Goodbye for now

This is a short post to say that I am going to stop posting but I will keep what is currently on my blog out there because I know a few people have found one or two of the posts helpful. I’m stopping for the simple reason that, for me, the blog has served its purpose. I don’t drink. Nearly two years and the blog and the blogging community played a massive part in helping me quit the booze. I can no longer summon up much enthusiasm for writing about something, sobriety, that now is just part and parcel of my life; and there’s nothing worse than maintaining something when your heart is no longer in it.

I feel a little guilty in that having gained from the support and comments of others I am now effectively not giving back but new people have come along and there’s plenty of inspiring people out there. I am keeping the blog open as I know from some emails that people have found some of the posts helpful and if anyone wants to get in touch I am happy for them to do that by email at jsimmonds@protonmail.com

I aim to start a new blog under my real name that will have a wider remit. What I shall do is make a commitment that if I did start drinking again I will come back and report that on this blog. So no more posts will signify that I’ve stayed off the booze or I’m dead, either way they’ll be no alcohol in my body.

So for now adieu. If you’re someone starting out on sobriety and have stumbled upon this blog, please read the many great blogs out there around quitting, and the ups and downs of making that decision. Deciding it’s time to quit means you know it’s something you have to do, but it’s tough especially in the early days but the bloggers out there show it’s not only possible to quit , but also that there are so many advantages and positives to quitting. So final words; start the adventure, quit, you’re not alone and you won’t regret it!

All the best

Jim X

I don’t want to go to the bloody pub!

Lockdown is winding down in the UK. Hurrah! I can play walking football from Monday, I can meet my sons outside. I can have friends over for a BBQ. But what am I regaled with on the telly night after night? Pubs! Wall to wall coverage of pubs; pictures and videos of pubs, shots of beer taps lining shiny bars, pub owners relishing opening their doors, interviews with people saying how they have booked tables at pubs for the next 3 months. The coverage gives the impression that all of us are just drooling over the prospect of going to the pub and downing pints- and if you’re not then you must be plain weird! Far less coverage has been given to the thousands who have developed alcohol problems over the course of the last year. That’s not such a nice image.Oh no skip that one, next ad for beer please.

So, I for one am not looking forward to pubs reopening. Good luck to those who are but sitting round for hours watching people get either bit merry/very merry/slightly pissed/pissed/trollied(London expression I believe) or completely wasted (except for nominated driver who has to pretend to enjoy this spectacle) is no longer my idea of a good time.

Since giving up I’ve realised I can talk absolute garbage, be silly, lark about all whilst being absolutely sober. I don’t need a drink to be bonkers and have a good time, amazing; and had I realised this years ago I could have saved myself a fortune. Still I hopefully have a few years of playful and childish behaviour ahead of me. Last week I met up with my two boys and their mother. We met in a park (pubs closed ) had a picnic and played catch/rounders/ frisbee/football/walked. No one drank as most of us were driving. Afterwards we all agreed it was a lovely day. Maybe because we hadn’t been able to meet up for months or maybe it was not drinking and doing something other than sitting around a pub table downing pints. Interesting, even my sons noticed that!

Just had another ping whilst writing this – pubs opening up tomorrow near me- arghh – it doesn’t stop. I know. I have the answer. Someone out there please give me a million pounds so I can open a pub called “The clear head” or “sober as a judge” and I’ll be a pub stocking all The AF drinks and mixers, delicious mocktails, incredible coffee, all sorts of teas and maybe one beer and bottle of spirits for the desperate ones who can’t face a day out without their fix. They’ll be games and music and activities. Now that’s a pub I would look forward to going to tomorrow.

Jolly sober Jim X

What Can I Say?

My last post was erroneously titled “Back Again.” That was 2 months ago and I wasn’t back again. I dropped by, wrote a few words and disappeared. Aware that I wasn’t really “back again” I felt that what I should do is face the fact that doing the blog didn’t have the same motivational pull it used to have. I started it to help me stay the course in what I thought was never going to work, namely giving up booze. But it did work- the writing things down, the comments, reading other blogs; all of that was a massive part of being able to give up and stay alcohol free.

