You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
I can’t believe I’ve been sober for six weeks! What I can and do believe is that I wouldn’t have done it without Alcoholics Anonymous. In my case, sobriety cannot be done alone. Alcohol was a huge part of my life and now that it’s missing, I need to get the support elsewhere. Boy, do I need support! My head is a dangerous place to be sometimes. I regularly come away from normal conversations with people thinking that I sounded stupid and probably pissed the other person off – even though they’ve given me no indication to believe such a thing. Friends this week have told me that I’m brave, intelligent, funny and articulate – but I don’t really believe what they’re saying, in my heart. I dislike the sound of my own voice and would do anything to avoid using it. I don’t want to believe that I’m just as normal and deserving of happiness as everyone else, because what if I’m not? What if I really am stupid and boring? This is what it’s like to be in my head. These are things that I think about all the time. See why I drank?
Despite the constant nagging doubts, I’ve continued to go out to meetings, where I hear people I’ve never met before tell my story over and over again. People who to look at I would never think I have ANYTHING in common with them, yet they sit there and say things that I used to think only I was feeling. I’m slowly accepting that I’m an alcoholic, just as everyone else in AA is. This illness that we all have is bigger than any differences that there might be between us. And it’s scary to say that I have an illness just like everyone else. It’s scary to accept that I’m not alone, that I have to trust other people in AA, because I never trusted anyone before. I don’t want to trust, because it leaves me open, and vulnerable.
Recovery really is a bitch sometimes! But at least I’m recovering. I keep looking at the one month sobriety chip that I got a couple of weeks ago. I wish I could hold it in my hand all the time. I can’t wait to get the two month chip. Things such as these mean a lot to me. Two months ago I’d never have conceived of going six weeks without a single drink. I have drinking dreams occasionally, where I wake up terrified that I’ve thrown my sobriety away for another stupid piss up. Those dreams serve as warnings, and I’m taking heed of them. They remind me that I can’t and don’t want to drink again. I don’t know what’s around the corner, I don’t know how great the future is going to be for me, but every day I seem to become more sure that it’s going to be a whole lot BETTER than my life was in the dark drinking days.
I’ve been told that I’m going through a grieving process and I’m really starting to believe what they say. Alcohol is like a dangerous ex partner of mine, who haunts me every time I go out and walk past the pubs and clubs I used to go to; but I miss my ex most of the time. I miss that relaxing feeling as the drug seeps through my system and makes the night a bit warmer. To begin with, alcohol used to cuddle me in its strong arms and I loved that because I wasn’t used to being cuddled so freely. Then towards the end the inebriation would usually smack me in the face and take me to dangerous, unknown places that I hadn’t been to before. All without me knowing. I had no control over it in the end. This thing that I thought was keeping me safe was exposing me to more harm than I could possibly deal with.
Yesterday I went out to a big street event in Central London which happens every year, where music plays loudly through speakers all over the place and people dance in the street with plastic cups full of beer in their hands. At first I didn’t want the beer, I just wanted to dance. I’d missed dancing so much, I thought. I didn’t just use to go out for the drinking, I’d go out for the party atmosphere and the music which I loved so much. Of course in my drinking days I could never be completely sober when I was out dancing. It never occured to me to try sober dancing before. Yesterday I weirdly found myself dancing in the street with thousands of other people to music that I barely recognised. I can’t say it was fun, exactly. I could smell beer everywhere, and I wasn’t with a big group of friends, so as the day wore on I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable and panicky.
I’d gone there thinking I was looking forward to my first big social outing all month, but by 8 o’clock I just wanted to get home. I didn’t feel safe any more. I experienced my biggest alcohol craving in five weeks, and all the loud noise and overbearingness of the crowd was getting to me. I suddenly remembered that before I started drinking I never used to like noisy, crowded places. Yesterday I felt like a scared little child, lost in the crowd, and I couldn’t bear it.
So I went home thinking I never wanted to go to any bars or street parties again. The injustice in my inability to enjoy such things any more was apparent, but I had to look after myself. I’m pleased with myself for managing to last nine hours at the event without touching a single alcoholic drink. Maybe in the future when friends want to go to bars and parties with me I’ll stay a couple of hours and no more. I haven’t had much of a social life in the last five weeks and it would be nice to start doing non-AA related things again.
The other night I had another drinking dream, in which I lay in the middle of the road, unable to move because I was so drunk. I woke up petrified, convinced for several minutes that I’d really thrown away five weeks of sobriety. I know these dreams are a warning to me. I plan to take them seriously because if I ever drink again, it will be a disaster for me and everyone I know.
