Any recovery programe starts in the same way. You admit you have a problem and it consumes you. In my case, it was drink. It could easily have been any of my other self-destructive behaviour patterns, but as a starter for ten, my body decided to tackle an unfettered love of jar.
For every success story, there’s at least a thousand people ready to stick up their hands and say giving up didn’t work for them. The failure rate is depressing. Those who fail are happy to speak out. Like when you watch reality casting shows and whoever happens to be this month’s Simon Cowell-alike tells a room full of eager faces how most of them won’t have the X-factor.
So what does it feel like to be four years sober and consider yourself a success? I should add, the four-year part doesn’t matter. There’s strength in white-knuckling a single sober day.
There’s one thing of which I am sure. The decision to stop drinking saved my life.
Hangovers
For years, I refused to own my problem. I would drink. A lot. I’d have hangovers and dread facing people the next day. As a functioning alcoholic, my career highlights include: finding myself with no wallet in the middle of nowhere looking for a phone box to call my sleeping parents 200 miles away and ask if they can prepay a cab to get a 25-year-old me home. I’ve woken with two cracked ribs and a broken TV. I’ve found myself thrown from a cab in a foreign city covered in sick that might have been mine.
I stopped drinking much like I stopped smoking. One day it didn’t happen
Towards the end, my evenings always started the same. With the intention to limit myself to what was in the kitchen. Once I took the first sip, I couldn’t stop and wanted to keep going to that place where I got sociable and fun and brave enough to not hide away. I wanted to think nothing. Half way through any evening, I’d stumble to the nearest shop selling wine and slur my orders.
I stopped drinking much like I stopped smoking. One day it didn’t happen. The next day was the same.
It took a year of not taking a drink to deal with the dark cloud that had followed me around. Until I could do that, I was simply a guy who drank too much.
Bit by bit, I asked why I let myself get literally legless, lifting the lid of a box marked PRIVATE. I came face-to-face with the hurt of growing up an only child, with industrial grade acne, no friends, no self-confidence, a weight problem … and a preference for men. In each and every respect, I felt alone. Add them together and the feeling manifested as alcohol abuse in my adult life. I was singled out by the school playground bullies because I didn’t know how to fight back. I stood alone in bars and clubs on account of zero social skills. People didn’t bother getting to know me, because I hid away in shadows.
Drink corrected everything.
Numb
As I identified each cause, the effect lifted. A little each day … until I no longer was consumed by the desire to drink. I no longer needed to be numb.
I don’t call myself sober. I prefer to say I’m not drinking today. Mostly because it saves on the embarrassed silences when ‘fessing up to being a reformed booze bag – or the people who implore me to have just the one glass when I stay quiet.
I let myself have a drink. Because I trust that I know when and how to stop. And why. Drinking was no longer fun. The pain and anxiety that drove my love of the bottle added bubbles to my beer.
Of course, I’m not unique in this. Millions of us only drink once in a while. I have a penchant for an espresso Martini. But drinking is no longer a defined part of my life; something I do every day from 5pm until sleep takes over.
I’ve long been reluctant to write about this part of my life, even though I’ve published stories about recovery and made it the central theme of ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. The thing is, I realise there are lots of drinkers like me. People who don’t accept their relationship with alcohol might be a problem. They’ll keep tumbling and hit new lows.
One of the best things I ever read is that you don’t have to hit rock-bottom to step out of the lift. You can stop self-sabotaging at any floor.
I was lucky. One day, drinking didn’t happen. I’m grateful it did. I’m grateful to Mark for making it so.
Moderation Management™ is a lay-led non-profit dedicated to reducing the harm caused by the misuse of alcohol. MM provides support through face-to-face meetings, video and phone meetings, chats, and private online support communities.
As a writer (and occasional comic), I worry about being cancelled. Not that there’s much of me to cancel. I have the social media footprint of a handbag dog. Something small and yappy that would have your leg off as soon as look at you. Like 
What better day to ditch perky Joe Wicks and his enormous fucking living room? When the world re-opens again, let’s agree to take taxis to air-conditioned office buildings. Ignore those obese fuckheads who claim to be government health experts with their warnings of how not walking up stairs will kill you. Take the lift. Spend eight full hours sitting and two full minutes ramming a three-pound Tesco meal deal into your mouth. At 5pm, summon an Uber and demand the driver take you to the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet. 90 minutes later, stricken with meat sweats, stumble to the nearest pub for more sitting. That’s how to do Monday.
You bought a box in 1983 after waking up in A&E and vowing to give up drink, drugs and crisps. After ten minutes of Anne Diamond’s ‘How I lost 4 stone‘ DVD, you lost the will to live and ate an entire trifle. In lockdown, with everyone raving about how they’ve rediscovered green tea, you gave it another go and remembered at once why you never bought it again – it tastes like dishwasher slurry. It’s time to re-embrace light brown tea and leave the folksy herbal shite to people who have sex in public toilets. Stop lying to yourself and have a custard cream.
Nobody bought banana bread before lockdown for a reason. It’s like the world’s most disappointing cake crossed with the world’s worst bread. And don’t get me started on sourdough. You’ve watched a Kilner jar of flour and water bubble and turn rancid green over the course of a month, and now you’re expected to eat something that contains the sludge? Why not go the whole hog and make raw chicken sandwiches?
If there’s a tree, it needs a string of lights. The same goes for their gazebo, trampoline and split-level pond until their back garden is lit up like the Las Vegas monorail. Lights that resemble flaming torches – they’ve got 20. If it doesn’t move, it’s crying out for a string of flickering, fit-inducing multicoloured bulbs.
They won’t draw the line at ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ or ‘We don’t skinny dip, we chunky dip’? It’s not enough to laugh (and laugh and laugh and laugh) about wine being one of their five a day fruits. True sociopaths express themselves by covering each and every surface and wall with dead behind the eyes signs purloined from garden centres or TK Maxx. These are the sort of people who also own a heavily laminated, full-sized photo of Steven Seagal.
We’re not talking supermarket sausages over charcoal. A true serial killer sets up an outdoor kitchen, like a set from Gilligan’s Island. They’ll have a cabinet of cutlery, wine chillers, blankets in case it gets chilly, covered crocks and a Sarah Lee gateau. Aware of the UK’s (notoriously non-existent) nighttime mosquito problem, they’ll surround the area with citronella candles, causing all you consume to taste of lemon toilet cleaner. Your fellow party-goers will include their huge extended family who all drive people-carriers and every other neighbour you already hate and don’t talk to.