An experience of AA

It's been over a year since the last entry here, my last real attempt to quit for any length of time. I can't remember if I managed it or not, but it's pretty unlikely. This time I'm not trying to quit completely, just pack it in for roughly ten weeks 'til I go to the States to see my fiance. Oh shit, yeah, did I mention? We're engaged. I almost keep forgetting.

I went to an AA meeting with a mate from work on Monday night. That was weird. I'd always been curious what they're like and well, here's an honest account. In the interests of openness, I should state I am atheist and have been drinking daily for around five or six years with breaks of no more than a month one January and the odd few days while ill. Over the last few years it has ruined great relationships, cost me a fortune and damaged my health which has led me to this point where I want to give anything a shot to help me cut out the everyday drinking and become the social drinker I always was.

So, you go in - this one was at a United Reform Church with a dedicated AA room, I guess, as it has the logo attached to the door - and there are rows and rows of chairs. Maybe thirty people milling around getting coffee and biscuits - this is a fairly busy meeting, he tells me. We sit at the back after he introduces me to a few of the people he knows - apparently almost everyone is a regular, and one guy describes AA as his social life, going to six meetings a week.

There's an awkward moment when I'm handed a sheet by the chairperson to "read" - I presumed it meant for me to read, then my mate explains it's what they take turns reading out at the end of the meeting, some kind of vows or something. Fuck this. So I go up to the front and quietly say to the guy that this is my first time and I misunderstood. He's cool with it and hands me a beginner's pack.

It seems the format is that the chairman does some sort of reminder of why everyone is there, because we're all alcoholics, and quickly runs through what will happen. He asks everyone to say hi to the newcomer and I get a lot of greetings. And then it's on to, well, what is the term, the... lead speaker? The accused? The confessor? She is a woman in her mid-30s who gets the rest of the first half of the meeting to tell her story - or "share" as the terminology they use is - in as much detail as she likes. It goes all the way from her youth through to where she is now, 13 years sober and for the first time ready to sit at the front and talk about it. It's really quite an intense experience as she goes into detail about how she ended up feeling she needed AA to help quit for good, and the 20 or 30 minutes fly by.

A short break for another coffee, and then it's on to more of the same, just in a cut down format. People seem to take turns saying, "Hi, I'm Bob and I'm and alcoholic", to which everyone replies, "Hi, Bob", and then Bob launches into a monologue about whatever is on his mind. When I say "his", I should mention that the split of men to women was probably two thirds to one third, so there is not a huge disparity by gender. It being my first time there, quite a few of the six or seven shares were directed towards me, encouraging me to come back and recounting the first time they came and all the fears and doubts over whether they would ever come back. One guy in particular told his story which was essentially a mirror of my own - the functional alcoholic hiding it just enough most of the time until it creeps up eventually and causes chaos. One other share hit me the hardest; a man in his 60s saying how the hardest thing about going sober was dealing with having feelings again; how for the first time in years his grandchild ran up and grabbed his leg and he actually felt something inside other than wondering where the next drink was, and he cried.

They were all a genuinely nice, normal bunch of people. If you met them in the street, you would never know they were struggling every moment of their lives not to pick up a drink and drift into blissful oblivion. They are just the alcoholics among us who for their own reasons have decided they just cannot keep that lifestyle up any longer. I was the youngest in the room by a good 10 years but I have reached that point, too.

The meeting draws to a close with everyone standing in a circle holding hands, reciting something I presume you are supposed to learn eventually, and then you leave at your own pace. I had to shoot off as I had a lift waiting but four people stopped me before I could leave to give me their numbers and tell me to call them any time I felt desperate. I've never seen compassion like that outside of CA.

I do not know if AA will help me, or even what help I am looking for. I know at the very least I want help towards long-term moderation, if not total abstinence. I have no idea who it will or will not work for until you yourself have tried it; this is just to give you an idea of how the meetings go, here in the UK at least. My only advice would be to give one a look out of morbid curiosity if nothing else, as some of the stories you will hear will echo your own experiences down to the bone and it's quite a fascinating feeling.