33 days feels like a very long time. It’s certainly the longest I’ve been sober in my adult life. At the moment I feel great about it; I never want to get drunk and embarrass myself again. I can do the things I need to do to get by in life, and everything is all right. I had to retake an exam today at University, which I failed back in the spring due to being hungover. For the past fortnight my mind has been focused on this exam, because I couldn’t afford to fail it again. My future was hanging in the balance; I desperately didn’t want to f*** up again. My fortnight of hard work paid off in the end because I was able to complete the exam today quite comfortably. So I’m not stupid or a failure after all.
It feels like it’s been a week of achievement. To top it all off I was given my one month sobriety chip at an AA meeting on Tuesday. I keep looking at it, it really is a nice thing. I can’t wait to get my chips for 2, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months! I’m a very visual person and look forward to seeing what colours they are. The 1 month chip is red, my favourite colour.
Earlier this week I began to worry slightly that I wasn’t being very honest in this blog about the down times in sobriety. So far I have been very upbeat and positive, perhaps glossing over the negative feelings that I have also experienced during the past month. Well, I can’t say it’s been the easiest month in my life. In fact it’s probably been the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. Some days I don’t want to do anything except sit and watch the telly, when I should be out seeing friends and making something of my life. On those days I just can’t be bothered with life. It all feels pointless and annoying. I feel nervous before pretty much every AA meeting I go to, worrying that I won’t talk to anybody and I’ll end up feeling more lonely than before. This month has made it clear to me that I have great problems with socialising. I felt isolated throughout my teenage years, and then during my drinking years I drank to curb the isolation only to make it worse.
Luckily today isn’t one of those days when I feel very negative about the situation. Having successfully passed an exam that I was worried about for months, I’m going to go to bed feeling pretty positive again. Tomorrow may be an awful day; I may hate everyone and wish I could go to the off license and purchase a six pack. But I’m going to keep praying for my sobriety because I’ve felt the changes taking effect this week and so far this programme is working for me.
In AA they say that you live life ‘intensely’ in sobriety, and I’m really learning the validity of that statement this month. My head has been up and down and all over the place during the last 29 days; I don’t know where my mood is going to be from one day to the next, but the one thing it has always been is intense. I’m feeling EVERYTHING to the greatest possible extent. Sometimes it’s wonderful, like when I’ve just achieved something I never thought I would (29 days without a drink being an example); sometimes it’s utterly dreadful, horrible, too painful for words. Not because I’ve given up alcohol, but because this is how my life is, how it always was before I started drinking. I used alcohol to stop myself feeling so many things all the time. In the end I think I killed all my feelings completely.
Right now I’m loving sobriety, despite the bumpy ride, because I’m finally free of alcohol, and I can see possibilities unfolding before me. It’s like coming out of prison, it really is! So what if I’m so angry sometimes that I get a headache? At least I’m feeling something. One thing I couldn’t say is that my life at the moment is boring. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, as well as the most exciting. I’ve got my life back; I can do things I never would have done before. I’m doing things that scare me a little bit every day. I’m speaking to other human beings every day, for the first time in my life. I haven’t achieved many of my ambitions yet, but for the first time there’s the possibility that I just might, in the end, because people in AA regularly do achieve their dreams.
29 days ago, I took on a voluntary role, delivering food to people in London who are too ill to cook for themselves. As a student on holiday I wanted to do something worthwhile with my time, and thought that this job would be the perfect reason to get out of bed in the mornings, as well as something that would look good on my CV. My first shift in this job could have gone so much better, if I didn’t turn up so hungover that morning. A lot of the work involved driving around in a car, and halfway through the shift I had to stop to be sick, in the middle of the street. That wasn’t the first time I’d ever been sick in public, but it was the last. I never want to be in that position again.
Not only did I let down the charity that I was supposed to be working for, all those people who were waiting for their food to be delivered; I embarrassed myself publicly once again, because of my complete dependence on alcohol. I went out the night before knowing full well that I’d have to be up early the next morning and go around in a car for several hours. Of course, the prospect of getting drunk that night put all doubts out of my mind, as it always had. I drank to blackout that night, and I can barely remember coming home.
Today, I was asked back for my second shift, after thinking they would never want me back. I told them that I was sick last time because of food poisoning, and they believed me; but that’s not the point. It doesn’t matter to them why I was sick. When I had to go home that day I was convinced they’d never ask me back, because I’d let them down so badly. Luckily, they’re the sort of charity who give people second chances. They may secretly know that I was hungover that day, I don’t know. It wasn’t mentioned today, anyway, and I know that I have just been given a gift from God.
