Another Day One: rambling, gambling, backsliding

After many years of heavy drinking, I was finally forced to admit that I had a serious problem, and to give up alcohol altogether. I understand that it is very common - nearly a part of the problem - that it takes a very long time, and that people are extremely reluctant to admit that they need to give it up. Everybody knows that Step One in a twelve-step programme is admitting that you have a problem (even if, like me, you have never been to a twelve-step meeting).

I gave up totally for over a year and I was very happy. However, since the single pint I had shortly after my one-year anniversary, I have not succeeded in stringing together an entire year again. And I have learned that relapsing can be as essential a part of the problem as not wanting to admit to a problem in the first place.

I may go into the details of my various relapses at some point but for now let me just say that the first one was incredibly distressing. The pride I had in my year of sobriety was destroyed. The shame I had defeated came flooding back, and it wasn't yet the good kind of shame, the kind that is almost indistinguishable from pride, but the crippling soul-destroying night-sweating kind.

These lapses tended to (possibly tend) to follow a pattern and to the extent that I have come to recognise the pattern, I am hopeful that I can break out of it, although I have not yet. Maybe this time.

The pattern starts with a casual moment. It is not the fuckit moment of the doomed alcoholic answering the call of the Fuckit Demon. (I may talk more about that nasty little fucker at some point.) It's more like letting your guard down. I entertained some children on Hallowe'en and was offered a glass of wine and two days later I was up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep and drinking wine from the bottle, still drunk in the morning, and I forgot my daughter's lunch when we left the house for school. And I cycled back to get it and fell off my bike.

Another time, sick of being the only person to order non-alcoholic beer I ordered an ordinary beer. Two days later I was calling in sick to work, and sneaking nips of gin from my landlady's cabinet.

Some occasions I have learned to be careful around. Airports were always my downfall, so it has not been too hard to be especially on my guard there. The anonymity, the sense of being treated like livestock, the simultaneous sense of boredom and stress. It would drive anybody to drink...

I find family holidays hard, but not weddings or pubs. I am quite happy to sit while others drink but when I am stuck alone in the melancholy shadow of my childhood home I find myself reaching for a sneaky sip of wine like a furtive teenager, and I am in my forties.

It has been about four years since my great year long stretch, and I have had many relapses. None have ended in real disaster, but each one is cripplingly distressing. When I pull myself out of the relapse I am always grateful, positive, physically happy to be back to myself again. And I am always hopeful that I have learned something.

Well one thing I have learned is that I can't afford to let my guard down. But also that it's exhausting to try to keep your guard up the whole time. One good way to maintain vigilance in a way that is not draining is to frame it positively: to exercise gratitude. I am not a big fan of hippy nonsense, and I have said that I am not religious but I have found that actively articulating my gratitude not to be drinking does help remind me of what I stand to lose if I drink.

But you know: how grateful can you be the whole time? When sober I am delighted to acknowledge the twittering of the birdies in the trees, and the beauty of nature around me, all that crap. I am not exaggerating when I say that I find myself humming a merry tune as I walk the dog down to the local cafe to get a coffee and a pastry on a sunny spring morning. I am not cynical about this.

But after about six weeks or so I forget the horror and I have a beer, and then nothing bad happens so I have one the next day, or a couple. And it never takes much longr than a week to have me back where I started - sleepless, sweaty self-loathy, tired, unproductive, feeling like a failure.

This blog is not intended as a cure for my relapses, but I hope it will be a useful tool to help me avoid the next one, maybe help hold off the next one for a very long time. I hope so. I have a couple of challenges coming up soon, and I may talk about that tomorrow.