Sobering up for a month

For the next month or so I'm going to try abstaining completely to hopefully get me out of this sordid little grief-hole I've got myself in to. That last post sums it up - it was written while drunk and my room was dark and I was in one of those moments where you can't ever imagine not drinking.

As usual it took one of those terrifying withdrawals to force me to stop. I didn't even think I'd been drinking a lot but I think my liver is protesting at the moment, and can cope with less than it used to, hence the random blackouts in bed and sickness. Waking up drenched in sweat and so weak through shaking I can barely make it downstairs. I'm now on my second full day dry, and could only manage one drink the day before that because I felt so ill. Having a virus hasn't helped that much but I'm now back on my cocktail of thiamine, milk thistle, folic acid, omeprazole and a week-long course of antibiotics I'd been putting off taking for months.

I came very close to asking my parents if I could stay with them for a couple of weeks to help me avoid drinking. Unfortunately, by the time the opportunity arose the other day, they'd started drinking to celebrate my sister graduating and it being my dad's birthday, so I couldn't talk about anything serious. I'll see how it goes this weekend. I've got a few things planned to keep me busy, but if I start getting tempted I'll go round there. The only problem is my dad at weekends coming home drunk and as I'd have to sleep on the couch he's sure to wake me up ranting. Last time I did that, when I'd just broken my arm, I ended up going home and struggling on my own rather than dealing with him.

Hopefully, in a months time I'll be feeling a lot better and actually have some spare money for a change. I'm allowing myself one cup of tea in town on my breaks because I have to get out of work and do something or I go crazy, but tea is only £1 compared to anywhere between £3 to £7 if I go boozing in my hour. I can stretch one cup of tea out over an hour while reading Reddit, I am sure :)

Definitions of alcoholism

It is somewhere between a cross of loneliness, abandonment, rejection, futility, somewhere you go and you stand on your own and you go home and you cry and you want to die.

I find it quite a shameful life. When I'm drinking on my own, I feel superb. When I have to interact with people while drinking, I find it very troublesome. This seems to be a common theme among drinkers. What starts as social drinking develops into the resentment of other people's perceptions of it and a desire to escape from that judgement, so before you know it you're drinking twice as much at home on your own rather than being with people.

Then the depression kicks in. For many months, years, you don't know if you're depressed because you're drinking or drinking because you're depressed. The problem is that by this point you're physically addicted so stopping to find out is something hardly anyone can do on a whim. The misery of physical withdrawal is not something I would wish on someone who'd gang-raped Barack Obama in a sex dungeon.

Drinking has ruined relationships for me. I'm not even that bothered about being with anyone but I wouldn't say no to it if someone interesting appeared. Yet all year I've pissed away moment after moment with women purely because I either knew I was too drunk to make sense or I was too drunk and destroyed things. A lot of people on r/ca think that sort of thing is funny - I don't. By nature I'm thoughtful about people and this strange nihilism I've developed while constantly drunk is... not me.

Drinking has got me in to shit at work. I don't care about that though: work is a four letter word.

My friends know I'm a drunk, especially since my recent spate of blackouts. Well, who cares. If they like me enough and appreciate all I do for them, then we'll stay friends. If not, who cares, I have another 40 trillion friends who do care.

Reading this back, it's quite clear I'm torn between my natural independence and comfort that my stupid drinking only affects me, and some form of loneliness, a grasp back to the past where I had someone to be normal for and be normal with. I miss her more than I miss cheap beer.

As low as you can go

This week has been the worst drinking experience of my life. I completely over-did it at the weekend; blacked out at a party on Friday, woke up at 2pm and hit the wine, passed out, woke up at 2am and hit the wine, woke up at 4pm and hit the (new box of) wine. This completely screwed sleep pattern is still with me, and I hate it. After work on Monday I was expecting one of those horrible nights sleep where you get the hot and cold sweats, twitches and may as well not bother trying to sleep at all for all the good it does you. I got that, plus the strongest shakes of my life... I had to drink more to relieve it, then was up 'til nearly 6am.

