As I mentioned last night, one of my aims in all of this is to essentially recondition myself into someone with saner drinking habits by means of breaking down my current habits until I have room to form new ones. It's one of my core tenets that humans boil down to very little more than advanced chimps, so in the same way you can train an animal over time, it's fairly straightforward to train a human once you know how to circumvent their defences. In this case "their" is "my" but the principle still applies.
Drinking shandy is a good starting point for me as it helps to combat one of the habits I have, that I naturally have a fairly fast drinking pace. By that I mean my hand seems to move of its own accord towards the glass in a regular rhythm, emptying the vessel at a pace I'm accustomed to. Therefore, reducing the ABV of what I drink makes this whole job easier for me by removing the need for me to spend the whole night battling against my own arm's will. I will be adopting this tactic this Friday at my cousin's party, in tandem with alternating drinks: one lager shandy drunk slowly, one lemonade, and so on. The result is drinking half a lager over the course of more than an hour, but it takes a whole load of family pressure over the "not drinking" thing off my back.
One of the other problems I have is that I genuinely do like beer. I must qualify that by saying I like real ale, which is as important a distinction as saying you like Fentiman's Curiosity Cola versus Rola Cola or Weston's Organic versus White Lightning. If I didn't have a problem with taking drinking a bit too far sometimes I'd very much likely be a fully signed-up CAMRA member, possibly even a ticker. I intend to give a full post or two to the subject of why real ale and good pubs mirror something intrinsic in my character that I never want to lose touch with, but I think it is important to distinguish my passion for real ale from my wider drinking habits - the former is drinking for taste, sociability, contentment and bonhomie, the latter as a tool to help with other problems I have.
The second tactic I've been thinking about, then, is not a new one and indeed is something I've made some efforts to try to move towards over the past year. A few times I have thought to myself that my body doesn't lie to me, and if I don't feel in the mood for a pint of real ale, then I shouldn't be drinking. By and large I have managed this but it does unfortunately conflict with the hectic schedule I have and sometimes I find myself out and about in rapid succession and a possibly-dodgy pint of ale isn't always the most appetising prospect. After a week plus of hard thought on this, I can say with good assurance that it is nearly exclusively these times when I have ended up over-drinking and causing a problem. I've found that I'm normally a good-natured drinker when sticking to real ale but when I begin to add other drinks on top of that on a second or third night out, I begin to lose that control I cling to.
My aim with this extended period of very light drinking, such as the two shandies on Saturday, is to break the habits I've formed of becoming bored in the week and wanting to go out and do something. I have looked at many of the people I know for inspiration and a common theme seems to emerge, which is that they have a stronger sense of being able to wait for designated occasions when they can drink and perhaps have one too many, but it doesn't impact on their day-to-day lives. This is something I've never really learned, probably because I feel like everything I do runs at 200mph and slowing down is just against my nature. I do think though that I need to take a step in this direction.
What prompted me to develop this thought was hearing about The Rat Race Ale House in Hartlepool. What a fantastic venture, something I could easily aspire to myself. Everything about this sums up the vision in my head of what I think drinking is about and want to be. The pub is my natural environment and I love nothing more than sitting around with friends and a good pint of ale just having a natter. I can control my drinking with ale because it's a very predictable drink, quite smooth on the up and with few if any lingering effects the day after. It's also a pleasant drink, full of interesting and changing flavours, which I have never been able to say about Strongbow or cheap red wine. Seriously, when I picture where I'm at my most content, it's with a really good pint of ale in an old-fashioned pub.
So what is the tactic? Well, I aim to gradually move entirely towards sticking to ale whenever I find myself in a pub. It isn't always possible, so the commercial bitters must come next. And dare I say it, if I find myself in a pub with a really bad choice of beer, I'd like to think I could get through half an hour in there with a lemonade or a lager shandy rather than hitting the cider or spirits. Rather than a drink being just a drink, which I think is an attitude I've picked up from my dad, I want it to be something to be enjoyed and remembered; and since subscribing to a ton of beer blogs recently, I've found it's an area I'm genuinely interested in.
I would also like to travel a bit more to places like the Rat House, as it combines two of my favourite things: travel and ale. Maybe if I could do something like that once a month, in the week after payday, say, it'd give me the thing I need to look forward to to help me avoid just drinking any old time because I have nothing up ahead to keep me going. Again, I must repeat to myself, I do not want to project myself into being a social outcast by stopping completely, but I do want to treat drinking as something that should be enjoyed at the right time and with the right drink, and not just something to help me forget myself.
Tomorrow: racier than a greyhound strapped to a pigeon's back, Brian Blessed reads in deeply sensual tones a passage from Her Knickers Are On The Dancefloor: The Strongbow Years.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Monday, 30 November 2009
Party animal
It is very difficult to say whether my gradual change from a shy young lad into the fairly normal chap I am today happened because I began drinking or if it would have taken place anyway. I lean towards the latter but I think it was prodded into motion by the odd red wine or three. I certainly remember the first group social situations I was in being tremendously easier with the aid of a couple of pints.
Looking back, it seems very masochistic how I put myself in a succession of difficult situations every weekend. I found being out around people very hard work and nothing came naturally, yet there was still a social instinct dragging me back. One of my clearest memories from the time is Millennium Eve, when I woke in a haze at 6pm, dusted myself down and went out in search of a ticket to the party my friends were at. When I didn't find one, I spent a couple of hours stood on my own in a cess pit of a pub, and I distinctly remember thinking that's all I had to do for someone to come up and talk to me (oh, the folly of youth). In these early days in pubs I recall the first feelings that I had to keep on drinking just to get by.
