Day One

Are things that bad that I need to go to AA...?

One morning in February I woke up broken.

The previous night I had, yet again, drank far too much.

I spent the morning alternating between dry heaving over the toilet and lying in bed, desperately wanting the pain, nausea and panic to pass. It was not a workday. I had drank because I knew I could get away with it – no one would be affected by the drinking and so no one would question whether it was okay to drink over a weeks’ worth of booze in just one night. It was symptomatic of the dishonesty that characterised my relationship to alcohol. I wasn’t drinking in secret, storing bottles in the toilet cistern, but I was hiding how out of control my drinking had become. To others, but mainly myself.

Later that day I sat on a park bench overlooking the city and told myself I had reached the famous ‘rock bottom’. In some ways I was thankful and relieved. It felt like I had finally arrived at a destination I had been travelling towards for many years. Rock Bottom didn’t look like I anticipated. I wasn’t in a hospital bed, or a police cell. No-one had been hurt or was threatening to leave me, and there was no group of concerned friends and family waiting to deliver the big intervention. Depressingly, Rock Bottom looked exactly like every other day I had sat on this bench regretting my actions. From the outside there was no indication I had arrived at this final destination. I looked like any other unremarkable middle-aged man nursing a black coffee on a wet bench, staring into the middle distance. Nobody knew I was nursing a hangover so severe it was bordering on a cerebral haemorrhage, or that I was thinking about how my life was completely unmanageable with alcohol in it. I could not go on like this.

At that point I had been actively trying to control my drinking for about fifteen years and had been concerned about it even longer than that. It’s pointless even trying to count the number of times I promised ‘never again’ to myself. There had been stretches of abstinence lasting anywhere between 10 and 40 days, but I would always start again, even when I didn’t want to. I realised that I needed a longer period away from the booze and to achieve this I needed to do something different. I looked around for help. There was little to nothing on offer from the NHS. The only option seemd to be AA. But was I really THAT bad?! I looked up local AA groups and found meetings for that day.* But I could not bring myself to go. As bad as I felt, I still wasn’t sure that a life permanently without alcohol was for me. I just needed to take a substantial break and let my brain recover. Besides, I didn’t want to become ‘that guy’ on the AA poster in the doctors surgery – a nameless blacked out figure cradling his head in a windowless church hall.

Instead, I joined several online communities through Facebook. Most of these were large groups in which it was possible to lurk without contributing. But recognising the need for accountability, I also joined a smaller online group where it was more difficult to hide. I had no intention of giving up drinking forever. I intended to join and then slope in after a few months after I had sorted myself out. Lots of people in this smaller group posted daily about their journey, usually stating the number of days of consecutive sobriety they had under their belt. I committed to doing the same in the hope that it would help keep me accountable.

I planned to give up for a month. Over three years later, I am still not drinking, and have no intention to start again.

Looking back, I realise that my posts to that group are a daily record of the gradual unravelling of this knot of addiction. A knot formed at christmas 40 years ago by the taste of a warming nip of sherry in a tiny, delicate crystal glass. I gained, and continue to gain, so much from the stories posted by others in the communities I belong to. This blog is my way of paying things forwards in the hope that others on this journey might find something useful to support them.

It is tempting to edit or rewrite or summarise the posts, to present oneself and one’s journey gilded with the benefits of hindsight. I have not done that. I have kept the posts largely as they were when written so that readers can get a sense of the ups and downs of the journey as they happened. Looking back, it is interesting to observe the rise and fall of different preoccupations, and the questions I was grappling with at different stages of the journey. Many years on, it’s incredible to think that there were times that I almost wept with anguish at the thought of not being able to drink. Alcohol had such power over me and infiltrated every part of my life. The process of reclaiming my life from its influence is not what I thought it would be. I honestly thought that I would knock the booze on the head for a couple of months and my life would magically transform. It was not like that. It required a painstaking process of unpicking, unravelling, and rewriting my life; a process that is still underway.

My book ‘Do I Drink Too Much?’ helps readers explore for themselves whether or not they have a drinking problem. For those who decide that they do, I recommend taking a strategic break from alcohol, a significant period of total abstinence. Although there is no evidence to guide what length of a break from alcohol is effective, I would suggest that a year is best. Project Three Sixty Five is a companion blog for those on, or who are considering whether to take, a strategic break. It’s there to help you see what might be in store for you, at different points, in real time as it happened to me. Your experience will be different, of course it will,. But perhaps it might help you prepare for what is ahead, reassure you that whatever is ahead is going to be fine, and help you feel less alone on your journey.

*Please note that neither this publication, nor Control Issues, is anti-

AA. I know and have worked with many people who have benefitted hugely from AA. I respect the programme, the organisation and the many millions of people in that community who recieve and give suppport to others with alcohol problems.

Photo by Stefan Bischoff on Unsplash