Tuesday began okay but half way through the day I went home and had another bout of strong shakes, which I honestly thought were turning into a seizure. I was really quite scared, to be honest. So, back to the wine it was, which killed it for a while, but I had to spend all of last night sipping wine just to avoid a repeat. I tried sleeping at 2am, laid there for an hour and then felt another of the bad shakes coming on and dealt with it with deep breathing. The rest of the night was spent waking to nightmares every half hour, specifically people being around me and causing pain in specific parts of the body.

So, now it's Wednesday. Never in the past have I had to deal with this kind of crap for so long after a weekend. I clearly crossed some sort of invisible line and now I'm at its whim. The same whole body shaking hit me at work earlier and I had to run to the supermarket to buy something, anything to drink. I felt disgraced with myself.

I have to survive until Friday morning like this now, when I get to see the doctor and get some benzos. Two more days of trying to perfectly balance the alcohol intake so I avoid the shakes, reducing the intake a bit each time but still having enough that it aggravates my stomach and gives me the worst acid reflux I've felt for years.

I really need to stop with the alcohol, which is where the benzos come in. Earlier this week I had pretty bad pain on my right side, it's fucking my acid reflux up even worse (I've already been on omeprazole for that for a decade) and I have a recurrence of those horrible pressure headaches, like a vice being clamped around your skull. Oh poor body, what have I done to you? Let me make up for this quickly.

So, tonight will be a repeat of the previous two, I'm sure; laid wrapped in a blanket in bed, watching Star Trek: Voyager endlessly, sipping at a little less wine than the day before (tonight's plan is to stretch a small glass to every two episodes, so I should stay under the bottle mark - yesterday I went over a bottle). If I get the benzos (I will kill for them) then I'm going to stay with my family for a week or two to remove the temptations and boredoms that surround me here. When you live with a guy who drinks most nights and you've not much else to do after work, it's so easy to pick something up just for the sake of it. I need to get away from that whole scene.

Physical symptoms aside, I do actually feel shame for ending up in this situation. Most people now expect me to do something absurd at parties. I find it impossible to go shopping without picking up some beer. My health has been battered. Drink-induced apathy has ended my relationships and stopped me forming new ones. Some drinkers are okay with these things and Godspeed to them. But I, well I'd like to get to know again the Richard before all of this took a hold.

An unused HTC Wildfire-S

I keep on thinking about why I drink. Avi set this off, the bastard. I can see I'm destroying myself slowly. I ruin most of any relationships I form, though friendships persist because I'm easy to get along with in that way. I don't really know why I keep going this way. I remember a time when I didn't drink and felt okay, but now... fuck no. Day to day life scares me to death, such is its triviality. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have a drink to liven things up. I'd die of boredom before anything self-inflicted.

If I had to hazard a guess, I think I drink because day to day life doesn't trigger anything pleasurable in my head. Stuff happens that other people are excited by, but it does nothing to me. So, for years, I've drunk to make up for that missing stimulus.

I dread to think what Americans would make of me, morbidly self-obsessed as I evidently am.

NEWS

The alcholism, then. A strange beast which destroys half of your life and leaves you perfectly fuctional for the rest, at least for me. I can't speak of other people's experience. It seems it's usually people who aren't drinkers who comment on us drinkers. I'm not fond of them. Everyone's different so I've no idea why the rest of the drinkers drink... I'll leave it to them to tell their story.

A friend wishes to know of my experience of drinking, however, so here we go. Why not be more honest with an American drunk you love than a counsellor you don't trust for a second?

I drink mainly because when I'm sober I find life so boring I find myself boring and am then unable to conjure validations to make myself interesting to other people; basically I suppose it's a self-worth thing, but it is not overcomeable simply by having knowledge of this deficiency. Chemically, when my head is tired of being here, it needs something more than a funny TV programme to let me escape it. Drinking has been the best solution.

