Airports

This attempt at sobriety is not going as well as I had hoped.

I was aware of the dangers of staying with my sister in Scotland, and I did lapse a bit there, sneaking the odd swig of whiskey on the sly. This is a genuinely unforgivable bit of disrespect. I didn't crave a drink, I just took it out of fuckitness and wanting to get away with it. It's like when I used to steal a swig of gin from my ex's house, like I was drinking at her, a calculated gesture of disrespect.

But I have a legitimate reason for feeling hostile to my ex, and I have no reason at all to disrespect my sister, who is a very kind and generous and affectionate woman, as well as being my little sister. There was no real harm done, apart to my soul.

But then the airport. The thing is I knew I was going to sneak a drink at the airport even before I got there. I was with my child, who is not quite ten. I sneaked a sneaky whisky, and then another one. We hadn't eaten because of the trip to the airport, so I was tipsy when we got on the plane.

What is it about airports. I know they have been the downfall of a lot of alcoholics and I have mentioned them here before. I think it might be partly to do with the contradictory forces that are at work on you. For instance, the process of checking in and waiting and eating and boarding the plane is both infantilising and stressful. You lurch (as they say soldiers to in war) between boredom and terror. You are at once pampered and dazzled by the smells and shininess of Duty Free and fast food, but you are also being herded like cattle and you have no real agency. I think it doesn't help that a lot of the time in the airport you are supposed to be enjoying yourself, or at least taking pleasure in the anticipation of your journey.

The great wisdom of these observations did not stop me from getting drunk. I was sloppily attentive to my child, who was happily stuck into a book and happy to ignore me, thank the living fuck. It seems that the brilliant light of divine shame was not enough to guide me from acting in a disgustingly degraded way, but I am glad she did not notice. I dropped her off at her mother's house, went home and slept.

That was a week ago, and I have been drinking since then. Fans of quiterature literature might be disappointed that the scale of my drinking has not been dramatic - my favourite bit in a sobriety memoir is reading the sensational accounts of the sheer volume of booze that someone can consume and still function. And I have at times consumed large quantities. But in the last week it has been a steadily growing daily volume of beer.

I went out for dinner with a couple of friends on Thursday. I had a strong beer before I met them, and another one with dinner. I felt fine. On Saturday I went to another friend's house and brought four bottles of strong beer, which I drank over the course of several hours. I didnn't absolutely disgrace myself but I didn't feel great the following day. My child came from her mother's on Sunday and I had a couple of beers over the course of the afternoon, and the same thing the following day.

At no point was I endangering the child, or driving, or operating heavy machinery, but I hate that I was not fully there for her, that I was thinking about alcohol, that I was deceiving her. She has noticed that my rule about only drinking AF beer is a little lax in its application. I am ashamed of myself when I think of the behaviour I am modelling for her.

Yesterday in the supermarket I was thinking about getting beer. II was standing looking at the shelf. The child distracted me with a request for sweets or something, but I felt as though I had been caught, and I am not sure that she was not in fact deliberately guiding me away from the beer. That's too much to put on a child. Of course after I had dropped her over to her mother, I did go and buy the beer. And then some weed...

I am sick of this and I am afraid that I will never learn. Years ago when I first sucessfully gave up for a year I was happy and it was easy, and I was driven by a strong and clear need to stop. The quantities involved were much higher, the damage I was doing was too serious to ignore. Now, five years on I am better than I was but episodes like the last week, and the string of drunken days that led to my starting this blog in the first place, leave me upset and demoralised, and very concerned about the future.

I can only hope that I am learning, and that the process of keeping this blog will help me. The wisdom of the old slogan about taking things one day at a time is real. So today I am a non-alcoholic and let's hope it stays that way.

I had hoped the title of this blog would not become so relevant so quickly. I think it may help to be a bit stricter about writing regular posts.