As I sit here a couple days before embarking on a challenge to improve my health and well being through diet and exercise, I can feel a nervous energy that takes me back. About 8 and a half years back, to be exact. Boy, time flies. I've decided to tell the tale in the hopes of clearing up people's misconceptions and boosting my confidence - my bottle, if you will - for the battle ahead.
It's January 15th 2007. My years and years of heavy and consistent drinking have caught up on me big time and I have decided it is time to clean up my act. I am terrified that I won't be able to but excited about the possibility that I will. I started drinking alcohol at age 15. I can tell you the date and everything. February 25th, 2000. The wedding of my aunt/second mom Ingrid to her husband Tom. I blame them. Kidding! I had a few vodka and orange juices that night and I was enthralled by the effect. Soon enough it become an each weekend tradition. The naivety and innocence of it is still so fresh in my mind that even now I can understand why I fell for it so hard, so fast. Nights listening to Champagne Supernova and other Oasis classics with Paul Dalton in my Mum's living room, literally lying on the ground and watching the room spin. It was fun. But I don't do moderation, I only do excess. With that in mind, inside a year I was already hearing from people close to me - my Mum, Paul - that my drinking was problematic. I was undeterred though. There's little more stubborn headed in this world than a 16 year old when you're trying to tell him not to do something.
June 29th 2001 my father took his last breath and passed into the next life. Truth be told it was a merciful end - his personality and his spirit left his body behind when he fell down that flight of stairs in 1998 - but I can't honestly tell you that it softened the blow. I was devastated. You know the feeling of sitting in the airport, at the gate, just twiddling your thumbs, waiting? That's kind of what those three years after Dessie's accident were like for me, in hindsight. I didn't want my Dad to die but he was gone once his head hit those marble steps and fractured his skull. I spent three years at the gate awaiting his funeral. Anyone who has lost someone after a long battle with ill health will speak of the trauma endured watching them suffer. I was left with almost no memories of my Dad before his accident, so powerful and traumatic were the images of who he became afterwards.
So while there was never a conscious decision to start drinking like a fish upon his passing, it seems very clear to me that the discomfort and pain the alcohol masked was about him. And once I start down a road, it's very difficult to stop me. From the day of his funeral until the day I stopped drinking in January 2007, there were less than 10 days that I did not get drunk. It's not a statement I put out to be dramatic, it just is the truth and I think more than anything else, that bare fact highlights why I felt the need to take the drastic action I did. To give you the full context, that is 10 days out of 2,025 where I wasn't drunk. So I was drunk about 2,015 days over that period. That's a lot of days.
When I stopped drinking, I did so with the help of the AA. I was on the way to the pub and I blew a tyre, and they insisted on towing me home rather than the pub, you see. Ok, not that AA. Alcoholics Anonymous was a wonderful thing for me. I will be forever grateful for the positivity, the support, the love and above all else the understanding I got there. Those first 6 months when I got sober and my head got clear are genuinely the six best months of my entire life before I met my wife. I grew up more in that time than probably a decade prior. I purchased my first home, moved up the ladder in work, got in good physical shape and started meeting women, something I'd forever struggled to do.
This is where the story gets complicated, and it's kind of why I decided to write this blog. I am nothing if not extroverted when it comes to expressing my personality. As such there was probably not a person I knew who didn't know I was an 'alcoholic'. The difficulty with that term and indeed the AA in general is that it allows your relationship with alcohol to define who you are. I found that after a certain period of time, living a life where my primary purpose was not to drink alcohol was almost as restrictive and problematic as living a life where my primary purpose was to drink alcohol.
In 2007 I had started seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist, a wonderful woman named Tina who to this day probably doesn't fully understand how much she helped me get to grips with my life during a very, very foggy period. My thinking was cluttered and muddied, the work we did cleared it all up. In 2009, she was the person who broached the topic that had run through my mind for about the prior 6 months. What if I'm not an alcoholic? What if there's no such thing? What if excessive use of alcohol is a symptom of my personality, and it can be controlled? What if I don't have to define myself by what I do or don't do with this here liquid? I will say that when she mentioned it, I think the possibility of my drinking again was a distant possibility as opposed to something she thought I may do in the short term. But I had to know. I had to know can I drink alcohol and take it or leave it like some people, or do I have to drink every day of the week, once it starts?