You should listen to Maximo Park for a bit. "Some things are worth the bruises, some things are worth the hurt." You know what that means.

I think I'll probably die young of some sort of alcohol-based disease but I know for sure I'm okay at the moment after a load of tests. Maybe 50 or 60, I'll be gone. I'm not bothered. I am, really; I love my sisters and the thought of not seeing them makes me cry. Everything they do matters to me more than anything, and always has done. I mean that when I say always - probably because of a strange combination of being 8 years older than the elder one and just being generally fond of them; they've always mattered more to me than anything.

Perhaps the synopsis of what I have just written, upon re-reading, is a journey into the subconscious. I drink to escape the reality I hate and then find the people I love to make things feel better.

End of the alco team

Just a quick look back on things now, as I've a lot of other things on my mind. None of this is really clear in my head yet, anyway, so there's no point trying to go into it too much.

I had my last session with Mark yesterday, just a short one to wrap things up. I didn't want to make a scene so I put a positive face on things. Going has certainly helped me swing things round from the way I was heading for the last few years, but that's all it can do - just give you a nudge. The rest of the time I'm on my own and only have my own willpower to rely on, my own head to listen to, my own decisions to make. Going to see these people hasn't done much to make those decisions any easier, it's just put them at the front of my mind all the time rather than me shoving them to the back whenever convenient.

I'm seeing a counsellor now instead, for up to ten sessions. Depends how it goes, y'know. I don't really know at the moment why I'm doing it, as it just seemed a good idea months ago when they first suggested it to me. It takes that long to get an appointment. By now, I feel like I've already done some of the things that counselling would have helped me to do, so I don't really know why I'm going? It was a bit weird today seeing this middle-aged woman three feet away from me and asking me why I was there. I think that's a really bad way to begin. It just left me flummoxed for words and wondering where the hell to start. Surely the point of seeing someone like them is that you bury your real reasons behind everyday denial and confusion so to be asked outright what's wrong with you is like going to your GP and explaining that a weakness in your aorta has been aggravated by an infection you picked up on a recent holiday leading to your shallow breathing and increased blood pressure.

I'll give it a go anyway. I remember going into this right at the beginning being sceptical they'd be of any use to me, but they had a few useful things to say over the course of it. Maybe something will come of this too. I know I don't enjoy the way I relate to my dad much but what can be done about it now? He's the person he is, I was brought up the way I was, we're not close, so what? I think we both prefer it that way. It just means we don't involve each other in private parts of our lives unless drink is involved, but I've had enough of that now anyway so I've been stopping that too. I don't know how often I'll see the man really since the times just don't come up any more when we cross paths. It's a shame as I do like him but it's kinda like any relationship, you can't get by just based on being pissed. It's too hard to keep up and even when you try there's not much of substance there.

I don't know what I think about my mum. I've tried to get to know her better and we get on alright and all that, but I still wonder what other people are on about when they talk about their mums. To me she's just another person, I'm not dependent on her in any way and have never felt I have been. I don't really know any other way since that's the way it's always been so I don't feel like I'm "missing" anything by it. I've always had my sisters anyway. I like her a lot as a person, don't get me wrong.

I think what I would have talked to the counsellor about months ago, was how difficult I found it at the time to admit that I was struggling with drinking to my mum and dad. Like I said, I've always had a distance between myself and them so it wasn't something I ever felt like I needed to do. When it got bad at the end of last year though, it seemed admitting things to people was necessary and I eventually told them both. I told my mum, and she was okay about it, and we have the occasional word now and then about it. I told my dad, and it became a discussion about depression and suicide and so on. It's done now anyway, so that difficulty has passed, and I no longer really feel like I have any difficulties in my life other than keeping an eye on my drinking habits.

Sorry for that ramble - just trying to clear things up in my head.