Another thought struck me today related to this, that for the last decade I've felt very much trapped between social classes and it normally leaves me feeling very isolated.
This occurred to me tonight when, after my exam, I made my way to a pub near my home to catch as much of the Rovers-Villa semi-final as I could. (That was a conscious decision - I was avoiding watching it at the nearest pub to the college and then ending up hanging around in town drinking afterwards until the bus home.) There can be few more obvious juxtapositions than a two hour psychology exam essentially forcing me to discuss why people are fucked, followed by an hour sat on my own watching people who are fucked.
What struck me was that I've always felt somewhere inbetween the working class I was born in to - the people who drink socially in the pubs I like - and the middle class - the people I've always intellectually more associated with. I've never been that close to my family apart from liking how they can, without a second's notice or a hint of awkwardness, gather for any social occasion and totally relate to each other. That is something that very few middle class, geographically disparate families I have ever known, have been capable of doing, and it's a very warming thing. On the other hand, from an early age at school I always associated with the clever lads and am still great friends with them to this day - and they're all from middle class backgrounds. My girlfriends have been from that background, too; I'm attracted to intelligence before anything else, I know by now.
What I've put myself through is a torn life between the fantastic honesty and utterly genuine warmth of my family, tempered by their requirement for beer and complete lack of relation I feel for them often, and the intellectual and comic rewards I've always sought from my friends, partly cancelled out by their own detachment and individualistic views. Pub-going people are by definition blessed with social skills, warmth and a genuine temperament few possess, but equally they have a fondness for laughing too loud at simple jokes and taking the edge off most humour. The more gifted people out there have a knack of seeing into your soul with a wise comment, but are more than fond of patronising comments and sorry put-downs. Somewhere in the middle is who I look for but I've ended up with this huge mass of friends and family who I can relate to in one way or another but few of whom I feel any real kinship with, and I've been using beer to fill in those gaps.
I often think that just "taking it as it comes" is the best answer, but the fundamental issue with that is that if that ability isn't born into you, and you're one of those people who want to make a difference and give answers to people, you can't just take things like this as they come.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Self-control
Interesting look at the "contagious" nature of self-control, which is an aspect of what I'm struggling with.
http://www.uga.edu/news/artman/publish/100113_SelfControlStudy.shtml
http://www.uga.edu/news/artman/publish/100113_SelfControlStudy.shtml
Ploughing on
Not the easiest of times recently. I've been exposed to some of the risk factors I recognise, but I've come through them okay. A death in the family and not seeing my girlfriend much - one, my family's inclination to drink at times like this, and two, the absence of the usual things to do in the evenings and a feeling of isolation. It was potentially a bad combination but I stuck it out by creating something for me to do that took away the worst pangs of boredom and loneliness; last Sunday I went on a very chilly walk around part of town with a friend, looking at old pubs mentioned in an online group I visit. I took a few photos which I'll get online at some point and had a good natter with a mate - something I've been missing, as I expected, being able to share a problem with someone who gets where you're coming from. It was everything I wanted and have been aiming for, the kind of social drinking that people do without a second glance - a gentlemanly walk around a few quiet pubs having halves in some and pints in others, no need to rush anything or anyone pressuring me, finishing up with a curry and a trip to the cinema and not a negative thought in my mind. Along with being busy revising for an exam tonight, that kept me sufficiently occupied not to do much but be on my own with books and notes, really.
This whole thing is proving to be a bit of a mission of self-discovery and from the last fortnight I've learned that the idea of suddenly stopping is too much for me and just makes me want to go completely in the opposite direction. However, contrary to what I'd previously thought, when I carefully position beer in my life, for example this week by having a quiet weekend at home so that I'd enjoy my Sunday afternoon out with a mate, I can moderate like a normal person. Crucially I was also able, again, to stop it turning into anything more than that afternoon, and this time on my own; I had a few drinks on Monday night, but only because my mate's dad had just died, and it didn't get late. Slowly I can feel my instinctive opinion changing from that insane urge to just keep going, into thinking more about the consequences; changing that instinctive feeling is very important as it's what guides a person when they've had more than a couple of drinks.