But then , like so many other things, not drinking became normalised. No more Friday night anxiety crisis, no internal wrestling. I gave up and life carried on. Other than the odd time when I’d remember my drinking days and yearn to join in, not drinking became what I did, a part of who I now was. I no longer wanted to drink. I preferred not drinking. So doing the blog began to lack a purpose. I know others have found it useful and that makes me feel a little bit guilty. Suppose others read my blog, think, “yes, if he can do it so can I” and then suddenly the posts stop, some might assume I’d cracked and gone back on the juice. Added to that is maybe a feeling that having been supported by sober bloggers meant that now is the time that I should do the same for others maybe starting out. But it that just didn’t work for me.

So a few days ago I resolved to do a final post saying I’m still here and happily alcohol free and that I would post something if that ever changed. I also was going to say I’d be happy to communicate directly with anyone if they wanted my support. That was the intention. The final post.

Then a couple of days ago I was chatting to my Spanish friend who told me she had been reading my blog, had no intention of giving up alcohol but just enjoyed the posts. That was unexpected and intriguing. I guess it was also helping her with her English and if she reads this I fully expect a comment written in both English and Spanish! I told her of my plan to wind up the blog but with that incredible insight that women seem to have so much more of than us chaps, she said, “if you don’t want to write about alcohol all the time write about different things.” Pretty obvious really.

So then I said, “So what should I write about?”

She said, “Ask people who read your blog (which is now probably just one or two) what they would like you to write about. That might be a good start.”

So I’m going to give that a go as a way of getting back into my blog. I’m reaching out to Blogland- If anyone wants to, then please fire some questions at me, name some topics that might be interesting for me to reflect on and write about, crank up my rusty blogging engine to get me going. Alternatively just ignore me and I’ll go sulk in the corner with my fragile ego. It’s down to anyone foolish enough to be reading this – give me questions or inspiration. Let’s see where “BLOG PHASE 2 – Post Alcohol Musings” takes me.

Oh and a final alcohol free related point. Gordons 0% “spirit” is very nice!

I’m ready and waiting!

Jim X

Back Again

Well, here we are again. Back in blogland. I have been very remiss. Not reading, commenting or writing on WordPress but staying pretty chilled all the same. I think I’ve been hibernating like a little hedgehog, curled up in a tight ball waiting for the vaccine spring to wake me from my slumber. Staying in my nest thinking it’s not worth getting savaged by the Covid fox just weeks before putting on my astrazeneca suit of armour. To be honest it’s been quite pleasant; daily walks, food deliveries, bit of online work, lots of reading and the luxury of not really having to do much at all. I was expecting to stay like that until about March but then just a couple of days ago I got the message to book my vaccination. That was a surprise and so I went today and had it. Brilliant. I have to say, the vaccine rollout is one thing this government has got right and that’s probably because it’s been organised by the wonderful NHS rather than outsourced to some incompetent private company run by the husband/wife/brother/sister/friend of a sitting conservative MP. Enough of the politics, it’s great that so many people here are now getting the vaccine and with that the prospect of “not quite normal” ” normality” returning fairly soon.

Maybe that’s what’s prompted me to write. I’ve had the vaccine and that marks my own wake up call to start doing some of the things that I have put on hold. My first step was rereading my last post and boy what a miserable read that was. I wonder if anyone else has had that sensation of reading a previous post and thinking, “What was going on there?” I was in full feeling a bit sorry for myself mode and painted a slightly skewed picture of what was going on for me at the time. Oh well, that was then and this is now. Maybe the growing distance between me and my drinking days is gradually giving me a much clearer idea of the how’s and why’s of my drinking and allowing me to find new ways of being and feeling in situations that previously were always marked by a desire to drink. With that distance comes a realisation that I didn’t need drink as much as I thought I did. That in turn means I can look forward to a booze free life from here on in without the trepidation I had when I first embarked on sobriety.

Do I still miss drinking? Very occasionally, but it really doesn’t feel such a big deal and all I have to do is remind myself that I was rubbish at moderation, remember the hangovers and the central place booze had occupied in my life and all I feel is self gratitude for making and sticking to that decision to give up.

That will do for today. I have more I’d like to write about but if I keep that in store maybe that will prompt me to do another post within the next few days and not leave such a big gap as has happened this time. I have no doubt that writing this blog helped me make the massive beneficial change of giving up booze and I am curious to find out if it will help in one or two other areas. Let’s see. I know I’m not the only one to have let things slide but I’m looking forward to doing a bit of catch up with the other blogs of old friends.