I put six kopparberg mixed fruit down my gullet on May 24th 2009, celebrating my 25th birthday. 855 days had passed since I had last consumed alcohol. And guess what? The world kept spinning and my life kept going. Nothing really changed. Truth be told, the summer of 2009 is a terrific memory for me. It is the one and only period in my life where I drank pretty much like anyone else. I would go out on the weekend, get pissed, act silly, wake up feeling like garbage, but just crack on with my life. It was, after all that analysing, fretting, worrying and debating, really that simple. Once I stopped telling myself I was an alcoholic I was able to regain power over booze. And I had a blast that summer. Although at age 25 I think I was still the old man in Tamango most weekends.
Which brings me to now. I very, very, very rarely drink. I had half a kopparberg last night with dinner on our last night away. That's, I think, the only drink I've had since Lanzarote last October. I can tell people in my life often wonder why that is. I can also tell there are those who fear that maybe there's something dark behind it, related to the problems I had when I was younger. I'm here to tell you nothing could be further from the truth. When I met MT everything changed. First of all, it coincided with my hangovers getting substantially worse. I don't know if the fact I had so long on the dry impacted it or it was simply the aging process, but my ability to function the day after drinking just about evaporated over that 12 month period. MT didn't, and doesn't, drink alcohol - she just never has. When you're living with and married to someone who doesn't drink alcohol, and your hangovers are absolutely obscene, your motivation to get drunk is very, very low. I genuinely will get a hangover off a drink and a half. Bear in mind my well documented health problems of the past few years as well. The reality is I am a 31 year old man and my entire world revolves around the two beautiful girls who I live with. When I have a couple drinks I am no use to them the next day. I hate that. Really, genuinely loathe it. I feel like I've wasted a day of my life and there's too. I spent enough years of my life hammered and hungover. It just doesn't appeal to me that much anymore. I've nothing against it and definitely no problem with anyone else who loves it. But it's just not something I have much of an appetite for anymore.
It's January 15th 2007. My years and years of heavy and consistent drinking have caught up on me big time and I have decided it is time to clean up my act. I am terrified that I won't be able to but excited about the possibility that I will. I started drinking alcohol at age 15. I can tell you the date and everything. February 25th, 2000. The wedding of my aunt/second mom Ingrid to her husband Tom. I blame them. Kidding! I had a few vodka and orange juices that night and I was enthralled by the effect. Soon enough it become an each weekend tradition. The naivety and innocence of it is still so fresh in my mind that even now I can understand why I fell for it so hard, so fast. Nights listening to Champagne Supernova and other Oasis classics with Paul Dalton in my Mum's living room, literally lying on the ground and watching the room spin. It was fun. But I don't do moderation, I only do excess. With that in mind, inside a year I was already hearing from people close to me - my Mum, Paul - that my drinking was problematic. I was undeterred though. There's little more stubborn headed in this world than a 16 year old when you're trying to tell him not to do something.
June 29th 2001 my father took his last breath and passed into the next life. Truth be told it was a merciful end - his personality and his spirit left his body behind when he fell down that flight of stairs in 1998 - but I can't honestly tell you that it softened the blow. I was devastated. You know the feeling of sitting in the airport, at the gate, just twiddling your thumbs, waiting? That's kind of what those three years after Dessie's accident were like for me, in hindsight. I didn't want my Dad to die but he was gone once his head hit those marble steps and fractured his skull. I spent three years at the gate awaiting his funeral. Anyone who has lost someone after a long battle with ill health will speak of the trauma endured watching them suffer. I was left with almost no memories of my Dad before his accident, so powerful and traumatic were the images of who he became afterwards.