I haven't heard from the alcohol advisers since December 21st so I'll be ringing them today. They were supposed to ring me to schedule an appointment in the new year, but it's the 14th now and no word, and the snow's died down enough that they must be back up to speed now. I've felt very isolated in the last few weeks and sometimes feel the pangs to just give up because everyone's left me to it, but I've held them off just waiting to have this person to talk to. That's the problem with drinking. People always look after themselves first but a pint's always ready to listen. Not that I believe in that, by the way, I'm just making an observation on the nature of it. The counterside to that, of course, is that a pint is like having a mate who just nods to everything you say and never tells you when you're wrong or gives friendly advice - not much use at the end of the day.
It is a slow and unpleasant process, but I'm slowly phasing out time around some people. There are people I know who "get it" and others who don't. I'll never have any influence on them so my answer is to cut down the time around them, for better or worse. This week should perhaps remind me that there are people out there with problems they can't beat who deserve more sympathy than me, and I'm in this on my own anyway.
This whole thing is proving to be a bit of a mission of self-discovery and from the last fortnight I've learned that the idea of suddenly stopping is too much for me and just makes me want to go completely in the opposite direction. However, contrary to what I'd previously thought, when I carefully position beer in my life, for example this week by having a quiet weekend at home so that I'd enjoy my Sunday afternoon out with a mate, I can moderate like a normal person. Crucially I was also able, again, to stop it turning into anything more than that afternoon, and this time on my own; I had a few drinks on Monday night, but only because my mate's dad had just died, and it didn't get late. Slowly I can feel my instinctive opinion changing from that insane urge to just keep going, into thinking more about the consequences; changing that instinctive feeling is very important as it's what guides a person when they've had more than a couple of drinks.
I haven't heard from the alcohol advisers since December 21st so I'll be ringing them today. They were supposed to ring me to schedule an appointment in the new year, but it's the 14th now and no word, and the snow's died down enough that they must be back up to speed now. I've felt very isolated in the last few weeks and sometimes feel the pangs to just give up because everyone's left me to it, but I've held them off just waiting to have this person to talk to. That's the problem with drinking. People always look after themselves first but a pint's always ready to listen. Not that I believe in that, by the way, I'm just making an observation on the nature of it. The counterside to that, of course, is that a pint is like having a mate who just nods to everything you say and never tells you when you're wrong or gives friendly advice - not much use at the end of the day.
It is a slow and unpleasant process, but I'm slowly phasing out time around some people. There are people I know who "get it" and others who don't. I'll never have any influence on them so my answer is to cut down the time around them, for better or worse. This week should perhaps remind me that there are people out there with problems they can't beat who deserve more sympathy than me, and I'm in this on my own anyway.
Monday, 4 January 2010
Social situations
I've learned several things over the last week which is always a very pleasing state of affairs, for there's nothing more frustrating than stagnating in a feeling that you're getting nowhere fast.
Firstly I had what felt like a setback on New Year's Day. I'd managed fine going from the weekend of the 27th until then without having anything. I'd intended going through the wedding I was at the same way but I pretty quickly discovered what is probably one of the biggest reasons I drink at things like that. I found myself in new company and while they were all very nice people it was the fact alone that they were new to me that filled me with a heavy sense of unease and worry. To be specific, it's not a generic shyness around new people I feel, for in day to day situations I can carry myself perfectly adequately, but in social situations it's an overwhelming sense of disappointment in myself for not naturally being able to be as funny or interesting with them as I can be with people I know. The sense of disappointment quickly becomes all I can think about, even when I'm conscious of it and am willing myself to just think straight and act as I would with people I know.
Drink comes into this as it puts a foot in that revolving door and has the same effect as if I was magically suddenly sat at a table of friends - the mental block clears and I find it possible again to think clearly and without hindrance. Part of it is psychological in that having a drink in front of me makes me feel less of an outcast and more a part of the group, but part of it is the physical relaxing effect of a beer or two. I've come to see that this is one of the reasons I have instinctively drunk at occasions like this, because I'd got used to it as a way of killing off those feelings of unease before they had chance to kick in - feelings of unease which I've never really learned to handle.