Jim X

Ramblin’ Man

Happy New Year to anyone reading this. Before I start this incoherent ramble a message to any new readers who are trying Dry January. For whatever reason you have decided to give up alcohol for one month. Stick with it. At the very least it will give your liver a well earned rest but it could well be the start of a fascinating, sometimes uncomfortable period of introspection and change. Nothing to lose and lots potentially to gain.

OK down to business. This is a tough post because I haven’t posted for a while and I’m not sure what I want to say. Having said that I have felt a strong urge to post and yet have been putting it off. So this is a more than usually self indulgent post, a shambolic attempt to figure out what if anything I have to say and where if anywhere this blog is going to go. If that all sounds like an existential crisis, it’s probably because it is one. I’ll just dive in.

The “not drinking “is going well. I’m still not drinking but not drinking, the original rationale behind this blog, is beginning to feel like an irrelevance. I don’t mean that giving up booze wasn’t a big deal and important. It was and it is, it’s just that now that being sober has become a set part of my life, I can see that drink was just a manifestation of deeper issues. I focused on alcohol because it was an issue in my life but its absence has starkly highlighted other issues in my life. As alcohol has moved into the background, other things have moved into the foreground. Alcohol kept some things in their place but like some semi permeable membrane it let other things through.

I’m grateful to myself that I stopped drinking but the landscape that has been revealed by its absence is not always comfortable. One example; feelings and emotions. With alcohol I could dampen down those unconscious emotions and conscious feelings. One example from my youth. Crippled by anxiety, I wanted to simultaneously approach girls and run away from them. A few drinks and those emotions and feelings subsided. I no longer feared rejection, I stopped worrying what people would think of me, I stopped comparing myself to other guys. It was liberating and I could join in. I felt normal. An illusion maybe but I had experiences I may never have had. Of course if I could go back to my younger self I would help me to understand why I had such shockingly poor self esteem at that point in my life. I see that now but at the time I just felt defective and alcohol made it seem OK for a while. And so it goes on and builds up. That’s why, with the perspective of not having drunk for 16 months, I can see that my dependence on alcohol was not about the alcohol per se, it was what the alcohol was helping, and later,not helping me deal with.

So having given up, I can see why I was attracted to alcohol and why bad habits developed but recently I have had something else to contend with. Alcohol helped suppress some difficult emotions but it also let others through particularly as I became older. Through necessity and application I managed over the years to control my feelings. I learned to shut down, to blank off difficult stuff. I became good at that. People dying, yeh let’s deal with that, divorce; let’s not let that get you down. I started to take a perverse pride in how I was able to deal with stuff that others couldn’t understand were not breaking me. But these things always come with a cost and that cost for me was a neutral emptiness or maybe better described as a gnawing, nagging emptiness, a void where I knew there should be something. Then I’d drink and the dam would break. tears would flow and I’d allow myself the misery and sometimes ecstacy of feeling. Of course with alcohol it’s impossible to regulate where things would go. Sometimes I would wallow in regret and anger, at other times remember wonderful times where there was a promise of a fantastic future. But the alcohol has stopped. The membrane now holds up and very little gets through. That, I’m realising is not good. I feel sometimes like the physical lock down we have all had to experience for me has been accompanied by an emotional lock down. Safe, sanitised but not how life should be. And where alcohol would, in the past, help me deal counter productively and self destructively with some of this “stuff”, other coping strategies have now tried to take the place of drink. The “stuff” is still there and needs dealing with. That’s why I say the alcohol feels irrelevant. It’s not a part of my life and I’m tremendously happy about that, but it was only a symptom, a reaction to other things, and unless I deal with those other things, alcohol and similar coping strategies will always be pulling at me trying to lure me into a false sense that all is OK.

Not sure that I have expressed what’s really going on but still trying to get a sense of it all. Maybe with it being a New Year I might let my blog go in a different direction. Like may others, food has taken up some of the slack left by booze. If booze was never really the problem but became the problem, perhaps the same applies to food. If that is indeed the case I need to deal that and unpick what the food is really feeding. What is the real hunger? Let’s see where that goes.

