…is a beneficial, if not essential, exercise, which frees the mind from the cataract of useless information and cacophony of conflicting ideas roaming unfettered inside a human brain.
Respite offers the opportunity to assemble things in an order which is easier to process for the individual and to make sense of the pile of notes strewn across the desk.
I’m not complaining. Far from it. Its the way I work which, in turn, works for me, and if that’s all I have to worry about on a Sunday, I’m in fortunate position. Almost 6 years ago it would have been an entirely different story, as I awoke each day from ethanol induced unconsciousness to begin another day in the pursuit of the magic potion which would appease the source of my pain.
Recovery from addiction is about finding what works for the individual. There are no tried and tested miracle cures unfortunately and it can take many years of misery inducing relapses to reach the stage where it feels that the right thing to be is sober.
This raised the question for me ” How many rock bottoms are there ?”
Because, just when I thought I had gone as low, physically and morally, as I could go, lo and behold, there were still more back streets available to explore. And on many occasions I did, without finding the the mythical, repugnant rock bottom which would be so alien to my inner self that it would propel me towards sobriety. My rock bottom, if such a thing exists, was the onset of a deeply felt hatred of myself.
I had no pressure to stop this time. My partner enjoys ( a crucial word ) a drink. The police and sheriff’s officers weren’t breathing down my neck for once. Life was probably as good as I had known it during the previous forty years but my main goal in life was still the procurement of alcohol from any given source. However, the situation where I bounced back from a particularly strenuous session after a few of what had caused me to feel ill in the first place, deserted me.
It’s substitute was something I hadn’t experienced with such intensity in all my years of addiction. A profound self loathing. 
Gone were the self justifying get out clauses. No longer could I seriously find a morsel of a reason to drink. And, believe me, I tried to, because I wasn’t used to feeling this way and it was disturbing to find that my panacea was no longer effective. So with some reluctance, I stopped, and as time went by I started to like myself and the way I was developing once more.
Have I made things difficult for myself by not using outside agencies like AA or the various counselling services ? That would be hypothesizing, and I won’t say that things have been easy, especially in the early days, but for 20 years my drinking was interjected with lengthy visits to rehab, psychiatric hospitals, AA meetings and counselling. A jail sentence did nothing to quell my alcoholic ambitions. However, I would never discourage anyone from availing themselves of those agencies, ( except jail ) because I believe that these experiences helped me to achieve my long term goal in many ways.
I wish I knew the combination or held the key to the safe where the secret of sobriety is stored because so many good people I have known haven’t made it to this stage and were never given the chance to properly experience a sober life. This stark reality fills me with deep sadness and lets me know just how lucky I am ( and luck played a major part ) to have been one of the survivors who found what works for them.
Please feel welcome to comment below.
more to come…
The milestone in this case being, that this is article #300 to be published on this website in the 15 months since it began.
Its not hard to guess which one prevailed, and the time span between each episode became shorter, until barely negligible, as time went by.
The time I have invested in where I am today is the best investment I’ve ever made. I’ll never be rich or have a well provided for lifestyle, but by allowing myself time to learn about myself, I’ll be able to make informed decisions about how my future is shaped.
However its an essential part of recovery for me and lets me know how I’m doing.
After 20 years of this, I began to lose hope of ever attaining a respectable period of sobriety and giving life a chance. Then it began to dawn on me that, although I learned a lot and met many interesting people in these places, I just never seemed to fit in. Although I tried, particularly in AA, something just didn’t feel right. I was too busy trying to find a role model and taking advice from others that I had totally forgotten about myself.
Patience and allowing myself time to recover have been invaluable tools. Time is a great healer and not to be rushed.
The difference is that its not ” my ” alcohol. I didn’t buy it for my or anyone else’s consumption. Its part of someone else’s plan for Christmas day but has no place in mine.
Sadly I never achieved that ambition and, instead, had to be satisfied with listening to the adventures of those returning. Chemicals have since replaced the hop as the preferred beer manufacturing ingredient, but if you are very lucky they can still be found in the brewing process of what are called ” craft beers “. Its another glaring example of how things which were universally available are now being profferred as luxury items.
I installed myself out of the way and watched as hundreds upon hundreds of human beings followed each other towards a destination unbeknown to me. I watched as a train arrived and disgorged the same hordes travelling in the opposite direction. I had no idea that trains could accommodate so many people and wondered why they would subject themselves to this kind of torture, day in, day out, year after year.
Its offered me the golden opportunity of looking back on my life and thinking, ” Well, you fucked that bit up good and proper….whats next ?”
I have a new weapon in my battle for recognition, if that’s what I desire. The bus pass.
Instead, use it to your advantage in applicable situations and you’ll find that you soon get your own way. Worth bearing in mind is that kids of today are apparently having the time of their lives and their heads are so far up their own arses that they don’t give a shit about anecdotes from our own upbringings, so they should be avoided at all costs. Anecdotes too.
It shouldn’t be any problem then, should it ? The difference this time is that I will be making the journey, completely free from alcohol and no artificial bravado installed.
I used to think that I had to do as I was told, because everyone knew better than me, because they hadn’t spent the best part of their lives in a stupor and being looked after by the state.
That alone makes things a bit easier because the problem has been identified.
I usually met such criticism with a riposte of “I’ll decide, thank you”, unless it was the landlord of the establishment who had had enough of my presence littering his peaceful bar room, and propelled me gently towards the exit door and the elements beyond. It wasn’t hard , in those days, to find another place where my custom would be welcomed and I could fade unnoticed into a corner with my drink and steadily fuel myself to the point of my own version of “enough”. If I was lucky, this meant falling asleep until closing time, but if I had made my way into the outside world, the potential for uncharacteristic adventures increased many fold and I came to in many strange places without knowing how I got there.
Some of us walk a tightrope each day, filled with tension, waiting for a chance to pounce on some unsuspecting victim. Others are more laid back and take a more pragmatic approach, needing a great amount of aggravation to finally snap.
The government has intentionally divided our societies, pitting faction against faction and individual against individual, so that we are too busy fighting our own local battles to notice what is happening on the grand scale. They use class, religion, sexuality, colour, race, sport and many other devices, in order that we will proudly own some sort of label which puts us at odds with others and doesn’t , in any way, fit with our identity as human beings first and foremost.
This usually means having a late dinner or staying up till the early morning hours until I find myself unable to absorb any more. Meanwhile , life still keeps revolving. A little bit of it revolves around me, then my life, in turn, revolves around another, and at times like this, international affairs pale into insignificance.
When it was installed in the space I had vacated for it, my first thought was that I didn’t qualify for such a desk. This was a grown up’s desk. And it had drawers. What on earth was I going to do with drawers ? At one stage in my life, I know, they would have been full of the remnants of another drunken episode, but now, I’ll have to organise my life into drawers.
An Ex Drunk's View From The Driving Seat 