Some parts of my website were lost to time a few years ago but I remember writing at the time that after going out, it seemed to me that having a drink just dragged me down to the level that a lot of other people were at sober. It made it possible for me to tolerate conversations about everyday things, which normally I would never engage in. I remember being in one of these and drifting off halfway through, thinking, "but why do I want to talk about this?" Even when my tongue loosened enough to talk to people, my head couldn't let go of the fact that it wasn't anything that interested me in any way. I think in recent years I've partially overcome that but at the time, it was something that bothered me.
It was experiences and thoughts like that which made me accept for the first time that I enjoyed drinking not because it made me a better person, but because it switched off a lot of everyday problems I was tired of living with. Self-analysis is in my nature (like you hadn't guessed) and it gets bloody wearisome after a while; drinking took that away. The price I paid was that after a certain amount it took away my mental edge, and made me prone to calamitous decisions, but it was still preferable to just plodding along every day living with the same old me upstairs.
I think that once that habit had taken hold, and I'd created a link between drinking and being someone else, it became quite deep rooted and led me to where I am today. The question I'm faced with is whether I still need a drink to be around people. Based on the last six or seven years, then no, I don't. I think the habit just overlapped the time when I would have naturally grown out of my awkward stage and been fine on my own, but I continued to think that I needed a drink just to get by. It takes a conscious effort to think about your habits and question whether they're right - the default is simply to do whatever comes to mind first and presume you're right.
I won't pretend that I'm a fundamentally different person - I do still find a lot of conversation utterly pointless and am socially most at ease in the world sat in my parent's living room in silence - but I have learned the social skills necessary to get by, and I don't think I'm an embarrassment in company. Just like those early days, having a drink lets me strike up conversation with people, but the pointless words I mutter should be struck down for violating all known principles of good humour, intelligence and purpose.
Tomorrow: in a thrilling departure from moribund yarns of woe, we look back at the glory years of ultra-drinking (2004-06) and cast a light over several sticky pages of titillating tales.
Looking back, it seems very masochistic how I put myself in a succession of difficult situations every weekend. I found being out around people very hard work and nothing came naturally, yet there was still a social instinct dragging me back. One of my clearest memories from the time is Millennium Eve, when I woke in a haze at 6pm, dusted myself down and went out in search of a ticket to the party my friends were at. When I didn't find one, I spent a couple of hours stood on my own in a cess pit of a pub, and I distinctly remember thinking that's all I had to do for someone to come up and talk to me (oh, the folly of youth). In these early days in pubs I recall the first feelings that I had to keep on drinking just to get by.
Some parts of my website were lost to time a few years ago but I remember writing at the time that after going out, it seemed to me that having a drink just dragged me down to the level that a lot of other people were at sober. It made it possible for me to tolerate conversations about everyday things, which normally I would never engage in. I remember being in one of these and drifting off halfway through, thinking, "but why do I want to talk about this?" Even when my tongue loosened enough to talk to people, my head couldn't let go of the fact that it wasn't anything that interested me in any way. I think in recent years I've partially overcome that but at the time, it was something that bothered me.
It was experiences and thoughts like that which made me accept for the first time that I enjoyed drinking not because it made me a better person, but because it switched off a lot of everyday problems I was tired of living with. Self-analysis is in my nature (like you hadn't guessed) and it gets bloody wearisome after a while; drinking took that away. The price I paid was that after a certain amount it took away my mental edge, and made me prone to calamitous decisions, but it was still preferable to just plodding along every day living with the same old me upstairs.
I think that once that habit had taken hold, and I'd created a link between drinking and being someone else, it became quite deep rooted and led me to where I am today. The question I'm faced with is whether I still need a drink to be around people. Based on the last six or seven years, then no, I don't. I think the habit just overlapped the time when I would have naturally grown out of my awkward stage and been fine on my own, but I continued to think that I needed a drink just to get by. It takes a conscious effort to think about your habits and question whether they're right - the default is simply to do whatever comes to mind first and presume you're right.
I won't pretend that I'm a fundamentally different person - I do still find a lot of conversation utterly pointless and am socially most at ease in the world sat in my parent's living room in silence - but I have learned the social skills necessary to get by, and I don't think I'm an embarrassment in company. Just like those early days, having a drink lets me strike up conversation with people, but the pointless words I mutter should be struck down for violating all known principles of good humour, intelligence and purpose.
Tomorrow: in a thrilling departure from moribund yarns of woe, we look back at the glory years of ultra-drinking (2004-06) and cast a light over several sticky pages of titillating tales.
Two men and a baby
Never one to do things by half, I spent last night avoiding the perils of a drink-fuelled trip to Burnley by sitting in with a takeaway curry watching Match of the Day, babysitting. With another man.
Michael Palin's Pole to Pole could equally have passed as a program as a cursory insight into the minds of those who, like me, react to perceived wrongs in extremes. At one pole, hardcore ultra mega-drinking leading to marital ruin. At the other, discussing the fine blend of spices used in tonight's madras while a small child lays next to you, merrily booting you in the ribs now its stinking nappy has been changed.
Perhaps I exaggerate the extremes but I'd be lieing to say that the obvious contrast between what I could have been doing and what I was doing didn't cross my mind at any point. I wouldn't say I found it a problem - I was sad not to be out on my sister's birthday, of course, but the previous night was meant to cover that and she had plenty of other people there. I think the most difficult part of me not going along on things like this is that it confronts me with the role I've built up over time as quite a few people's "link man". I began thinking about this as I left the Rovers game yesterday, which I managed fine with a pop before and after and a tangy, £1.80 coffee at half-time.