Happy New Year. Jim X

Small Reminder to Self about Why I Don’t Drink Anymore

First off, what’s happened to my good intentions? I was going to blog more regularly, really I was. I was intending to read other blogs, make comments and generally be a more responsible, committed blogger. Sounds very much like my approach to giving up drinking; a good idea that just took me a bit of time to get round to. At least with blogging it’s only been just over two weeks. My decision to finally give up alcohol took slightly longer; maybe 30 years give or take.

The reason it took me so long to finally quit booze was down to one main reason, DENIAL. Good old denial, it keeps us following the same tired old path regardless of the evidence in front of us. Denial is sneaky though. It concedes a tiny little bit. In my case I knew that drinking excessively was bad for me, I knew I didn’t want hangovers that lasted two days and the wasted days that entailed. I knew that dependency creeps up on you. Despite that , denial is a strong adversary to our good intentions. Here are some of my favourite denial soundbites; a top ten” Jim’s favourite denial tracks” if you like:

• You’re doing a demanding day time job- you can’t be too dependent
• Jim, it’s OK you don’t drink in the mornings
• You only lost your licence once and that was 30 years ago
• Your liver function test was fine, you’re fine!
• That homeless guy clutching his cheap cider- now that’s a guy with a drink problem
• You’re overthinking it, just enjoy life
• If your’e worried just moderate a bit
• Everybody has one too many occasionally
• You deserve a treat
• Churchill drank far more than you Jim and he won a war and was a national hero

You get the picture. I could add another twenty justifications for my drinking and one of the “sobering” aspects of being sober is the stark realisation of how much denial there was in my relation to booze. Had someone confronted me at the time however Mr Denial and Ms Protect would have emerged to defend my drinking at any costs.

I was thinking about this in relation to a little trip I have planned. Next weekend I’m off to see my son and his girlfriend for an outdoor meal at a pub near where they live. I’m not seeing them at Christmas as I am not keen on catching Coronavirus by sitting for hours in a heated enclosed room with several people in close proximity to me. So outdoor pre Christmas meet ups is my preferred option. No problem… except, in my drinking days this would have put me in a highly agitated state. Driving somewhere like a pub and not being able to drink alcohol was my personal nightmare. I hated it. I couldn’t envisage sitting down, seeing drink all around me and not having a drink. Here’s another list. Jim’s “What I used to do when invited for a meal/pub/party/ far away”

• Work out cost in terms of time and money of trains and taxis (not always feasible or desirable)
• Find some way of manipulating someone else to give me a lift
• Find some way of manipulating other parties to come nearer to where I live
• Work out how many units I could drink and still legally drive and how much time that would necessitate me being at the venue
• Arrange to drive, get a lift back and get someone else to drive me to venue to pick up car next day
• Consider the horror of going and not drinking alcohol at all (very rare)
• Decline the invitation rather than the hassle and torture of any the above

The scary thing is I was thinking this last week that the last option of declining invitations rather than not being able to drink was quite a common one. Just consider that in all its sad truth- I actually occasionally used to make decisions not to see family or friends if it meant I couldn’t drink. Drink before relationships. There it is in black and white. No denying that one and I may well have done that this weekend. I know I would have probably not gone, or tried to get them to meet me somewhere else or have driven and not drank but spent most of the time thinking about the fact that I couldn’t have a drink rather than enjoying their company.

Reading that back it’s horrendous the grip that alcohol had over me, preferring it at times over spending time with family. Wow. Next time I feel tempted to drink, this will be one of the scenarios I will remind myself of. To be free of that power and grip that alcohol had over me, that I often denied to myself, is the gift I gave to myself 15 months ago and it keeps giving. People mean more than drink. Obvious really when the fog of denial has lifted. I just need to remind myself of it now and then. Sober batteries fully recharged!

Jim X

I’ve Given up Sex!

Ok that title was a cheap, cheap stunt to grab your attention. This isn’t really a post about sex, well only as a metaphorical allusion, but before you trudge off with a grumpy face having missed out on a bit of voyeuristic titillation stay with me a while and let me explain.

I was looking for an analogy to giving up the booze and surprise surprise- sex appeared. Those of a nervous disposition should turn away now.

Let’s begin by forgetting booze for a moment. Let’s suppose I’d become addicted to sex.

