How it was

Over the next few days I'm going to post some sobriety related posts ... you'll understand why on Friday if you stick with them.

How it was...

Awful! I drank and it was crap - simple. Well if it was that simple how come I drank for 25 years. That's a fair point. Because I'm an alcoholic that's why - it is that simple as well. :-)

I started drinking in my teens, so do many others but from the word go my relationship with alcohol wasn't right. I was always trying to get others to come for a beer with me, I was always "getting another in", throwing up in the car park or on the roadside etc. At 17 I remember going to the pub on a lunchtime during a school holiday on my own and thinking then "This isn't right you shouldn't drink on your own just for the sake of it".

Once at college and work I spied out those that liked to go to the pub and befriended them the main qualification for being a mate of mine was that you liked going for a drink. Soon though even that didn't work these buggers only wanted a pint or two and then go back to work or home to see their girlfriends etc. So soon I was working in London drinking most lunchtimes and evenings and increasingly on my own. I knew in my mid twenties that I drank too much, it caused rows at work with work mates, with my wife etc. But I couldn't stop. I'd stop once a year for a few weeks to show you all I didn't have a problem but I'd be counting the hours until I could drink again.

For many years it was this drink at lunchtime and on the way home every day - go to the football on a Saturday and have a few pints there as well.

I'd wake up most mornings hating myself, the world, the universe etc. I'd get out of bed, often soaked in sweat which I later discovered was my way of dealing with the alcohol, and start planing/scheming the days drinking, could I get out at lunchtime, when could I leave work how late could I get away with before coming home to sit in the chair asking the same questions over and over insisting I'd only had a couple whilst actually struggling to add up the real amount. Then I'd hit the bed saying to myself tomorrow will be different. It rarely was.

On very few days I'd make it home without having a drink. I'd want to run around telling everyone but of course to do that would expose the whole facade I was trying to keep up so I'd have to sit there quietly not letting on and by the end of the evening the one thing I knew for sure was that... I'd have to drink again tomorrow.