Perhaps not today

You know the story, once an alki, always an alki. It does get easier as time goes by but it's still there, in the back of your mind, waiting to get at you, to break you.

And it knows that it will succeed, perhaps not today, not tomorrow but it sits, and it waits and it's ready for the moment to come along. It doesn't matter how quick it comes along or how fast you are to deal with it, you're fucked. If you slip up then you lose. There are very few things in this life that are guaranteed. That's one of them, the other's divorce and either way you're fucked again.

It nearly got me this weekend. Don't know why I fancied a drink but I did. Not an unnatural thing, is it but the fancy was with me all the time, it's Monday and it's still there, hovering, trying to convince me that one or two won't hurt me.

Aye, my arse - I think that I've heard that a few times too often now to believe it. One or two wouldn't hurt me, that's true enough but when did I last have one or two, must have been a while ago now, how many decades?

I fell off the horse last month. The old "Just one or two" promise, you know, a tenner a pint, aye, that'll be right, shining bright. It's at me again today and I've not even had my lunch yet. A bit early to start, whatcha think?

Nah, I think that I'll carry on fighting.

After all, I have to, I can't let it win, can I???

I wish I'd been a bit more sensible

I wish that I'd been a bit more sensible as I grew through my mid-teens and on. It wouldn't have done any harm for me to have taken a little more care of myself, would it.

I doubt very much if I was the only one that misbehaved and acted the fool, pretended to be a big man who enjoyed a good drink every day, who could drink half a dozen more than you could before breakfast. Kind of silly, isn't it. If I hadn't behaved like that then I wouldn't be the alki that I am now.

The one thing that really gets to me though, is the amount of "Recovering" alcoholics that I meet. You know, the alcoholics that you bump into that believe they are going to get "better." I wish!!!

There are quite a good number of these people around who think that a fortnight off the booze and that's them ready to take on the world again. Then, a couple of months down the line and they have another couple of weeks off - to "cure" themselves again and they're off, no problem, cured again, no chance that they're an alcoholic. Just because they sweat a bit more than is comfortable or that they shake a little in the morning, a week or two and they'll be brand new.

I can't mock. I was one of these people. I would hate to think just how long it took me to find out that I had got it wrong - for thirty-odd years.

Ignorance is pretty stupendous, isn't it :(

The alcoholic Scotsman

I was just thinking about what life was like when I grew up in Scotland. My parents did a lot to ensure that I enjoyed my childhood and that I received a decent education but they couldn't keep me away from Scotlands attitude to alcohol.

Socially, it was quite acceptable to drink huge amounts when I was a young boy, unlike today where a couple of large drams is the most that is seen as alright for an evening.

So I wonder if todays slightly different views on alcohol, on the concept of "getting drunk" would have resulted in myself having a different attitude to alcohol and therefore stopped, or at least taken longer for me to become an alcoholic.

I think that there is a good chance that growing up today, with todays social attitude towards alcohol, I would have dealt with it differently when I started drinking beer, whisky and the like. I may well be wrong but as I see it, it's put over that it is not so sensible to get pissed every night, which is great.

Hopefully, the problems of alcoholism will have shrunk massively and won't come back.

I will still be an alki

Over the last wee while I've not done too badly. I've stuck to the tea and coffee, the juice and the tins of coke. When there is stuff like that in the house for me then there's less excuse for the demon drink to raise its ugly head.

It hurts though. The fact that this problem, that I control quite well, will last for ever, regardless of how well I do in staying away from alcohol, I will die an alcoholic. That is the painful bit.

The pain is not justifiable, well, not to me anyway. Why should I make so much effort and succeed in what I am  trying for and still it goes on.

When it comes to the last of my days, I will still be an alki, a bevvy artist - but that's life I guess.

But I will have a bit more cash in my pocket and perhaps less of a beer belly.

There is always hope :))