For a short, disturbed while imagine Jim as this over sexed, dog like human, always on the look out for his next sexual encounter,(Suffice it to say we are in the realms of both metaphor and fantasy here). Poor sex addicted Jim, sniffing the air for pheromones, flirting shamelessly, looking at his Tindr app every few minutes. Poor man; one shag a month used to satisfy him then it turned into needing sex once a week and soon his sexual hunger got out of control. Soon he found himself needing some form of sexual activity every day. And Jim tried them all; you name it he’d tried it. Friends noticed his haunted expression, his lack of interest in anything unconnected to sex. Things were getting desperate. His sexual addiction was affecting work, family, even his grocery shopping, where one day he found himself after a grocery shop with no basic provisions but several salamis, kilos of plums and the store’s supply of figs. Things were indeed getting out of control. Women would challenge him, “Why are you talking to my breasts Jim!?” His self esteem lay in tatters. Sad, pathetic old Jim was losing the little respect he had left. Guilt and shame followed him round like the shackles on a convict. He had reached the bottom (stop it!)

Are there really men who do this? (Answers on a postcard please)

So Jim started a blog “standing tall- reclaiming my pride” but clearly was still being affected by sexual connotations. He went cold turkey, he knew he couldn’t moderate, he would have to give up the thing that for so long had given him such pleasure, he was going to have to give up sex!

At first it was easy, he found other like minded sex dependent people through his blog and shared their stories of how they were coping with a life without sex. Yoga was very popular but all that tight fitting lycra and body posturing just acted like triggers for poor old Jim. Then Jim was told about cross stitch and knitting. It was heaven. Jim would spend hours doing cross stitch and sex became the last thing on his mind. For months Jim stuck to his goal- no sex, no pursuit of sex. He thought he had cracked it.

And yet… As time wore on, Jim was surrounded by images and references to the thing he had given up. Everyone seemed to be having sex and enjoying it. Some appeared to be happy to have sex just now and Jim realised he could never be that way. Then Jim began to think fondly of his early adventures with sex, those innocent days of clumsy fondlings with Susan from the convent school when he was 17 but deep down Jim knew there was no going back.

Has anyone else written a post which they wish they hadn’t? This is mine I guess but I’m sure there’s a message in her somewhere and at least the psychoanalysts out there can have some fun dissecting this. Suffice it to say giving up something you enjoy is hard- but when it does you harm (hopefully unlike sex) it really is so much easier to say goodbye to it.

Jim X

Happy on my Birthday

If i’d had the type of birthday I had this weekend even ten years ago I would be feeling miserable, unloved and hard done by right now. For my birthday I went for a walk in the countryside with my partner, I read the paper with football on in the background, had an afternoon nap, received and sent messages, had a takeaway curry, watched some telly and went to bed. No meal out (still a possibility here until lockdown this coming Thursday), no alcohol, no meeting up with friends, no special outing and it probably would have been like this even without the pandemic.

Ten years ago I would have been thinking why was my life so dull, devoid of event, empty. I certainly would have consoled myself with drink; oh yes indeed. I would have used the excuse of my birthday to drink copiously until I felt even worse than I did, fell asleep and lost the next day to a hangover.

Happy birthday to anyone with a birthday in the next 365 days!

So this weekend I had what I would have previously labelled a shit birthday. The strange thing is it wasn’t a shit birthday. It wasn’t great but I had a good day; relaxed, couple of nice presents. It was Ok. I didn’t feel aggrieved or that I was missing out on anything. I was quietly content. I was intrigued- why was I content with a situation that previously would have made me miserable?

One possibility is that I have learned to expect less. Maybe life has become uniformly flat and and my suffering was bourne out of a desire to see life delivering more than it ever could. Expect less, suffer less. In one of my favourite plays, Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge,the lawyer Alfieri tries to understand the tragedy of Eddie’s overpowering passions. He concludes,”Most of the time we settle for half and I like it better.” The message for me? Rein in those passions and desires. You may lose something in the process but you’ll survive. I’m not sure that’s the whole story.

The other possibility which I think applies more is that the things that I felt were important previously simply are not anymore. Was I really having fun down the pub, drinking pints, seeing unpredictable situations emerge, hoping deep down inside for some flirtatious encounter? Enveloping myself in the illusory cloak of being alive . Looking back it all seems like desperate attempts at finding validation, connection, excitement and to deny the existential truth of our mortality. Sorry if that sounds heavy and morbid, it actually is the opposite. If those earlier attempts to find joy, meaning, escape all fell flat what else was there?