So while there was never a conscious decision to start drinking like a fish upon his passing, it seems very clear to me that the discomfort and pain the alcohol masked was about him. And once I start down a road, it's very difficult to stop me. From the day of his funeral until the day I stopped drinking in January 2007, there were less than 10 days that I did not get drunk. It's not a statement I put out to be dramatic, it just is the truth and I think more than anything else, that bare fact highlights why I felt the need to take the drastic action I did. To give you the full context, that is 10 days out of 2,025 where I wasn't drunk. So I was drunk about 2,015 days over that period. That's a lot of days.
When I stopped drinking, I did so with the help of the AA. I was on the way to the pub and I blew a tyre, and they insisted on towing me home rather than the pub, you see. Ok, not that AA. Alcoholics Anonymous was a wonderful thing for me. I will be forever grateful for the positivity, the support, the love and above all else the understanding I got there. Those first 6 months when I got sober and my head got clear are genuinely the six best months of my entire life before I met my wife. I grew up more in that time than probably a decade prior. I purchased my first home, moved up the ladder in work, got in good physical shape and started meeting women, something I'd forever struggled to do.
This is where the story gets complicated, and it's kind of why I decided to write this blog. I am nothing if not extroverted when it comes to expressing my personality. As such there was probably not a person I knew who didn't know I was an 'alcoholic'. The difficulty with that term and indeed the AA in general is that it allows your relationship with alcohol to define who you are. I found that after a certain period of time, living a life where my primary purpose was not to drink alcohol was almost as restrictive and problematic as living a life where my primary purpose was to drink alcohol.
In 2007 I had started seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist, a wonderful woman named Tina who to this day probably doesn't fully understand how much she helped me get to grips with my life during a very, very foggy period. My thinking was cluttered and muddied, the work we did cleared it all up. In 2009, she was the person who broached the topic that had run through my mind for about the prior 6 months. What if I'm not an alcoholic? What if there's no such thing? What if excessive use of alcohol is a symptom of my personality, and it can be controlled? What if I don't have to define myself by what I do or don't do with this here liquid? I will say that when she mentioned it, I think the possibility of my drinking again was a distant possibility as opposed to something she thought I may do in the short term. But I had to know. I had to know can I drink alcohol and take it or leave it like some people, or do I have to drink every day of the week, once it starts?
I put six kopparberg mixed fruit down my gullet on May 24th 2009, celebrating my 25th birthday. 855 days had passed since I had last consumed alcohol. And guess what? The world kept spinning and my life kept going. Nothing really changed. Truth be told, the summer of 2009 is a terrific memory for me. It is the one and only period in my life where I drank pretty much like anyone else. I would go out on the weekend, get pissed, act silly, wake up feeling like garbage, but just crack on with my life. It was, after all that analysing, fretting, worrying and debating, really that simple. Once I stopped telling myself I was an alcoholic I was able to regain power over booze. And I had a blast that summer. Although at age 25 I think I was still the old man in Tamango most weekends.
Which brings me to now. I very, very, very rarely drink. I had half a kopparberg last night with dinner on our last night away. That's, I think, the only drink I've had since Lanzarote last October. I can tell people in my life often wonder why that is. I can also tell there are those who fear that maybe there's something dark behind it, related to the problems I had when I was younger. I'm here to tell you nothing could be further from the truth. When I met MT everything changed. First of all, it coincided with my hangovers getting substantially worse. I don't know if the fact I had so long on the dry impacted it or it was simply the aging process, but my ability to function the day after drinking just about evaporated over that 12 month period. MT didn't, and doesn't, drink alcohol - she just never has. When you're living with and married to someone who doesn't drink alcohol, and your hangovers are absolutely obscene, your motivation to get drunk is very, very low. I genuinely will get a hangover off a drink and a half. Bear in mind my well documented health problems of the past few years as well. The reality is I am a 31 year old man and my entire world revolves around the two beautiful girls who I live with. When I have a couple drinks I am no use to them the next day. I hate that. Really, genuinely loathe it. I feel like I've wasted a day of my life and there's too. I spent enough years of my life hammered and hungover. It just doesn't appeal to me that much anymore. I've nothing against it and definitely no problem with anyone else who loves it. But it's just not something I have much of an appetite for anymore.
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