Despite there being a free bar at the wedding, I maintained a good degree of sobriety and managed to think logically and calm myself about a moment of anger I had when I saw someone ordering two strong drinks at the end of the night - I had a flash of anger that if I had done that I'd be leapt upon as a raging alcoholic, but then I remembered that it would be justified to do so as I've shown that I react in a different way to that kind of drinking than other people - a worse way. What's not okay for me is okay for them, you know, and I remembered that and stopped myself before I got angry. It might not sound much of an achievement but normally I find it quite alluring to succumb to those flashes of anger and switch off any resistance to them, because they feel like such a change from the normal hyper-self controlled me.
Anyway, in summary, when faced at the wedding with the pressure of a new social group, I learned that I'd gone too far by thinking I was ready to totally not drink at things like that. Maybe in the future, when I've done it a few times with less drink than usual, yeah, but not yet. I kept the drinking to a normal level, though, went home fine and was A-okay the next day, so I think I just did enough to kill off my freaking-out that night and get me through to the next stage.
So what was the next stage? Well part of what I've been doing on here and in person is being honest about as much as I can, so before we went into the reception I told my girlfriend I was panicking a lot about the next six hours and I'd be having a few drinks. She took it well which was a relief as I can understand that I change my mind a fair bit on here - as I mentioned in a recent post, it's because I don't know myself what the best route is from day to day. A fair point she had was that a few drinks that night might kick off my usual urge to have a few more the next day, and then a few more, and then the whole "stopped drinking" thing is dead in the water again. Being honest I only fully understood what was happening at those times about three or four months ago, when I began to see a pattern emerging after yet another stupidly intense weekend. But I get it now, and I think it's one of the main things I need to be doing to keep in control - avoiding the one night leading into another just because I get that feeling inside and my body tells me I'm fine. The lesson has been that my body lies to me and the voice making me want another is the remnants of last night's alcohol leaving my system; two simple but duplicitous chemical facts.
So, and I felt a bit lame for suggesting it, I asked if we could spend some of the next day together. There was no need to explain why - obviously partly it was to give me some company to help me avoid the boredom that makes me want to give in, and partly to show her in person that I wasn't falling into that trap again. And it is a trap - as I mentioned some time ago on here, when I think back, almost universally, the times I've ended up stupidly drunk and ended up upsetting her or being an all-round wazzock haven't been after a night out but after a second or third night out, when it's built up inside me but for lord knows what reason I seem unable to recognise it. It seems to me then that if I can't rely on the instinctive feeling that "I've had enough" that most other people have, then I have to create and rely on an intellectual decision to stop myself and ignore what my body tells me. On the day following the wedding I did just that and once the pangs for more had passed by dinnertime, I felt back to normal once again.
I'm actually taking some genuine comfort from that because, and it's really hard to describe just how strong an urge it is, when I've had that wanting for more in the past I've normally just given in and let it beat me. It will be hard for me to exercise the same decision every time and I think I will have to actively plan to have something to do or have people around to help me avoid it, but I know now it's possible.
For the future, I'm currently going back to the idea I had several months ago that having something unusual to look forward to every month or so might help me get through the intermediate patches without feeling too cut off from the rest of the world, my friends and family. It's a hard trade-off for me, on the one hand the need to be more moderate and on the other the need to see people. I've been reading about the National Winter Ales Festival 2010 over in Manchester later this month and it's that kind of thing that I think I'd like to do more - go along for the day (having most definitely not had a beer the night before!), try the food, try some crazy new beers (which I really do love doing, always have done, just hidden it by the obviousness of my excesses), see a few friends I don't often see, and get the train home with a Sunday ahead to spend "in recovery" - not tricking myself I'm immortal and I can quite easily go out again that night. When I think about it, it feels like the solution that might work for me, helping me hit that middle ground. I'll be asking around anyway, putting some feelers out, and seeing what happens.
