Odds and Sods

I'll be honest with you, I've hit a rough patch!  It's been bubbling for a bit now, and it coincides with having now been nearly two weeks off the smokes (no surprise there).

I've been demonstrating alcoholic behaviour with chocolate!  Sounds innocuous, but in my noggin it's not.  The fierceness with which I crave more chocolate, once having eaten a bit, is frightening.  I go at it with total conviction, and know that, if it was there, I'd keep snaffling the stuff until I puked (brown sick - nice)! This is such a concern for me that I have now banned Cadbury's from the house!  Poor L & M will have to get their chocolate fix when I'm not around...

However, it's not just this.  My beloved Blues went and won the FA Cup on Saturday and, my oh my, could I have gone on one serious session!  That old desire to drink and drink and drink and drink came flooding into my brain.  Thankfully, I didn't; but it was there alright!  I've been warned that there will be hard & tough times (remember, life does have a tendency to throw shite our way from time-to-time) that will put me in danger of 'picking-up'.  What I didn't expect is that there'll be good times too that put me in just as much danger!  And City's win was one of them (granted, one big win every 35 years isn't too much to worry about!) - I wanted to seriously celebrate, and it took a fair-old bit of will to dispel such thoughts...

So, as a result, it's been a strange weekend (for example, I could've easily got in bed at about 7pm last night, just to get away from the unsettled and agitated feelings.  I didn't - I managed til 9pm instead!).

Blue 'Moon

I'm absolutely certain my Honeymoon Period of sobriety is well and truly over now!  This means I have to face the hard & cold fact that this will be a battle.  A daily struggle that will sometimes be okay, but will sometimes be tough too.  Even the gym was a chore today (the first time I have genuinely found it hard to get motivated for it in the morning).

It's the humdrum that concerns me. The daily grind of maintaining.  But, s'pose we all have to do that in our own way.  I also have to come to terms with the fact that I am odd, and I'll occasionally have to do odd things - e.g. like going to bed at a ridiculously early time, if that's what helps me to deal with things.   So that's me right now:  My name's Mr Partridge.  And I am odd...  (you say, "Hello, Mr Partridge!")

Hit the Sauce!

My sponsor tells me that, apparently, I have completed step 2 ("Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity") - and I had some homework as part of my doing this step.


I had to write a job ad for my Higher Power.  Essentially, I went with the approach that it's highly likely there will not always be mutual admiration and cooperation between me and such an entity - they'll be times when I don't want a bar of him (I've decided he may as well be male - but I'm not using the proper (pro)noun), and he'll have to persist and work through that!  In fact, you may as well have a butchers:

So, on to Step 3 ("Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.") - notice that famous proper (pro)noun; it get's everywhere (especially in the Big Buggering Book)!

Serenity, No?

This one is about commitment - the willingness to buy-in, jump-in with two feet, get in the middle of the lifeboat, etc.  and let Mr H.P. carry me along.  The idea is that this is, of course, to help stop drinking - but I'm told  it moves into one's life holistically!  Mmmmm - we shall see.


A lot of people I've spoke to in AA said they really got stuck on this Step - and, yet, one day, got bloody bored and fed-up of questioning and succumbed, threw in the towel.  Others, including devout atheists (try and reconcile that one!), had a 'Eureka' moment and understood it, got it finally and comprehended once-and-for-all!  Again, we shall see. 


My sponsor said that he was dreading this one, as he thought I'd plague him with bastards of questions.  And, yes, I want to do just that!  But, I reckon, right now, doing that may just be counter-productive.  It's Early Doors and I really have to keep it simple, and over-complication will close my noggin - I must stay open-minded and give things a try. Granted, sometimes I just can't help myself, and sometimes I say them aloud - but this smart-arse needs to realise he has a lot to learn!

God in the Machine!!!

I'm embracing the AA Programme more than I ever expected to.  But, as always, I try to over-analyse.

The thing that I'm particularly struggling with is Step 3, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."; and the implications of citing God in subsequent steps, eg. "4. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him."