Over all the years I've been out and about drinking I've probably cultivated an image as "the one who's always around" - the one who people can rely on to be up for doing something. And that's fair enough, because I always am up for something. This isn't to say I'd always be people's first choice, but that I'm someone they've come to know they can probably count on to come along to things and organise everyone else. I was reminded yesterday that when I stop going to things, it breaks a link that people expect to be there, and makes me feel tremendously guilty. An example: a friend had been invited on the trip yesterday, but upon finding that I wouldn't be going, it became a different proposition - that socially important link between him and another group of people was gone. This is a fairly straightforward situation you've all experienced: a friend invites you to a party, and it's fine if they're going as they're your link, but if they're not, then it's an entirely different scenario.
Even between familiar groups, such as close family and my friends, over time I've entrenched myself into a position where my absence rather than my presence is noted. If I turn up then all is well with the world, and if I don't then I must have some reason for not doing. What this boils down to in terms of the thought process I go through when I'm deciding whether to go along on something, I think, is back to my near-obsession with the group dynamic. My first thoughts are always: who will be there, how do these people get on together, will I fit in and will my presence make for a better time for all? I nearly always find that it would, but the thought's just occurred to me that it may just be me actively seeking out or imagining conflicts I could resolve or conversations and jokes I could help carry - if you like, me seeking out a role and purpose for myself in the group, carving out a niche which leaves me feeling useful and fulfilled.
A problem like the above sounds, in isolation, like a pretty trivial thing. So you think you're so important people are gonna miss you every time you're not there? - get over it! That answer doesn't really say much about the effects my stopping drinking has on how I feel about my usefulness in the world and how someone's night is changed in lord knows what ways because this person decided not to come, and maybe that person too. They're real effects on people other than me that are easy to dismiss but doing so doesn't really help anyone except the kind of person who would think to say in the first place, "just get over it". There was a fascinating study done that looked into the difficulties heroin users with families had getting off heroin. Rather than the family acting as a support for the user when they stopped using, in many cases it was seen that the family actively pushed the user back on to heroin to reinstate the sense of usefulness and purpose in their own lives. The children, for example, had found approval in stealing to fund their dad's habit, and the wife had grown accustomed to her life looking after the man. Confronted with the loss of this, they would rather stick with the heroin dad that gave them purpose than an unknown quantity. Saying "just get over it" is rarely as simple as it sounds.
I don't think I will ever actively choose to pull back from this position I've made for myself as someone people can rely on to be active and on the scene. I never want to be forgotten about and fall down that subconscious list in people's heads of who to call first, because I'm an active person and I've no plans to vegetate in a living room for the rest of my life in a sober dystopia. But at the same time, if I'm to succeed in controlling the crazy drinking that comes part and parcel of saying yes to every invite, I know I'm going to have to get used to disappointing people sometimes, as much as it makes me feel terrible for doing so. You know, maybe it's a case of over-empathy, but every time someone rings me up and asks me if I fancy going out, I just remember the times I've done the same and got a "no" back, and I can't do the same to them.
I think over the weekend I've made a couple of insights with regards to the above and the link between drinking and my view of the group, so it's been a good one. Myself and my friend had a couple of shandies in front of the football and I think that might be a way to go whenever I next end up in a pub situation, because it seems a very useful way for me to get over the embarrassment and fear in my head of standing in a pub with a soft drink, while having the physical effects of just drinking pop. It was a good suggestion on his part, and at two and a half cans over six hours there was no question of being drunk from it (indeed there was no time to be drunk inbetween all the trips to piss out that sodding lemonade), but for now I'm just going to think it over for a few days and weigh it up in a future post as one of many strategies I could adopt in future. As I think I've said before, rather than make a post here celebrating going x days without a drop of alcohol, this time I'm taking a long-term view of things and trying to find some answers that will help me be a normal person around drink for good.
Tomorrow, in a sizzling tome upon which early drafts of Caligula were based, I discuss the perils of throwing beer and sex into a blender and setting it to "Explode".
Michael Palin's Pole to Pole could equally have passed as a program as a cursory insight into the minds of those who, like me, react to perceived wrongs in extremes. At one pole, hardcore ultra mega-drinking leading to marital ruin. At the other, discussing the fine blend of spices used in tonight's madras while a small child lays next to you, merrily booting you in the ribs now its stinking nappy has been changed.
Perhaps I exaggerate the extremes but I'd be lieing to say that the obvious contrast between what I could have been doing and what I was doing didn't cross my mind at any point. I wouldn't say I found it a problem - I was sad not to be out on my sister's birthday, of course, but the previous night was meant to cover that and she had plenty of other people there. I think the most difficult part of me not going along on things like this is that it confronts me with the role I've built up over time as quite a few people's "link man". I began thinking about this as I left the Rovers game yesterday, which I managed fine with a pop before and after and a tangy, £1.80 coffee at half-time.
Over all the years I've been out and about drinking I've probably cultivated an image as "the one who's always around" - the one who people can rely on to be up for doing something. And that's fair enough, because I always am up for something. This isn't to say I'd always be people's first choice, but that I'm someone they've come to know they can probably count on to come along to things and organise everyone else. I was reminded yesterday that when I stop going to things, it breaks a link that people expect to be there, and makes me feel tremendously guilty. An example: a friend had been invited on the trip yesterday, but upon finding that I wouldn't be going, it became a different proposition - that socially important link between him and another group of people was gone. This is a fairly straightforward situation you've all experienced: a friend invites you to a party, and it's fine if they're going as they're your link, but if they're not, then it's an entirely different scenario.