Firstly I had what felt like a setback on New Year's Day. I'd managed fine going from the weekend of the 27th until then without having anything. I'd intended going through the wedding I was at the same way but I pretty quickly discovered what is probably one of the biggest reasons I drink at things like that. I found myself in new company and while they were all very nice people it was the fact alone that they were new to me that filled me with a heavy sense of unease and worry. To be specific, it's not a generic shyness around new people I feel, for in day to day situations I can carry myself perfectly adequately, but in social situations it's an overwhelming sense of disappointment in myself for not naturally being able to be as funny or interesting with them as I can be with people I know. The sense of disappointment quickly becomes all I can think about, even when I'm conscious of it and am willing myself to just think straight and act as I would with people I know.
Drink comes into this as it puts a foot in that revolving door and has the same effect as if I was magically suddenly sat at a table of friends - the mental block clears and I find it possible again to think clearly and without hindrance. Part of it is psychological in that having a drink in front of me makes me feel less of an outcast and more a part of the group, but part of it is the physical relaxing effect of a beer or two. I've come to see that this is one of the reasons I have instinctively drunk at occasions like this, because I'd got used to it as a way of killing off those feelings of unease before they had chance to kick in - feelings of unease which I've never really learned to handle.
Despite there being a free bar at the wedding, I maintained a good degree of sobriety and managed to think logically and calm myself about a moment of anger I had when I saw someone ordering two strong drinks at the end of the night - I had a flash of anger that if I had done that I'd be leapt upon as a raging alcoholic, but then I remembered that it would be justified to do so as I've shown that I react in a different way to that kind of drinking than other people - a worse way. What's not okay for me is okay for them, you know, and I remembered that and stopped myself before I got angry. It might not sound much of an achievement but normally I find it quite alluring to succumb to those flashes of anger and switch off any resistance to them, because they feel like such a change from the normal hyper-self controlled me.
Anyway, in summary, when faced at the wedding with the pressure of a new social group, I learned that I'd gone too far by thinking I was ready to totally not drink at things like that. Maybe in the future, when I've done it a few times with less drink than usual, yeah, but not yet. I kept the drinking to a normal level, though, went home fine and was A-okay the next day, so I think I just did enough to kill off my freaking-out that night and get me through to the next stage.
So what was the next stage? Well part of what I've been doing on here and in person is being honest about as much as I can, so before we went into the reception I told my girlfriend I was panicking a lot about the next six hours and I'd be having a few drinks. She took it well which was a relief as I can understand that I change my mind a fair bit on here - as I mentioned in a recent post, it's because I don't know myself what the best route is from day to day. A fair point she had was that a few drinks that night might kick off my usual urge to have a few more the next day, and then a few more, and then the whole "stopped drinking" thing is dead in the water again. Being honest I only fully understood what was happening at those times about three or four months ago, when I began to see a pattern emerging after yet another stupidly intense weekend. But I get it now, and I think it's one of the main things I need to be doing to keep in control - avoiding the one night leading into another just because I get that feeling inside and my body tells me I'm fine. The lesson has been that my body lies to me and the voice making me want another is the remnants of last night's alcohol leaving my system; two simple but duplicitous chemical facts.
So, and I felt a bit lame for suggesting it, I asked if we could spend some of the next day together. There was no need to explain why - obviously partly it was to give me some company to help me avoid the boredom that makes me want to give in, and partly to show her in person that I wasn't falling into that trap again. And it is a trap - as I mentioned some time ago on here, when I think back, almost universally, the times I've ended up stupidly drunk and ended up upsetting her or being an all-round wazzock haven't been after a night out but after a second or third night out, when it's built up inside me but for lord knows what reason I seem unable to recognise it. It seems to me then that if I can't rely on the instinctive feeling that "I've had enough" that most other people have, then I have to create and rely on an intellectual decision to stop myself and ignore what my body tells me. On the day following the wedding I did just that and once the pangs for more had passed by dinnertime, I felt back to normal once again.