Today’s shift went remarkably well. I found all the addresses that I needed to deliver to, I got all that food out and made those people’s days. I’ve managed to fulfil a responsibility, for the first time in my entire life. I didn’t run away, like I wanted to. Responsibility and stress have always scared me, which is why I’ve never lasted in any paid job more than two weeks. With this voluntary work, I could end up doing it forever, because I know I can do it now, and they know I can do it. I may feel nervous every time I go in for a shift, thinking I can’t do it, thinking I’ll fail and let them down again; what I’m learning is to ignore that little voice at the back of my head which says I can’t do it. The little voice that has always said I can’t do anything, the little voice that kept me drinking for six years. It breaks my heart that I wasted six years drinking to black out nearly every night, pissing people off, humiliating myself in front of people who could have been good friends. But I’m still young, and I’m moving on. I’m climbing that mountain day by day, and one day, I will get to the top, because I can. I’m not a failure, I’m not weak, I’m not embarrassing, I’m as good as all those people who always seemed so much more ‘normal’ and happy than me. I will get to bed tonight without a drink, and that is the most important thing I’ve done today.
Hi, I’m Josh, and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for 27 days. That’s a long time, considering the longest I ever managed without a drink before was 10 days. I came to the decision to give up drinking for good when I became sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time. It hasn’t been easy, not drinking. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Most days I think about having a drink. Some days I’m so angry I can’t go out. It’s lonely, but I’m pushing through until I can learn to live with myself, because that’s something I never did when I was drinking.
I believed a lot of things that were just untrue when I was drinking. I believed that I was confident, sociable, and fun to be around. That was a lie. Most of the time I had no control over my mouth or my actions. 9 times out of 10 I’d get so drunk I’d end up forgetting the entire evening. I’d then wake up in the morning wondering how the hell I got home (or wherever I happened to be at the time. Waking up in stranger’s beds was an infrequent, but nonetheless worrying experience).
Before I drank I was a shy, quiet, hugely withdrawn individual with no friends. I never went out. I saw very little of life and for years thought it would probably always be that way. And then, at the age of 18, it was like being given the keys to the kingdom. I left home, went to Uni, made some friends, and the rest is history. I drank to become someone else, because I didn’t want to be myself any more. I hated myself, what I was. I couldn’t live with myself most days. Alcohol enabled me to relax, to feel normal around other people, to have fun for the first time. I fell in love with alcohol.
My relationship with alcohol quickly became a dangerous one, but us alcoholics never realise that in the beginning. For six years I drank to oblivion every weekend and most week nights too. When I wasn’t drunk I was hungover. The pattern repeated itself endlessly, and I gradually got into more and more trouble. I was kicked out of bars, cautioned by the police, sent letters by the bank because I was spending so much on my social life. And I let it continue because as soon as I had one drink, I began to crave more, and I couldn’t stop. The craving was powerful, unstoppable, constant. It still is. I could never just go to the pub and have one or two drinks. Friends’ suggestions that I ‘try and control the drinking’ irritated and offended me. They didn’t know what it was like. I couldn’t understand the concept of stopping after one drink, why would anyone have just one drink? Why would anyone not want to get drunk, black out, wet themselves, end up in a prison cell, embarrass the family?
The final straw came last month when I vomited in the street for the umpteenth time. I was at work, hungover, and when I want to be sick, I can’t keep it in, it doesn’t matter where I am. I puked in front of someone’s house and the humiliation was no less than it had been all the other times when the same thing had happened. For a while I’d known that I couldn’t carry on living this way. I was in so much debt, my life was stuck in a rut because I couldn’t progress in any job, being hungover and ill all the time. I’d lost so many friends over the years due to my embarrassing behaviour, and worst of all I knew that every time I went out drinking, the same things would happen all over again. Every time that I prepared to go out for a night of boozing I had no idea what was going to happen, I couldn’t promise myself that I’d stick to a limited amount of drinks, because I’d broken the promise so many, many times already.
Living without drink has been at times exhilarating, fulfilling, crushing, and horrible. From one day to the next I don’t know where my head is going to be, my mood swings like a pendulum. I can’t do a lot of things that I used to do when I was drinking, because I no longer have that inner confidence that drink initially gave me. I find it difficult just having conversations with people. I feel just as embarrassed by myself as I did when I was a teenager. I drank to suppress these precise feelings of low self-worth. Every day I go from happy, to surprised, to lonely, to angry, to exhausted. Sobriety is intense and challenging, so much so that I regularly wonder whether it’s ever going to get better.
Sober friends keep telling me that it will get better, and I believe them. I have a choice: I could pick up the drink again and let myself get into all sorts of trouble just as I did before, or I could sit here and deal with this new challenge in my life until I’ve seen it through. Whilst I may be feeling rough now, I can guarantee I’d be feeling a whole lot rougher if I was hungover, with the knowledge that I’d drank to black out last night, possibly pissing off a whole new set of friends. So I’m sticking with sobriety.
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