The 'Big Book' talks quite explicitly about the Higher Power being God.  Now, I believe that there is a power driving me that I don't necessarily understand, but the literature is adamant that this is not manifested within me.  That I'm passive to some other external agent.  Why can't that power, that energy, regardless of whether it is tangible or not, be coming from inside me?  I don't consciously choose to beat my heart 75 times per minute, but something is making me do it.  Alright, granted that this analogy is a little bit obtuse, but I hope you get my point.  And, anyway, I want to take the credit for my turnaround!

I've been finding AA in the most strange places of late.  Taking into account what I've just been banging about, today's particular discovery is quite portentous.



Fawlty Ken

 Up early, as usual, I happened to have a little bout of the Squits (profuse apologies) - incidentally, I used to have them all the time when drinking; I just got used to 'em; these days it's quite unusual (ah, cue my hypochondria!).  I always have a 'bog-book' on hand for those more protracted visits, and my current one is The Bald Trilogy by Ken Campbell (all-round raconteur, philanthropist, Thespian - you'd know him if you'd seen him - crops up on telly, distinctively eccentric voice).  It's a trilogy of his one-man theatre shows that have no doubt made appearances in Edinburgh and the like.

Anyway, the passage (if you excuse the pun) I read made my brain go 'BING!'.  It is/was, as follows:

[bit of background: Ken is having a chin-wag with Hugh Hastings, an occasional acquaintance]
"Anyway, I was having a drink with Hugh in the pub one lunchtime and Hugh started talking about his acting career -
Well actually I hadn't known he'd got one -
A multi-talent: writing naval comedies, playing the piano... and now an acting career -
But this was the extraordinary thing: Hugh Hastings was only interested in playing Third Act Detective Inspectors in thrillers -
THIRD ACT DETECTIVE INSPECTORS!? -
they're the sort of part you get lumbered with, aren't they -
hardly, surely, a career goal? -
'Oh no no no!' -
Not according to Hugh -
'No!' he said. 'No' -
He said: 'The Third Act Detective Inspector is the nearest thing we have today to the fine old tradition of deus ex machina!' -
What's that!? -
Well, in order to understand deus ex machina you've got to go back in time -
Evidently the ancient Greeks, Sophocles and Co, if they'd've got their plots to such a pass that they couldn't logically resolve them -
it would be time then to call down the deus ex machina -
The deus being the god, and the machina this bunch of cogs and rope and wotnot -
And the god comes clanking down -
and with his deific powers he'd be able to put things in harmony again -
And Hugh said: 'Isn't that the same as your Third Act Detective Inspector? -
You've got two-and-a-half acts of human beings fucking up, and then Whoomph! -
The Inspector calls! -
And with his metropolitan magic he puts things back in order?
'No, no,' said Hugh, 'a Third Act Detective Inspector -
Man, it's a theophany. * -
With a Third Act Detective Inspector you can romp away with the thunder with the GLORY of any thriller -
if you know the secret' -
'Well,' I said, 'Here's another half, Hugh -
A secret? You mean there's a secret to playing Third Act Detective Inspectors?' -
'Mmm,' he said, 'oh yes -
first of all, you've got to learn the lines' -
And that was revolutionary talk in those days -
Learn the lines?
you always played a Third Act Detective Inspector with a notebook -
you'd got all your lines written in the notebook -
(poised as if to write answer - in fact reading line: -
'And where were you on the night of the fourteenth?') -
Hugh said, 'Don't even have a notebook -
And then,' he said (and this is the big one) -
'look for clues.' -
Wow -
'Where were you... (looking under hat) -
on the night of er... (finding sausage) -
the fourteenth?... (examining sausage with magnifying glass) -
Wow -

*Theophany: n., pl. -ies. A manifestation of a deity to a man in the form that, though visible, is not necessarily material. [Chambers Dictionary]"


Get a load of that!!!  A 'Theophany'!  Is an understanding of this exactly what I'm looking for?  Is that the intangible power?  Is deus ex machina what we invoke in AA?!!  And, as Hugh says, "if you know the secret": the Programme? and "...you've got to learn the lines": Steps, anyone?!!

Okay, I know, when you look for something hard enough, you can generally find it - all in the interpretation and all that.  But this is what I find without looking for it, completely unexpectedly: a dose of the old squeaky-bums in the smallest room in the house, and out pops (apart from the obvious) the very issue with AA which I've been a-ponderin'!  Now, what's all that about then?! Crackers...