Even between familiar groups, such as close family and my friends, over time I've entrenched myself into a position where my absence rather than my presence is noted. If I turn up then all is well with the world, and if I don't then I must have some reason for not doing. What this boils down to in terms of the thought process I go through when I'm deciding whether to go along on something, I think, is back to my near-obsession with the group dynamic. My first thoughts are always: who will be there, how do these people get on together, will I fit in and will my presence make for a better time for all? I nearly always find that it would, but the thought's just occurred to me that it may just be me actively seeking out or imagining conflicts I could resolve or conversations and jokes I could help carry - if you like, me seeking out a role and purpose for myself in the group, carving out a niche which leaves me feeling useful and fulfilled.
A problem like the above sounds, in isolation, like a pretty trivial thing. So you think you're so important people are gonna miss you every time you're not there? - get over it! That answer doesn't really say much about the effects my stopping drinking has on how I feel about my usefulness in the world and how someone's night is changed in lord knows what ways because this person decided not to come, and maybe that person too. They're real effects on people other than me that are easy to dismiss but doing so doesn't really help anyone except the kind of person who would think to say in the first place, "just get over it". There was a fascinating study done that looked into the difficulties heroin users with families had getting off heroin. Rather than the family acting as a support for the user when they stopped using, in many cases it was seen that the family actively pushed the user back on to heroin to reinstate the sense of usefulness and purpose in their own lives. The children, for example, had found approval in stealing to fund their dad's habit, and the wife had grown accustomed to her life looking after the man. Confronted with the loss of this, they would rather stick with the heroin dad that gave them purpose than an unknown quantity. Saying "just get over it" is rarely as simple as it sounds.
I don't think I will ever actively choose to pull back from this position I've made for myself as someone people can rely on to be active and on the scene. I never want to be forgotten about and fall down that subconscious list in people's heads of who to call first, because I'm an active person and I've no plans to vegetate in a living room for the rest of my life in a sober dystopia. But at the same time, if I'm to succeed in controlling the crazy drinking that comes part and parcel of saying yes to every invite, I know I'm going to have to get used to disappointing people sometimes, as much as it makes me feel terrible for doing so. You know, maybe it's a case of over-empathy, but every time someone rings me up and asks me if I fancy going out, I just remember the times I've done the same and got a "no" back, and I can't do the same to them.
I think over the weekend I've made a couple of insights with regards to the above and the link between drinking and my view of the group, so it's been a good one. Myself and my friend had a couple of shandies in front of the football and I think that might be a way to go whenever I next end up in a pub situation, because it seems a very useful way for me to get over the embarrassment and fear in my head of standing in a pub with a soft drink, while having the physical effects of just drinking pop. It was a good suggestion on his part, and at two and a half cans over six hours there was no question of being drunk from it (indeed there was no time to be drunk inbetween all the trips to piss out that sodding lemonade), but for now I'm just going to think it over for a few days and weigh it up in a future post as one of many strategies I could adopt in future. As I think I've said before, rather than make a post here celebrating going x days without a drop of alcohol, this time I'm taking a long-term view of things and trying to find some answers that will help me be a normal person around drink for good.
Tomorrow, in a sizzling tome upon which early drafts of Caligula were based, I discuss the perils of throwing beer and sex into a blender and setting it to "Explode".
Saturday, 28 November 2009
The first sober pub experience
A brief respite, tonight, from the ceaseless deluge of reminiscing that this has all begun with. It's getting a bit late now due largely to me having been out until about 10.30. Tomorrow is my sister's birthday so we went out for something to eat after work.
I didn't expect this to be a problem as it was meant to be my mum's side of the family, who by and large don't really drink. As it turned out, it was essentially the normal crew along with one aunt and cousin from the other side. Hmm, I thought. This is going to get tricky at some point down the line.
As it was, it was a relatively dignified evening and I had myself dropped off just down the road at about 10.30. A pint and a half of lemonade down the hatch and I'd got the usual sugar headache, but otherwise there were no side-effects to the night. I was only asked once what I was drinking, and I blustered it off with a non-sensical muttering of "well, you know, it's, isn't it, tomorrow, taking it easy, work and that, isn't it". It's such a rarity for me to go in a pub and not get a pint that I don't blame people for commenting, though.
I left at a good time as I could hear voices rising and conversations about car engines becoming strangely exuberant. There is a point at which, when passed, sober and drunk people can no longer effectively communicate. The point I feel most resigned by is when a comment with a vague hint of wit is lost amongst drunken noise. The point I fear the most is right before the crossing, when I realise what stage the night is at and soon I'm going to have to make a move. I do think this is for the best though as in my eyes, sober and drunk people belong apart and attempting to mix the two serves no purpose - it just isolates each group. My answer is to be sober in the group up to that point and then make my exit before I become an antagonist of the group harmony.
I'm pretty sure I found tonight easier than when I did this last year because of the very fact I did this last year. Nothing beats experience, eh? Tomorrow, my sister is going on a minibus trip to a nearby town and I'd naturally have gone normally, but I've re-arranged things so I can still see her but not be involved in the serious drinking later on. A mate has been very kind to hang around with me before and after on the "weak stuff" so I'm not the only sober one there. The night, along with going to the football and not having a couple of pints before the game with my mate, will be harder than tonight, I'm sure, but I've put a lot of thought into making sure I don't end up in a bad situation so I'm hopeful it will pass well.
