death. What I have to do is move on. And stop thinking.

All the wrong reasons

It has been a very difficult weekend. Something happened on Saturday and I have barely had a moment of mental peace in the fallout from that. What has emerged very clearly from the whole messy thing is that I am very angry, still. Who or what I’m angry at keeps changing every few minutes. The important thing is that I’m angrier than I’ve ever been and it’s not going away. I should be talking to a sponsor about this but I’m not. I should be sharing about this in a meeting but I’m not. Instead of doing what I ’should’ be doing I am being naughty for the first time in my recovery. I’m sitting at home planning my exit from AA; I’ve given up one of my service commitments and will be handing the next in tomorrow. I’m going to phone both my sponsees later to let them know that I can’t sponsor them any more. And tomorrow morning after the court case I will be sacking my sponsor. After that, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I should go straight to a new AA meeting that I’ve never been to and start again building up a social circle for myself. If it’s gay AA that I’m angry at then I don’t have to go to another gay AA meeting. There are over 600 meetings in London every week; I should be able to find somewhere else to go where the resentments and the jealousy won’t be an issue any more. But I don’t want to do anything that I ’should’ be doing at the moment. I want to say ‘fuck it’ to everything and everyone and leave all responsibility behind.

Why am I so angry with AA today? It saved my life two years ago; it’s given me friends and memories and a program for life. I’m angry with it because I don’t seem to be getting from it any more what I used to get from it two years ago. Maybe I’m not putting the effort in that I used to, though that would be a strange conclusion to come to considering how much service I’ve done this year. I feel like I’ve done everything I can this year and it hasn’t been enough. I’m angry that I don’t get invited to things any more by so-called friends. I’m angry that I can’t share comfortably in meetings that I consider my home group. I’m angry that when it comes to problems other than alcohol, AA is ill equipped to give me advice. So I should go to another fellowship, SLAA perhaps, where there are different answers that might be more useful to me. But that just means more work, more effort, more time spent on a recovery that I don’t feel very enthusiastic about at the moment.

I want a break from the gay AA meetings in London, that’s for sure. I want a break from all those people who think they know me but don’t really know me at all. Individually I’m not resentful at any of them; as a group I can’t stand them any longer. On their own they’re all very nice. Together they bother me a great deal for some reason. Saturday night was not the first time I’ve felt excluded from a group in a gay AA meeting. I thought it was just because I needed to work harder at fitting in with the group. But I’m starting to think I’m just not a group person. Two years ago I thought that not being a group person meant I should throw myself into the AA ‘group’, to see if I could change that fact about myself. Today I’m not sure if there’s any group I want to be part of in AA. If I was to try different meetings and find a different group, that might work for a while, but what will I do in another two years’ time when I feel this way about that new social group?

This isn’t just about AA, it’s about the human race. I’ve never felt that I fit into the human race at all. It’s supposed to be different in AA, but two years of experience has shown me that it isn’t so different in AA really. AA is full of human beings, after all. Just like in real life, people in AA are fallible and hard to be around sometimes. AA is supposed to have all the answers if you just look for them, but the only answer I’ve found is that I’m a sick, hopeless case. Is that a place I really want to hang out in?

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that I’ve suddenly come to this conclusion overnight, though it might have seemed on the surface like I was totally in love with AA until last week. I think I was holding out hope for AA until last week. Today I don’t feel too hopeful. That might change tomorrow. I might wake up and realise how stupid I’ve been once again. But this certainly isn’t going to be the last time I feel angry at AA. I’ll come back to the realisation at some point that AA can’t give me everything I need. The fact will remain that even in AA I have to look after myself most of the time, and I don’t like that. I’m angry about the fact that to get any kind of attention in AA I have to act as if I’m falling apart. When I talk about the normal everyday things that are bothering me, such as being terminally unemployed and depressed, the best advice I get is that I need to grow up and get a job. Never mind that I wake up some days feeling like the world is coming to an end and I might be better off dead. At the end of the day, people are always going to be people, whether they’re in AA or not. I thought they could be different, but they’re not. People will always be unreliable, too wrapped up in their own problems to care about mine.