I suppose it’s the feeling I have now that one doesn’t have to look so much out as in. If I can look at myself, be by myself and find that Ok, I don’t need to find external elements to give me a sense of contentment. I can then focus on what is around me already. It’s about accepting that we are here for a brief time and that that window of consciousness that we have is incredible and to be cherished not lamented before it’s time is up. It’s the old cliche of being able to be in the here and now, appreciate the people we have in our lives, love others and accept their love and extend our own resources to help others. Doing the small stuff is what often gives me pleasure, so on balance, my birthday was not a washout, it was a day where I could enjoy and appreciate being alive. Maybe I’m just getting old, but here’s the odd thing. I wish in a way I would have been able to look at life a little more this way when I was younger. Chasing illusions, desperate for some peace and some answers. That sounds like regret but it’s not really as you can’t get to your final destination without passing through some dodgy stations. It’s another day today, let’s see what that brings, see what tiny but important impact I can make. Right now it’s time for tea and toast- magic!

Out of Isolation

Having seen some old friends return on here over the last few days I decided I have three ways of treating this blog:

1 Carry on as I have done these last few months- dipping in and out – making the occasional comment and infrequent post

2 Ending the blog on the basis that I have nothing more of real value to say

3 Reengaging with the blog in a new way; with a commitment to reading, commenting and posting on a more regular basis

Option 1 doesn’t really work for me . As in my drinking days I’m an all or nothing type of guy so this option doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it reminds me of previous relationships; one foot in, one foot out.

Option 2 would work in the short term but would feel like abandoning something that has helped me enormously and maybe even helped others in small ways. That’s it then, it has to be Option 3; coming out of blog isolation. I need a proper reengagement; not the manic engagement of my first few months on here but regular posting and reading. Sometimes it takes something simple like someone saying they like reading one’s posts to realise that we do this fundamentally in order to connect. Sure I like to entertain sometimes in my posts, maybe (that means definitely) I also like the feeling of my fragile ego bathed in the warm glow of feedback sometimes. More recently I had to experience a negative response not just to my posts but to me as a person. I think that unnerved me more than I realised . In Transactional Analysis talk it took me back to my Child ego state; once again reexperiencing the criticism of father and brother, believing that maybe I was a fake, that I was a crap person and wanting to lash out like a child. It was a good reminder to self about how fragile we can be despite the insights we gain and how important it is to respond as Adult. It proved to be a valuable lesson. That’s the thing with connection we can’t control how it’s going to go and how it may affect us but it’s better to take that risk than stay isolated.

Well that’s the navel gazing out the way. Isolation in my title also refers to the past couple of weeks where I self isolated following finding out that the friend I spent 6 hours with working in my garden tested positive for coronavirus. We broke concrete, moved pots, spoke a starnge mix of Spanish and English and I was convinced that when he told me two days later that he tested positive that I would soon succumb. That in itself was a strange prospect. Sitting at home waiting for Covid to strike not knowing (I’m in my 60’s) whether you are going to have a few days of feeling a bit rough or being hospitalised and dying or any number of in between states. So there was a certain amount of anxiety. Of course you start scanning your body and “finding” symptoms. I took the tests and bizarrely it came back negative. I could do a whole post about how the track and trace system didn’t bother to contact me despite my friend telling them of our contact, of his boss pressurising him not to say he caught it off other workers, how those other workers continued to go to work despite symptoms because they were on zero hours contracts and couldn’t afford the loss of pay but I won’t. I think most of us know many of the systems in place are not up to the task in hand and that there is a high level of non compliance and restriction fatigue.

I will try and do my bit; I’ve alerted someone to the factory in question , I am joining an NHS panel trying to improve track and trace and I follow the guidelines logical or not.

So a good week overall. I’m alive and Covid free. Work is going well, I’m out of isolation and looking forward to nurturing my slightly neglected blog once again. Oh and I’m still not drinking.

Stay safe all. X

The Urge to Drink – The Urge to Avoid

I had a very interesting experience a few weeks ago that gave me a real, if somewhat unsettling, insight into my own dependency on alcohol.

