Day 41

I just wanted to escape. To have fun. Fun of the old kind. Messy, fuck-it fun.

Yesterday was tough. I wrote “I just want to get wankered” in my journal.

My brain is too full. Full of too many emotions. Full of a punishing workload. Full of the impact of living with near constant pain. Full of the complexity of the decisions I need to make.

I just wanted to escape. To have fun. Fun of the old kind. Messy, fuck-it fun. I felt like I was standing in front of a mirror in which I could see different responses to this situation playing out. I could see the ‘fuck-it’ version - calling friends, heading to the pub and escaping into an afternoon of booze, fun and laughter – momentarily relieved of the burdens of duty, pain and anxiety. I could also see the no-drinking version, and it felt drab, colourless, depressing and dutiful. The pull of my old life was strong. Very strong.

So I wrote it all down - IN BIG LETTERS that matched my BIG EMOTIONS.

That evening, I went to a Tori Amos gig. I nearly didn’t go, fearing it would be too strong a trigger in my current state. But the tickets were a gift, and it felt wrong not to use them. And my booze hound was probably seeing this as an opportunity to press the ‘fuck it’ button. I was close, especially being surrounded by people with their bottled lagers, and tumblers of gin and tonic, which looked so good. But a sense of accountability to my group prevailed, and one bottle of AF beer was enough to silence the calling of the Booze Bitch.

I’m glad I didn’t cave, because I had an amazing time. I love Tori Amos’s music because it is fearless, unashamedly emotional, complex and challenging. I was able to escape into the moment and become absorbed completely by the music. She played songs from her new album, plus songs I knew well, but with new arrangements. I usually feel annoyed at new versions, craving familiarity over novelty. But yesterday I noticed I could appreciate the new arrangements without hankering for previous versions.

I feel relinquishing alcohol is like learning to embrace new versions of old songs. You can hanker after the past, or you can choose to embrace the new. You must use the lines and refrains from your drinking life and weave them into a new and rewarding soundscape. This takes effort and will not happen by chance. Until you do this, your alcohol-free soundtrack will remain a disconnected mess of musical phrases snatched from sobriety memes and abandoned quit lit. It will feel off key and discordant, leaving you vulnerable to reaching for the old familiar song, however damaging or boring that song may now be.

So, this morning I got up early, loaded up the coffee pot and wrote without censorship, letting the words fall out of me and allowing them to arrange themselves on the page. Writing my song.

I felt on fire. Liberated. Free. The mirror image from yesterday was reversed.

This booze free life is the ‘fuck-it’ life. This crazy, nuanced, complex, emotional and unmedicated life is what being wankered is all about. You don’t need drink to get wankered, just a willingness to meet life as it is, not how you wish it to be. It’s drinking that leads to a colourless, washed-out reflection of a half-lived life.

My brain is still too full. I will make plans to make it less so. But they won’t involve drinking.