If I'm back at a reasonable time tomorrow, I'll scatter some sex feed across your coop for your gossip-hungry mouths to peck down.
I didn't expect this to be a problem as it was meant to be my mum's side of the family, who by and large don't really drink. As it turned out, it was essentially the normal crew along with one aunt and cousin from the other side. Hmm, I thought. This is going to get tricky at some point down the line.
As it was, it was a relatively dignified evening and I had myself dropped off just down the road at about 10.30. A pint and a half of lemonade down the hatch and I'd got the usual sugar headache, but otherwise there were no side-effects to the night. I was only asked once what I was drinking, and I blustered it off with a non-sensical muttering of "well, you know, it's, isn't it, tomorrow, taking it easy, work and that, isn't it". It's such a rarity for me to go in a pub and not get a pint that I don't blame people for commenting, though.
I left at a good time as I could hear voices rising and conversations about car engines becoming strangely exuberant. There is a point at which, when passed, sober and drunk people can no longer effectively communicate. The point I feel most resigned by is when a comment with a vague hint of wit is lost amongst drunken noise. The point I fear the most is right before the crossing, when I realise what stage the night is at and soon I'm going to have to make a move. I do think this is for the best though as in my eyes, sober and drunk people belong apart and attempting to mix the two serves no purpose - it just isolates each group. My answer is to be sober in the group up to that point and then make my exit before I become an antagonist of the group harmony.
I'm pretty sure I found tonight easier than when I did this last year because of the very fact I did this last year. Nothing beats experience, eh? Tomorrow, my sister is going on a minibus trip to a nearby town and I'd naturally have gone normally, but I've re-arranged things so I can still see her but not be involved in the serious drinking later on. A mate has been very kind to hang around with me before and after on the "weak stuff" so I'm not the only sober one there. The night, along with going to the football and not having a couple of pints before the game with my mate, will be harder than tonight, I'm sure, but I've put a lot of thought into making sure I don't end up in a bad situation so I'm hopeful it will pass well.
If I'm back at a reasonable time tomorrow, I'll scatter some sex feed across your coop for your gossip-hungry mouths to peck down.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
I'll have another beer. I'm not driving.
Good evening readers, and welcome to Thursday's memory-puke. Tonight's little think-back, I've concluded, should tell the other side of the story of those early years in my drinking career - not of how other things affected me, but of the effect my character has on my behaviour.
I won't go into a long self-psychoanalysis here because that belongs either in a room with a therapist or scrawled on the front page of a 17 year-old's Livejournal, but one fact beyond debate is that as a kid I was somewhere on the introverted side of the scale. My music teacher once asked me to play the flute in class and I was worried what it'd think of me. This kind of distant, withdrawn behaviour that manifests itself to other people as many kinds of social awkwardness, geekiness and so on, continued as I grew up and I only really began to chip away at it towards the end of secondary school. I say that not through some vaguely nostalgic recollection of my youth, but because I remember plenty of specific times when I made little breakthroughs that meant a hell of a lot back then. As sad as it sounds, roleplaying games really helped me develop my confidence in a group. Hell, we're only talking a room of four or five of my good mates, but I always found it really hard being heard and being funny at first; then one day, I remember GMing a session that went really well and I realised I wasn't so bad after all.
That's a horribly sickly tale and I won't slip back into regurgitating that kind of pus-dripping nostalgia into your eyes again, but you get the point. I was the quiet one. This carried on until I began drinking and then bam, well, you can imagine the effect that had. I'm no different to anyone else in that way - a couple of drinks opens up a whole new world in my head. One of the reasons I'm naturally pretty quiet is that I constantly run about 10 seconds in the future in my head, predicting where the conversation is going, with varied results - most often it helps me keep things going, but sometimes when people say something I've anticipated I feel like I've driven down a dead end and it kills things temporarily in my head while I reverse and think of new avenues.
If that sounds like hard work, it is, but I gave up trying to change that years ago. The only natural time I can really escape from that incessant buzz in my head of constant thought is by being alone; classic introvert behaviour. Being alone means I don't have to devote such a massive chunk of my time to other people, and can just think naturally. It's a relief for a while, and then I feel ready to go back into the world and deal with people again. It's just the way introverts work.
The only un-natural time I can escape the never-ending serious thought is by having a drink. Pretty quickly it flicks off rows and rows of those characteristics that make me appear quiet, withdrawn, hesitant and so on. The feeling of relief is probably what I like about it most. It's a very conscious thought: "Thank god - I'm someone else." I don't have to live with two people in my head, one beyond my control and the other always trying to control it - there's just one person I don't have to worry about.
Sometimes I actually resent people, in a very petulant way, for not recognising that for all the other God-be-damned times I'm around them my brain has been doing overtime wondering how they're feeling and whether they're happy and what they'd like to talk about; and so, for me to have a drink that lets me clock off from that, I see as my reward. I say that that's petulant because obviously, no-one can know the strange neuroses ever-present in my head while I'm sat talking to them. I guess it's a sense of self-justification: I have put a lot of work in for you, now let me have some time off to recover.
Returning to the time this was going on, probably around 1999 to 2002 or so, I found that drink was such a great help to me around people that I worried about seeing people without a drink to smooth things over. This is even with close friends, people who now I can handle myself around sober, but at the time were relatively new acquaintances. Perhaps a mental bond formed then? - that I only felt confident enough to be funny when I'd had a drink. The rest of the time I felt happy retreating into my personal time where nobody expected anything from me.