I'm actually taking some genuine comfort from that because, and it's really hard to describe just how strong an urge it is, when I've had that wanting for more in the past I've normally just given in and let it beat me. It will be hard for me to exercise the same decision every time and I think I will have to actively plan to have something to do or have people around to help me avoid it, but I know now it's possible.
For the future, I'm currently going back to the idea I had several months ago that having something unusual to look forward to every month or so might help me get through the intermediate patches without feeling too cut off from the rest of the world, my friends and family. It's a hard trade-off for me, on the one hand the need to be more moderate and on the other the need to see people. I've been reading about the National Winter Ales Festival 2010 over in Manchester later this month and it's that kind of thing that I think I'd like to do more - go along for the day (having most definitely not had a beer the night before!), try the food, try some crazy new beers (which I really do love doing, always have done, just hidden it by the obviousness of my excesses), see a few friends I don't often see, and get the train home with a Sunday ahead to spend "in recovery" - not tricking myself I'm immortal and I can quite easily go out again that night. When I think about it, it feels like the solution that might work for me, helping me hit that middle ground. I'll be asking around anyway, putting some feelers out, and seeing what happens.
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Beer stories #395
Hell, if I can't talk about my own beer career, other people's will have to do!
From Reddit: Funniest thing you've ever heard in a bar.
From Reddit: Funniest thing you've ever heard in a bar.
The deed is done
For the last couple of weeks I've been wrangling over the best way to proceed. It basically boiled down to two choices - either try to learn how to moderate better, or totally pack it in. I haven't wanted to speak about this choice yet because one of the problems I've had so far is that my mind has hardly ever been made up about what the best thing to do is, so when I've said things I later have a change of heart about they end up coming back to bite me and creating their own set of problems I really don't have the time for.
I've no doubt that my opinion will change again and I'll just have to go with the flow on that when it happens; it's really impossible to set anything in stone since I'm going into this virtually blind and with one person to talk to once a week about it. Nonetheless the inescapable conclusion I must draw from the time when I most recently realised I had to do something about all of this, is that for whatever reason I still have times where I lose self-control and so trying to moderate myself isn't very likely to work. I'm always wary of extreme solutions as I think they tend to provoke a rebellious response but as I mentioned earlier today, I've come to see that stopping altogether is a safer method for me to control it than muddling along clinging to a vague self-belief I might be able to manage it.
When I've talked about this in the past, people have usually tried to change my mind and tell me there's no need to be so extreme. I think that's just testament to the decent job I manage of hiding how much it sometimes affects me - how even on nights where I can seem fine, I'm either on the way down into a spiralling mood or I'll be such a wreck the next day I have to put aside days to get over it. I don't intentionally do that to myself - I don't enjoy the after-effects at all. I seem to have been blessed or cursed with a remarkable stamina for self-abuse up to a point, before which I feel on top of the world and after which I'm six feet under. Do you see part of the problem now? - it's that I can't even trust my own body to give me any pointers, so I'm even in a fight against myself. Even while I've been trying to moderate recently, the same thing happens - I feel absolutely fine and dandy until the moment comes when it all catches up with me in an instant. That isn't an easy thing to learn how to live with or work around, hence the decision to take this war nuclear and cut it out altogether.
I am tired of all this, and I know it seems silly - at least I'm not drinking MRSA gel, eh? But it has a big effect on me in its own way, and it's a hard thing to shake once it has its grip on you. If you see me at the bar, do a friend a favour and get me a lemonade, yeah?
I've no doubt that my opinion will change again and I'll just have to go with the flow on that when it happens; it's really impossible to set anything in stone since I'm going into this virtually blind and with one person to talk to once a week about it. Nonetheless the inescapable conclusion I must draw from the time when I most recently realised I had to do something about all of this, is that for whatever reason I still have times where I lose self-control and so trying to moderate myself isn't very likely to work. I'm always wary of extreme solutions as I think they tend to provoke a rebellious response but as I mentioned earlier today, I've come to see that stopping altogether is a safer method for me to control it than muddling along clinging to a vague self-belief I might be able to manage it.