I’m sure I’m coming across as very selfish and petulant at the moment. I’m sure I’ll be told to stop being so childish and get a grip on myself. Do you know what, I don’t care any more. I want to be childish and petulant today. I don’t want to take inventory or hand anything over right now. I don’t want to go to a meeting, tell everyone how self-centred and full of pride I am then be asked along to coffee only to have to turn down the invitation because I have no money. Having no money in AA is just as status-negating as it is in the real world. Even in AA, if you can’t pay for dinner then you may as well forget about being invited to that sobriety birthday. Sorry to be so down on AA after two years of fiercely defending it, but I can’t help being really fucking furious today. This is the way I feel and I’m not going to hide or pretend that everything’s OK just to please people. I’m taking back my right to be a dissenting voice. I don’t know where I’m going to go from here, once I’ve selfishly handed all my commitments in and sacked my sponsees. I haven’t thought about whether a drink would be a good idea or not. It would probably be a terrible idea – I don’t need AA to tell me that.

Worse

Tonight I nearly had an alcoholic relapse. Not for the first time this year I’ve been having pretty strong thoughts about getting drunk. But this time it’s worse than the other times. I came closer than ever before to picking up a drink tonight. I’ve been looking forward to writing this blog for about the past three hours. I need to get a lot of shit out of my system. Sorry to those readers who don’t like profanities. I’m probably going to swear a lot tonight.

I came closer to a relapse tonight than I ever have in the past two years because I felt totally and utterly alone. I was at my home group in Notting Hill earlier, the place where I should have felt amongst friends, but for some reason I didn’t. I couldn’t share because it was a busy meeting, and for the first time there were no gaps in which I could open my mouth and say my name like there usually are. Everybody was jumping in very quickly tonight, so I ended the meeting without having said an honest word about the state that I was in. As always I joined the group for coffee afterwards, and I was able to sit with my new sponsee, who is very chatty and keen to talk about how excited he is about sobriety.

He was the only person I could really talk to at the café. Once he’d gone, I felt like an outsider in the group that I used to know so well. I was back inside that glass bubble that used to encase me at school and at college before alcohol came along. The voices in my head were very loud tonight, telling me that no one wanted me there at the café, they all had to be thinking that I was some weird freak intruding on their social space. There was absolutely no evidence to suggest that they were thinking this, but of course there was no evidence to suggest they were thinking anything else. I couldn’t jump into the conversation and give them the chance to prove my worst fears wrong. All I could do was sit there and feel like an idiot while everyone else laughed and talked and interacted around me.

I can’t give people the chance to prove that they like me, because after all these lonely fucking years I still can’t trust people enough. Even in AA, where I’ve been given so many opportunities to let go and trust, I remain that little bit distant from things. I don’t say ‘hello’ to everyone all the time; I don’t talk to newcomers or give my number out; I don’t share in that many meetings; I don’t get invited to AA dinners and parties any more. I haven’t quite got over the last remaining bit of social anxiety and so I feel as if I’m pressed up against the window looking in on everyone else in the middle of the AA bed, where it’s warm and cosy and ever so happy.

At times during the past two years I think I’ve managed to make it inside the central sphere of AA life, for instance when I was going to Dean’s place regularly for coffee and chats last year; when I went to Gavin’s place with the fabulous clique to play cards and listen to gay music last summer. There used to be lots of things like that happening; now there aren’t. Again tonight I noticed a little group going off for dinner - everyone else seemed to be asked along, except for me, even though I was hungry and could have done with a really expensive meal in a posh restaurant in Notting Hill. It doesn’t feel right to invite myself along to these things. Am I mad or am I really missing something here?

By 9 o’clock this evening I felt completely out of it and had to leave the café. I can’t understand why I’m beginning to feel like the loner in the school playground again, but that’s what’s happening. I desperately, desperately want to be part of the group like I used to be, but I don’t really know how to be part of it. I know if I was being more honest in meetings about what’s actually going on for me at the moment, I might feel less like a fraud when I sit with my sponsee pretending to be sane and normal. At one point tonight I thought that I’d probably be better off with him sponsoring me, and he’s only two months sober. That’s not a joke. I really don’t know what I’m doing in AA any more, where I’m going.