The importance, then, of a person's character in terms of their drinking is, I think, very important. At this stage of my life I found that drinking allowed me to socialise without the restraints of my normal character, and later in the night would let me think about the really dark thoughts I had back then. It was quite seductive, really - such an easy way to escape my everyday self and become someone new and interesting to myself.
Perhaps that's the key point explaining why I slipped into it so easily back then. I was sick of being angry at myself for my own weaknesses, and a drink allowed me to escape that and become someone new. It's very much like having a room mate you hate, but who you get a few hours away from in the evening - it's such a relief.
Now, while that little ramble accounts for a lot of things back then, I'd be a fat faced liar not to mention the big thing that was going on back then - women. Tune in tomorrow for a detailed analysis of the male sexual psyche with relation to alcohol (1999-2002), with a few knockabout shagging stories thrown in for good measure.
I won't go into a long self-psychoanalysis here because that belongs either in a room with a therapist or scrawled on the front page of a 17 year-old's Livejournal, but one fact beyond debate is that as a kid I was somewhere on the introverted side of the scale. My music teacher once asked me to play the flute in class and I was worried what it'd think of me. This kind of distant, withdrawn behaviour that manifests itself to other people as many kinds of social awkwardness, geekiness and so on, continued as I grew up and I only really began to chip away at it towards the end of secondary school. I say that not through some vaguely nostalgic recollection of my youth, but because I remember plenty of specific times when I made little breakthroughs that meant a hell of a lot back then. As sad as it sounds, roleplaying games really helped me develop my confidence in a group. Hell, we're only talking a room of four or five of my good mates, but I always found it really hard being heard and being funny at first; then one day, I remember GMing a session that went really well and I realised I wasn't so bad after all.
That's a horribly sickly tale and I won't slip back into regurgitating that kind of pus-dripping nostalgia into your eyes again, but you get the point. I was the quiet one. This carried on until I began drinking and then bam, well, you can imagine the effect that had. I'm no different to anyone else in that way - a couple of drinks opens up a whole new world in my head. One of the reasons I'm naturally pretty quiet is that I constantly run about 10 seconds in the future in my head, predicting where the conversation is going, with varied results - most often it helps me keep things going, but sometimes when people say something I've anticipated I feel like I've driven down a dead end and it kills things temporarily in my head while I reverse and think of new avenues.
If that sounds like hard work, it is, but I gave up trying to change that years ago. The only natural time I can really escape from that incessant buzz in my head of constant thought is by being alone; classic introvert behaviour. Being alone means I don't have to devote such a massive chunk of my time to other people, and can just think naturally. It's a relief for a while, and then I feel ready to go back into the world and deal with people again. It's just the way introverts work.
The only un-natural time I can escape the never-ending serious thought is by having a drink. Pretty quickly it flicks off rows and rows of those characteristics that make me appear quiet, withdrawn, hesitant and so on. The feeling of relief is probably what I like about it most. It's a very conscious thought: "Thank god - I'm someone else." I don't have to live with two people in my head, one beyond my control and the other always trying to control it - there's just one person I don't have to worry about.
Sometimes I actually resent people, in a very petulant way, for not recognising that for all the other God-be-damned times I'm around them my brain has been doing overtime wondering how they're feeling and whether they're happy and what they'd like to talk about; and so, for me to have a drink that lets me clock off from that, I see as my reward. I say that that's petulant because obviously, no-one can know the strange neuroses ever-present in my head while I'm sat talking to them. I guess it's a sense of self-justification: I have put a lot of work in for you, now let me have some time off to recover.
Returning to the time this was going on, probably around 1999 to 2002 or so, I found that drink was such a great help to me around people that I worried about seeing people without a drink to smooth things over. This is even with close friends, people who now I can handle myself around sober, but at the time were relatively new acquaintances. Perhaps a mental bond formed then? - that I only felt confident enough to be funny when I'd had a drink. The rest of the time I felt happy retreating into my personal time where nobody expected anything from me.
The importance, then, of a person's character in terms of their drinking is, I think, very important. At this stage of my life I found that drinking allowed me to socialise without the restraints of my normal character, and later in the night would let me think about the really dark thoughts I had back then. It was quite seductive, really - such an easy way to escape my everyday self and become someone new and interesting to myself.
Perhaps that's the key point explaining why I slipped into it so easily back then. I was sick of being angry at myself for my own weaknesses, and a drink allowed me to escape that and become someone new. It's very much like having a room mate you hate, but who you get a few hours away from in the evening - it's such a relief.
Now, while that little ramble accounts for a lot of things back then, I'd be a fat faced liar not to mention the big thing that was going on back then - women. Tune in tomorrow for a detailed analysis of the male sexual psyche with relation to alcohol (1999-2002), with a few knockabout shagging stories thrown in for good measure.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Where it all began
And tonight's subject, ladies and gentlefolk, is how this all began.
A chronological take on things is probably the most fitting as I can picture changes over time that are only really relevant to each other in terms of what happened before and after. So, I suppose this all began the first few times I went out with my dad.
The habits I formed then have stuck with me to this day. The things I'll list now do sound absurd, and I'll make the comparisons you might imagine yourself - but I'll also show the differences, the reasons why these things matter.