Here Fear Here

A bit of an eye-opener happened yesterday.

I was feeling quite giddy and cocky (despite having the remains of a particularly virulent strain of man-flu - it's real, I tell thee!) but this riding-high feeling subsided a little by the afternoon; leaving me not-necessarily melancholy, but definitely under a bit of a cloud.

Well, I was in a bar (yeah, I know, watch that haircut!) and I happened to be getting a glass of wine for someone whilst I was at the bar.  The bottle was already open and probably hadn't been used for a bit; so the girl behind-the-bar poured a small drop into a glass, which she casually tasted to check it was all good.

Now, the things is, I was absolutely convinced she was gonna ask me to try it!  This filled me with a completely unexpected sense of total fear, if not abject terror!  It was a fleeting moment, passed in the blink-of-an-eye, but it hit me profoundly!  It was genuinely the very first time I have been actually fearful of alcohol (apart from in a couple of dreams) and it shocked me.

Since that moment, I've dwelled on it a little.  Can I safely and 100% be sure that I would've declined?  Even if I had, would I have been tempted, even just an iota?  It reminds me of the resulting feeling (don't know if you've had it) where I've been about to step out to cross the road, only just realising at the very last second that a car was speeding past.  What could have been?  What if I had stepped out?  Right at that moment?? I so very nearly did!  SPLAT!!!  I'm brown bread...

I suppose it's a good thing; maybe it shows that the notorious dreaded complacency hasn't turned my head?  That I can go in pubs, but must be vigilant.  I certainly won't be getting alcohol for anyone from now on - why put myself in potential harm's-way...


But, what I do know is that it bloody-well gave me a right kick in the swannickles, that's for sure!

Gnarly move!!!

My sponsor believes I have a very relaxed approach to recovery which he says he rarely witnesses in these, what are definitely, early days for me.  I've been warned of the potential spike of desire to 'pick up' again and, as I've mentioned before, complacency is my number one enemy after the Demon Drink.  But, according to my sponsoring namesake, the fact I understand that shows that I'm not complacent.

He also articulated that I have indeed "turned my life around 360°." And, yup, I suppose I have - it's funny to hear it said aloud.  There are so many things that are different for the better - to the extent that I actually feel lucky to be an alcoholic!

To say that is probably a bit twisted and facetious (and I never underestimate what my loved ones have had to put up with, for me to arrive at this point) but I would never have the life I have now without it.  I'd never be as motivated and contented, of that I am certain.  Work's a breeze; very little gets me really down (yeah, I have my low days, my troughs - but I know that's exactly what they are, they pass); I 'let things go' when I would otherwise hold resentments; and I've lost four stones!

I really am a changed man and, frankly, it's bloody ace!!!

The Dog Ate It!

I've been absent for some time - all simply down to actually being busy at work!  Things are good, nearly six months of sobriety under my belt now!  So what's new?  I have a sponsor!  So much for me not engaging with 'The Programme'!  It seems to have insidiously crept up on me (although 'insidious' is entirely the wrong word - to me, it sounds negative and underhand.  No, it's been more of a steady warm glow growing inside - how about that for cheesy???  But, who cares - that's exactly what it has been!).

Well, I meet my sponsor every two weeks, as well as at the Friday meeting (incidentally, he is the very person I've mentioned in these cyber-pages before - has the same name as me...) and he gives me homework.  Today's was a list of those times I have tried to give-up and how it made me feel.  Surprisingly, I got the wrong end of the stick and didn't write a list at all.  No, again the frustrated scribbler in me came up with some pretentious ramblings.  As it struck me as being a little like an instant post, here it is, unabridged (as it were):

"The first time I recall being aware of my growing dependency came after I’d moved back home the summer after my graduation.   Plenty of booze had soundtracked my time at University, but I think that my dependency on booze was masked by copious amounts of dope, speed, and LSD.