I’ve reached a point where something needs to change and it’s not changing. People come up to me all the time telling me how well they think I’m doing, how inspiring I am to them. I hate it when they do that because I think they couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not doing well at all. I might not be drinking, but something is very wrong with my life and with every day that passes the pretence gets harder to maintain. It’s not that I expect to be a happy bunny all the time – last year I definitely wasn’t happy, joyous and free every day, but over all life was better than it is now. This year I’m being forced to face up to things that I don’t like about myself.

It’s become clear how much work I still have to do on my addictions. Every day there seems to be another new problem to deal with. I’m not saying this to moan, I am just trying to be honest. The problems are not going away, they are  just getting worse because I have no fucking idea how to deal with them. I don’t know how not to be a sex addict, no one’s telling me. I went to a SLAA HOW meeting the other day and all I got was that you have to be celibate for the first twenty years or something. What fucking good is that going to do me? I’ve already done celibacy, and it’s driven me round the fucking bend.

So I left Notting Hill and went straight to Soho, the place I would feel naturally inclined to relapse in because I know how to get drunk there. It would be so easy to walk into any bar on Old Compton Street, get wasted, meet some guy and have random drunken sex to top the night off. I did it millions of times in the old days. Last night I had some kind of flashback as I was falling asleep which took me back to those days: I was in G-A-Y Bar, holding a pint in my hand and chatting freely to some older bearded bloke whilst dancing to Kylie. That would have been the best part of a drinking night out, the part where I’m drunk enough to talk to sexy strangers but not so drunk that I’m falling over and urinating myself yet.

I wanted to experience that again tonight. I realised in the meeting tonight that I miss going crazy in Soho; I miss standing in bars and talking to guys who might actually be interested in having sex with me. I don’t miss the hangovers, the embarrassing morning after recollections, the waking up in strange beds in random parts of London. But for a while tonight I thought I might be able to convince myself that none of those bad things mattered.

As I immersed myself in the Soho throng I really didn’t know if I was going to drink or not. I wanted the oblivion, the feeling of calmness and release that comes with inebriation. I knew a terrible hangover might be on the cards, but I wasn’t so concerned about that. A hangover I could probably deal with, I’ve done it so many times before. What I was really concerned about was the nearly two years of sobriety under my belt that I was about to throw away. If I was going to drink, that would be it, no more sobriety. I don’t think I’m one of these people who could go straight back to AA after a relapse. I’d know that in another two years’ time I would probably feel like drinking again. So there would be no real point in stopping at a relapse. It would have to be constant drinking until death. All or nothing. I’ve always known that. Tonight, when faced with such a massive decision I was really unsure what to do.

I got to the Duke of Wellington on Wardour Street, bought a coke at the bar and sat at a table on my own, giving myself some time to think. What I really would have loved then was being approached by some gorgeous older guy who offers to take me home and show me a good time. That didn’t happen of course. When I was drunk it seemed to happen so easily. In my two years of sobriety, it has never once been easy. Full of fear, insecurity and shame about my body, I can never come to any sexual or romantic encounter without a head full of noise and negativity. That would have been another reason to drink tonight. Drunk, I might have been able to make eye contact with someone who looked nice. Sober, I could barely look up from the table. After all this time, all this practise at being sober!

After ten minutes I felt desperate enough to send a very long text message to Spike, telling him where I was and what I was contemplating doing. I don’t know what I hoped to gain from this act of desperation. It was getting late and I knew he’d probably be asleep. I suppose in my fantasy he would have got on the phone to me instantly and told me that he was coming to get me. In reality, I got no response from him. If there had been a response, what could he have said or done to make any of it better? Really, what could have changed the fact that I felt so incredibly lonely I had to sit in a bar on my own drinking coke to avoid going home and being with myself?

That’s why I never pick up the phone to call people when I’m feeling that way, even in spite of all the talk you hear in AA about the mobile phone being a lifeline. I’ve never been a great fan of calling people at the best of times. Tonight I would have felt like I was just burdening people with my silly problems, and I didn’t believe there was anything anyone could say to make me feel better. I knew that I needed to find a way of making myself better. I either needed to get drunk, or go home and pray. Torn between two such unappealing options, I felt absolutely stuck. I resented the fact that I was so stuck, and then I resented myself for not being able to get unstuck. What a stupid fucking failure I am, I thought. How the hell did I get here? After two years, how is this madness still possible?