Now, all of this carried on for a few years, as I remember. I was mostly around Blackburn and I don't think things were too bad back then. This was right at the beginning of what we called at the time "the experiment", wherein Blackburn was the country's guinea pig for late licensing laws. Prior to this, 99% of nights would end when the club closed at midnight, frequently earlier. Post to this may well be what was the real start of my problems. You see, when the Napier began staying open later into the night, as well as a few other pubs in town, it became a viable option not just to get a taxi home and have supper before bed, but to get that taxi into town with a few other people and carry on the night.
And this just progressed, over time, into today's situation of entirely unpredictable opening hours stretching absurdly late into the night. That whole debate is for another time, but I can say it was not in my best interests. Prior to this I had been doing a reasonable job of drinking normally and going home, eating, having a brew and sleeping at a normal time - if, you will, the "old" way of drinking. Suddenly these extra hours extended that and none of us could resist it.
The constant argument that comes back when "cafe culture" is mentioned is that it's for the continentals and doesn't suit us. I firmly agree with this. Having been all around Europe I can attest that it's a great thing over there, where the culture has had centuries to adapt to it and has social rules firmly in place to work alongside it. But for the British? - we are historically a nation of hard drinkers who have needed to be controlled. See for example the 1830 Beer Act which was designed to end the gin plague the country endured at the time, with three quarters of London homes a dram shop. This in turn led to 40,000 homes turning into "public houses", the forerunner of today's pubs, which themselves had to be controlled during World War I with the introduction of "last orders". Historically, British drinking has needed control to avoid becoming self-destructive.
I digress. The point in question here is that the new late opening hours acted simply as an invitation, to me, to drink more. It was an easy way to extend the night and have more fun. From this time on, I think I've struggled with a sense of self-control any time after 11 or 12 - it's like the habits of those early years are hard-wired in to my head, and anything afterward is prone to end badly.
I'm fully aware that talking through these events can easily be interpreted as my attempt to rationalise and justify my behaviour today by events beyond my control. I'm not doing that. What I wish to explain is how events that at the time seem perfectly harmless or even beneficial, can in time turn out to be harmful. This early sequence of events in my drinking career (which is by far my favourite expression used among the beer blogging community) did, I think, set me on a path towards where I am today.
A discussion of the pro's and con's of that licensing legislation is well worth a post, even a book, on its own - I think that was really the beginning of the death of the pub scene, far before the smoking ban. But that's by the by. Tomorrow, I'll have a think back at the following stage of my career.
A chronological take on things is probably the most fitting as I can picture changes over time that are only really relevant to each other in terms of what happened before and after. So, I suppose this all began the first few times I went out with my dad.
The habits I formed then have stuck with me to this day. The things I'll list now do sound absurd, and I'll make the comparisons you might imagine yourself - but I'll also show the differences, the reasons why these things matter.
- I imitated the speed at which he drinks. It took a while to catch up at first, but it was something I was trying to do as it seemed it was normal. I didn't have any concept that people drank at different paces... it was just pint for pint. So why didn't I just treat it like a coffee - people sup a brew however they like? Well, there's the physical act of getting up and going to the bar. There's also the querying of whether you want another pint. And there's the image pressure I felt of not wanting a comment about "struggling with my pint", like I was weaker than the others.
- I drank as regularly as he drank. When I was very young this was five nights a week, but by the time I was 18 this was down to three at weekends. By the time I started drinking most of my friends had moved away so I naturally went out with my dad - Friday night was a big event, something I looked forward to after a week at college. And then Saturday was empty with another night out at the end of it, and usually Sunday too. Why didn't I just do this with him as little as I did everything else? - well, it was the first time I'd ever really done anything alone with him and been able to speak to him. I liked how the drink made it possible for us both to talk - we do have a lot in common.
- I developed my sense of being "the organiser", the chief morale officer, the one responsible for the happiness of the group. Before this I was very individualistic but from this point on, my contentment became very closely tied in to how the group was doing. I would then put myself in situations that weren't the best for me, but for the group. He did, and does, the same. Why didn't my happiness just derive from myself? - that's just the way I am. I'm very sensitive to people's moods and don't feel happy until others are.
Now, all of this carried on for a few years, as I remember. I was mostly around Blackburn and I don't think things were too bad back then. This was right at the beginning of what we called at the time "the experiment", wherein Blackburn was the country's guinea pig for late licensing laws. Prior to this, 99% of nights would end when the club closed at midnight, frequently earlier. Post to this may well be what was the real start of my problems. You see, when the Napier began staying open later into the night, as well as a few other pubs in town, it became a viable option not just to get a taxi home and have supper before bed, but to get that taxi into town with a few other people and carry on the night.
And this just progressed, over time, into today's situation of entirely unpredictable opening hours stretching absurdly late into the night. That whole debate is for another time, but I can say it was not in my best interests. Prior to this I had been doing a reasonable job of drinking normally and going home, eating, having a brew and sleeping at a normal time - if, you will, the "old" way of drinking. Suddenly these extra hours extended that and none of us could resist it.
The constant argument that comes back when "cafe culture" is mentioned is that it's for the continentals and doesn't suit us. I firmly agree with this. Having been all around Europe I can attest that it's a great thing over there, where the culture has had centuries to adapt to it and has social rules firmly in place to work alongside it. But for the British? - we are historically a nation of hard drinkers who have needed to be controlled. See for example the 1830 Beer Act which was designed to end the gin plague the country endured at the time, with three quarters of London homes a dram shop. This in turn led to 40,000 homes turning into "public houses", the forerunner of today's pubs, which themselves had to be controlled during World War I with the introduction of "last orders". Historically, British drinking has needed control to avoid becoming self-destructive.