When I first stopped drinking just over a year ago I found social events like meals extremely challenging. The urge to drink if I sat down for a meal with others was almost overwhelming. Restaurants were things to be avoided. I had tried going to one a few weeks after stopping and far from enjoying a nice meal with friends all I could focus on was their drinks, my misery and a sense of grievance as to why was I having to miss out.

Having friends or family round for meals was also a major abstinence battleground and again my strategy was mainly withdrawal rather than engaging in the fight. The problem there was that if I avoided things I liked, abstinence was going to be pointless. So I tackled the meals out and the meals in. Gradually as I successfully navigated a few meals I could feel the urge to drink lessen. The urge was still there though and I knew that this had to be less about a physical addiction to drink and more an association. Or was it? My urges took on a pattern which I am sure is familiar to other drinkers; meals with friends and family, social events, weekends; all triggering waves of anxiety.

After the first few months I could go days without wanting a drink at all, zero desire and then a trigger event and my cravings would start. The strange thing was that the cravings would ease rather than grow as the particular situation evolved. I knew these cravings were based around anxiety, the need to blot it out, but I mistook the nature of this anxiety. I thought my anxiety was based on my inability to enjoy myself without a drink; could I still have fun, be convivial without the aid of a few glasses of booze inside me? The answer was yes I could and as the months passed so gradually did some of this anxiety dissipate.

Back to a few weeks ago. I was hosting a meal for for four people. I was cooking and I knew that none of the people were big drinkers. As I prepared the food, I could feel the urge to drink creeping up on me. What! Still? I thought to myself. I rode the anxiety, we had the meal and my feelings settled down. Then last week we had four people round including my son and his girfriend. We all knew more coronavirus restrictions were on the way so this was likely to be the last such meal at home for some time. The urge to drink kicked in as I was preparing the food. Two meals on consecutive weekends and two lots of urges to drink. I was really disappointed. I thought I had beaten this thing. I enjoyed being sober and not having to plan my life around the next drink. I was annoyed that I was still experiencing times when I felt I really wanted a drink. That’s when I stopped and really looked at what was really happening. Up to then I’d assumed my anxiety was triggered by wanting a drink because it was a social occasion but this was something more. I have had a year of many social situations where there was a zero urge to drink. I knew I was anxious and that a drink would soften and kill off that anxiety but what was the real cause of it?

Anxiety is often explained as fear without a home but I needed to identify that fear. But not at that moment. Guests were arriving, food had to be prepared, table laid, drinks chilled. Both meals went well and I enjoyed both evenings. I knew I had to revisit what was going on and as I replayed the evenings and my feelings the location of the anxiety I felt started to reveal itself. It was located deep within me, and I think it was a fear of failure , of not being able to produce good food, a good evening for my guests. Would they like the food, would they approve or would the whole evening end up as crashing failure with my being revealed as the flawed individual that I am.

Wow, I was a bit shocked, was this what it’s always been about, drinking to avoid feelings of failure of being something less than others? I knew that tendency had been with me for a long time but felt that I’d successfully overcome it. The reality was that I had probably used alcohol just to mask it and give me a false sense of confidence in some specific situations. My urge to drink was really an urge to avoid that confrontation with the hurt and shame buried deep within me, to mask it. For me giving up the drink has allowed many things to surface and this particular “thing” seems the most significant. Had I not stopped drinking I would have carried on just drinking “to take the edge off” and that worked for me in a way. It blotted out a sense of failure, of not being good enough but it came at a cost. Part of that cost was that my drinking, in itself, became a cause of shame and yet another failure. A failure to control the very thing that was supposed to help. Better have another drink then, and so it continued.

When the current lockdown ends and I can enjoy a meal with others, I shall try and cook that meal reminding myself that my meals are OK, that I have put on good evenings for others in the past, that I’m alright as I am without the need to top myself up with booze. In fact what having meals like that has shown me is that the anxiety decreases as the evidence shows me that I wasn’t a failure. The food was OK, everyone had a good time and I have been able to enjoy that occasion sober. That takes time to sink in. The next time I prepare a meal the same feelings are likely to reemerge and I need to finally confront those uncomfortable feelings, look them in the eye and comfort the young Jim that grew up believing he wasn’t good enough.

Maybe it’s things like these that constitute the real challenges of giving up the booze and I’d be interested to know if others have had similar insights into their own patterns of drinking.

Jim X