Having my drugs pipeline cut-off once I’d moved back home, drink was my number one pastime.  I remember one summer’s eve, I’d ‘decided’ not to get any drink in.  That was when I really noticed the anxiety and discomfort.  I managed to hold out for a few hours but, in the end, I was leaving the offie with 6 bottles of Newcastle Brown (my drink of choice at the time), the anxiety and discomfort having been swept away with that decision…

There would be countless times that this scene would be replayed, transposing the venue and choice of drink in a multitude of ways.

But, I continued drinking with my perceived lack of impunity – I hardly remember anytime in my twenties that I went back to any possible attempt at abstention. 

My daughter was born when I was 29, pre-empting a turning-30 crisis one year earlier.  It was from here that a number of attempts were made at stopping drinking; but they were always with the notion that it was merely a break – never contemplating the prospect of long-term abstention (seeing reports of celebrity alcoholics who had long-term sobriety and who had accepted that they just did not drink was completely bafflilng to me – the thought of not having the drink in my life was unfathomable!).

Of course, in the past couple of years, this has changed considerably.  My attempts at stopping drinking were paved with good-intentions.  Many a-time, I would decide ‘this Monday’ that I would not buy any cider, any wine.  Of course today was maybe a Wednesday or Thursday, and this would mean me loading-up until that Monday came along.  Sunday’s were spent finishing off the stock-pile, readying myself for tomorrow’s new resolve. 

Monday would invariably start well.  Pure, solid resolve.  Yet, by the time the journey home was underway, I would always have a million-and-one excuses as to why this Monday was not the right day.  I would inevitably succumb and the amount of times my wife would hear the infamous “I need to call at Tesco”, I (and she) lost count.  She would look disappointed, but in my eyes, she looked fiercely judgemental!  Even more excuse to definitely get the drink now!  It was this type of vindication that I would look for everytime I tried to stop.

Eventually, I ending up seeing an Alcohol counsellor.  This time, admitting I was a heavy drinker, and looking for that elusive control.  Three times I tried a process of steady detox (fully aware of the dangers of alcohol withdrawal – add this awareness to a history of ridiculous hypochondria (did I ever mention, I had rabies once?  Yes, I really did!!!) and, well, you can imagine my thought processes…) – cutting down by 5 units every two days. 

What I fail to mention about these three attempts, is I always knew there was a ‘get-out clause’ just around the corner: an imminent all-inclusive holiday (I could hardly waste all that money and not drink!); my father-in-law’s 60^th Birthday Party (it would be seriously rude for me not to partake in their generous largesse); an important Man City match (now you can’t have football without booze, can you?!).  So I probably managed a cumulative 3-4 weeks not drinking.

Those weeks were garbage!  I spent most of the time uttering a mantra of “Booze is nothing to miss!” without really believing it.  I would walk past bars and pubs and look longingly in at the montage of happy-go-lucky, joyously fun-loving images of the vibrant, exciting people inside and want to be one of ‘them’. 

In fact, there was one occasion where I did manage about 5 weeks of abstination.  But, again, I had a particular motivation: I was due a liver scan having suffered with what I convinced myself was IBS, but then clocked up liver function bloods that were six times higher than an accepted ‘dangerous’ level.  I had no choice, my hypochondriac brain was in overdrive – if it wasn’t just out-and-out cirrhosis, it would at least be HIV and my boozing had simply been a factor that had highlighted my impending demise. 

I seem to recall that those five weeks went quite fast – it's amazing how obsessing about death, and the ignominy of being the architect of my own end seemed to send time flying. 

Well, I had my liver-scan and lo-and-behold, not much to worry about.  Yeah, a bit of fatty deposits but nothing too startling and my liver enzymes had settled to a relatively ‘hazardous’ state.  Green light!  Back to the blissfully loving arms of the beautiful booze I leapt, and by God, she made me most welcome!

So giving up and how it made me feel?  Powerless, weak, and utterly at its mercy.  I was aware of these feelings, but only like a distant echo, or like a car-alarm way off in the distance so as not cause any immediate distraction.  Eventually, you just get used to it – as we know, like the frog who’s boiling his knackers off but just thinks things have got ‘a little bit warm’. 

I was that frog. I see that now."

Peace. Out.

   

Watch This Space!

Mmmm - I feel a post is a-brewing....

Nebulous???