I digress. The point in question here is that the new late opening hours acted simply as an invitation, to me, to drink more. It was an easy way to extend the night and have more fun. From this time on, I think I've struggled with a sense of self-control any time after 11 or 12 - it's like the habits of those early years are hard-wired in to my head, and anything afterward is prone to end badly.
I'm fully aware that talking through these events can easily be interpreted as my attempt to rationalise and justify my behaviour today by events beyond my control. I'm not doing that. What I wish to explain is how events that at the time seem perfectly harmless or even beneficial, can in time turn out to be harmful. This early sequence of events in my drinking career (which is by far my favourite expression used among the beer blogging community) did, I think, set me on a path towards where I am today.
A discussion of the pro's and con's of that licensing legislation is well worth a post, even a book, on its own - I think that was really the beginning of the death of the pub scene, far before the smoking ban. But that's by the by. Tomorrow, I'll have a think back at the following stage of my career.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Rock bottom
These confessionals are tricky to know where to begin, so it seems best to just state a few facts and let this flow from there. When I started this a year ago, writing about what was going on at the time proved as cathartic as writing always has done for me. I hope this is still the case as I've contributed very little to the web since then - mostly, I think, because I've been a predominantly happy chappy.
Alas that is the case no more, as a problem has reared its head. (I wouldn't say I'm intensely unhappy either, but then a deep down analysis of the vagaries of my mood isn't what this page is about.) If you've read any of the prior posts on here, you'll know that I've had a problem with drinking for a while now. If you haven't read them, go have a look for an idea of where I was a year ago with it all.
I did a month off drinking and at the time that felt like a success. Unfortunately, since then my drinking has caused problems to me and to others and it finally hit breaking point this weekend just passed. Cue one very drunken argument with her dearest to me, a day spent coming to terms with thoughts of being alone again, a day off work laid motionless thinking about things, and then today.
Today I went to see one of Blackburn's alcohol misuse teams (yep, one of). The first trigger for this, to be honest, was the intense sense of panic I felt at the thought of losing her. My immediate reaction, as always, was to assume blame and think logically what I should do to fix the situation.
A little later, going on in to a long sleepless night characteristic of a body recovering from a binge, I laid thinking about what had gone on, trying to piece things together. It's one of the most difficult parts about drinking too much - sometimes you can't trust your opinion of whether you were in the right or wrong. Over the next few hours I drifted back to events from the past. The same conclusion threw itself up more times than not - I'd caused a problem by being so drunk I didn't have any recollection of being in control of my actions. These times stand out to me because I'm normally quite a peaceful man so they bob up and down in memory like a flashing buoy in the ocean.
I think I've never had to face up to the way I behave because I maintain a large circle of friends and family so any one person's exposure to this kind of mad behaviour is limited. The exception is her, who over more than a year has witnessed a fair few incidents.
The sense of guilt and remorse I've felt since I seemed to see those incidents in a new light for the first time, is difficult to express. I think it explains one of the two motivations I have for taking this so seriously this time, and involving professionals and by extension my GP and people close to me, which is that I need to know fully again what kind of person I am sober. People tell me all the time that I change, and my reaction is always "well yeah, everyone changes after they've drunk" - but like I said before, I can't trust my drunk opinion enough to judge other people's opinion of me. I need to know things against the great leveller of being sober to know how right or wrong I am. I want to know if me drinking too much is the cause of our problems, or if it's something else - that's probably an extension of my desire to fix everything and get a true answer at all costs. My belief at the moment is that the variance in my character and behaviour after a drink probably accounts for two thirds of the problems we have, with the rest being either down to her being in a crap mood or one of those genuine disagreements that crop up from time to time. I can't know or prove this, though, until I remove them from the equation.
The second motive is, well, a kind of grim acceptance that I'm hurting myself. I've been able to ignore certain things for quite a while now, for various reasons, but recently they've all begun to catch up with me. I've developed an excellent talent in keeping the separate parts of my life ticking over just well enough to avoid messing them up, to give me enough time to fit drinking in too. Alas, even after perfecting the art it becomes so intensely wearsome at times that I can't take it any more. I've also developed a strong sense of self-loathing in a way I'd grown very unfamiliar with in recent years. I think I despise weakness in people so much that seeing myself being weak and lieing to myself constantly makes me feel sick about myself.
My intention at the moment is to stop, indefinitely. The guy today said doing that can be dangerous, but I've done it before and indeed it's two days since I've touched anything already. It feels like a bad time of year to do it, but I honestly feel like a long break is the best way for me - and I know I need someone's help to manage it, because intellectually I always reason that I can do it myself, but drinking isn't much of an intellectual opponent and usually beats me down with iron fists after two rounds. I need to know whether this fear I've never lost that I'm boring when I'm sober is true, or if it's just a remnant from how shy I was 10 years ago. I think I've been weak in relying on drink to carry me through social occasions and give me a break from the whirlwind in my head 24/7, so I need to experience life just as I am naturally. My aim with this blog is threefold, really: 1) to stop me keep on lieing to myself, and bring it into the open, 2) as a way for me to keep in touch with the people who I've chosen to share this problem with, and 3) for me to explain and look into a lot of the things I've always wondered contribute to a problem like this.
In a funny way, for a split second today while I was sat answering questions about whether I was planning to self-harm and whether I'd ever used a weapon, I thought that all of this at least gives me something constructive to think and write about, and it might even make a good dissertation topic. We'll see what comes out over the next few months.
Tomorrow: where I think all this began.
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