I haven’t helped my case in recent times by stopping my anti-depressant medication suddenly; nor have I helped myself by making a sexual dysfunction that I’ve always lived with into a big massive problem. I haven’t been communicating with my sponsor for a long time. I’m really fucking angry with my sponsor at the moment, to be honest. Ever since we finished the steps there has hardly been what you could call a relationship there. He hasn’t done anything wrong, as such. He just hasn’t done anything. I see him every now and then, tell him I’m fine then move on to speak with someone else. I don’t trust my sponsor any more. He wouldn’t know what I was talking about if I tried to broach the subject of sex addiction with him. He doesn’t have that kind of problem, apparently. And I still cannot stand his partner, Clive, who was there at the meeting tonight and who completely ignored me, as he has done a few times recently. I don’t blame him, I’ve been ignoring him too. I gave up feeling bad about that tonight. We don’t speak on each other’s wavelength and that’s all there is to it. I need a sponsor. But I haven’t got a fucking clue who I’m going to ask. I can’t think of a single person who I want to put my trust in right now.

I didn’t drink tonight. After finishing my coke I left the Duke of Wellington and got the tube safely home. Here I am now, feeling like the biggest loser in London. Wasting all that time and energy in preparation for a relaspe that was never meant to happen. What was the point in all that? Why the hell did I go to Soho tonight? I just wanted to get away from this life, this head for a while. What I’ve realised this year is that I am still incredibly angry about what’s happened to me in life, and that anger is going nowhere. I’ve written about all of it in this blog, and that’s great, but I haven’t been sharing about it in meetings because they’re all so fucking busy and you barely get the chance to open your mouth before you have the yellow card waved in your face to tell you to wrap up.

I feel like I’ve been let down by so many people in my life and what hurts the most is that I cannot do a thing to change that. People are fallible and my heart is broken by that. My mother, who I love to bits, is a co-dependent emotional cripple who cannot take too much reality without falling apart. I continue to need her to make everything all right for me, and she just can’t. My father isn’t able to be in my life very much because he doesn’t know me and I don’t know him and I don’t blame him for that, but it’s never going to change. I have to look after myself in the world now and I don’t really believe that I can. Doesn’t matter how much spirituality I read about or how much therapy I do – at the end of the day, I have to be by myself in this world sometimes and I don’t want to be.

I want some intimacy and tenderness in my life. I don’t expect love, romance or a long term boyfriend, but I want to be held sometimes by someone who really loves me. Upon careful examination it turns out that I’ve never had intimacy in my life. I’ve had boyfriends and romance, I’ve been told by various men that I am loved; but have I ever had real intimacy? Almost certainly not. I’ve never had real, authentic love where I know the person’s soul inside out and they know mine. What absolutely does me in tonight is that I don’t believe I’m capable of putting all the work necessary into the kind of relationship where those magical things might happen.

For a start I don’t know where the hell I’m supposed to meet someone authentic and real who I might be able to relate to on a level that isn’t purely sexual. Gay bars, saunas and sex clubs are full of physically beautiful men - it would have been very, very easy to find sex tonight. I strongly considered going to one of those places after leaving Old Compton Street but in the end I just couldn’t be bothered. I probably would have failed to get an erection again, and there wouldn’t have been any intimacy. Sex places are great for learning about what I like and don’t like doing with my body, but they’re not great for finding intimacy and tenderness.

A few weeks ago if someone had said to me that what I really need is intimacy and tenderness I probably would have scoffed, as I was still under the impression that intimacy and tenderness don’t exist. What’s changed my mind? I’m not sure. Someone mentioned those things in a step 11 meeting the other day and I guess it’s become my latest obsession.

See, I can’t think about anything without becoming obsessed by it. I don’t know where I’m supposed to find intimacy and it scares me that I’ll never find it and instead of putting it to one side like a normal person would, I’m obsessing about it to the point where suicide seems like an attractive option for shutting my head up. Because drinking again would mean suicide for me. At the moment it really doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. Picking up the phone or going to meeting to share all this stuff does seem like the worst idea in the world. How embarrassing it would be to have to admit in an AA meeting full of people who know me that I am closer to a drink than I’ve ever been. What’s Spike going to think of me in the morning when he gets my desperate loser text messages? He’ll probably feel sorry for me and not know what to do for me. And that makes me feel a whole lot worse about myself.