When I've talked about this in the past, people have usually tried to change my mind and tell me there's no need to be so extreme. I think that's just testament to the decent job I manage of hiding how much it sometimes affects me - how even on nights where I can seem fine, I'm either on the way down into a spiralling mood or I'll be such a wreck the next day I have to put aside days to get over it. I don't intentionally do that to myself - I don't enjoy the after-effects at all. I seem to have been blessed or cursed with a remarkable stamina for self-abuse up to a point, before which I feel on top of the world and after which I'm six feet under. Do you see part of the problem now? - it's that I can't even trust my own body to give me any pointers, so I'm even in a fight against myself. Even while I've been trying to moderate recently, the same thing happens - I feel absolutely fine and dandy until the moment comes when it all catches up with me in an instant. That isn't an easy thing to learn how to live with or work around, hence the decision to take this war nuclear and cut it out altogether.
I am tired of all this, and I know it seems silly - at least I'm not drinking MRSA gel, eh? But it has a big effect on me in its own way, and it's a hard thing to shake once it has its grip on you. If you see me at the bar, do a friend a favour and get me a lemonade, yeah?
A new year
I think I've finally managed to come completely clean about all of this to all of the people to whom it matters. The only remaining thing left to say is that I know I've still got a long way to go with sorting it out because over Christmas I got the usual moments of either feeling close to losing control or actually losing control. This wasn't helped by telling my parents over this period which, naturally, wasn't very easy and after which I got the usual green light in my head to "reward" myself for doing something hard by having a drink to help get over it. Silly, I know, and one of the things I need to talk about to change.
Moderating it is very difficult for me. I feel that something has physically changed because it just sneaks up on me from nowhere these days, and I go from doing fine and feeling quite good about myself, to making the same old mistakes again before I know it. I think then that with Christmas out of the way, now's the time to stop. I've been searching for ways to cut down without making me feel isolated and alone by losing social time with all the people I know, but even if I managed it some times over the holidays, at other times it just seems impossible; drinking is so deeply entwined with most of the people I socialise with that without a drink involved, I feel like I don't really know them. The logical conclusion is that I should abandon that policy and accept that I'm really not much better than the rest of the people in my boat, and try whatever they try to get over the problem.
To be honest I'm pretty worried about how hard I'll find this, but at the same time I've actually just become very bored of talking to myself about all of this and seeing myself as someone with a problem - and other people seeing me as weak. I'd rather have to deal with a bit of loneliness when I'm not seeing people because I'm lonely anyway. And the idea of seeing this alcohol adviser is that I can get this off my chest without affecting my day to day life - perhaps this blog is subverting that idea so I might have to cut back on this. Sometimes I think I spend endless hours thinking about answers to problems when all I really should be doing is being a man, taking them on the chin and getting on with things.
I don't really have a grand statement to end this with, other than that I'm bored of all this and want it to end.
Moderating it is very difficult for me. I feel that something has physically changed because it just sneaks up on me from nowhere these days, and I go from doing fine and feeling quite good about myself, to making the same old mistakes again before I know it. I think then that with Christmas out of the way, now's the time to stop. I've been searching for ways to cut down without making me feel isolated and alone by losing social time with all the people I know, but even if I managed it some times over the holidays, at other times it just seems impossible; drinking is so deeply entwined with most of the people I socialise with that without a drink involved, I feel like I don't really know them. The logical conclusion is that I should abandon that policy and accept that I'm really not much better than the rest of the people in my boat, and try whatever they try to get over the problem.
To be honest I'm pretty worried about how hard I'll find this, but at the same time I've actually just become very bored of talking to myself about all of this and seeing myself as someone with a problem - and other people seeing me as weak. I'd rather have to deal with a bit of loneliness when I'm not seeing people because I'm lonely anyway. And the idea of seeing this alcohol adviser is that I can get this off my chest without affecting my day to day life - perhaps this blog is subverting that idea so I might have to cut back on this. Sometimes I think I spend endless hours thinking about answers to problems when all I really should be doing is being a man, taking them on the chin and getting on with things.
I don't really have a grand statement to end this with, other than that I'm bored of all this and want it to end.
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