A large coke - and don't get cheeky!!!

I'm in Lerwick, the big toon as it were here in Shetland, to pick up a couple of messages and I've been left with three and a half hours to waste. Right now I'm in the library, doing what people do in libraries without getting arrested but soon I'm going to go down to Da Wheel Bar and drink large amounts of stiff cokes - don't get wide now, what else does a man like me drink in a bar without getting pissed, eh?

Then I'll get on the bus and go home again after having had a good blether to whoever is standing beside me and willing to talk shite to a sober man. You never know, there might be one or two of them, in for the same reason, that be to get rid of and learn to cope with alcoholism. They're not in every night but usually.

I have fallen off the horse once or twice and I will do it again and again but it gets to be rarer and rarer, less often in a month or a year, whichever, but it gets rarer so it's going the right way and one day soon I'll be able to say that I am a sober man.

I hope that it doesn't take too long to get over the alcohol problem. I hate asking for "A large coke." 

A good Tuesday in the town

It was getting to the stage where food supplies were getting short in the house so I decided to go into town and go to the supermarket and buy in all the necessary's.

As usual, all the food required was purchased by about lunchtime and that was when the difficult bit became obvious - again. It can be very hard for an alcoholic to get through two hours painlessly in town when he has nothing to do but wait, it's awfully easy to go to the pub, striding in and come out again crawling.

I went into the pub, chatting to the rest of them, socially and having a very nice time, keeping my eye on the clock though as I didn't want to miss the bus.

When I was there I drank two tins of coke, that was it, no more and it was sufficient for me. My thirst was gone and I was comfortable.

I left the pub on time, smiling and caught my bus ;)

I'll maybe see you next time

If you look at the top left you'll see how long it is since the last drink that I had and it's the third month that I'm into now, about three weeks until it's done and while there will those difficult days, there always are, they are getting easier and they will continue to get easier and easier as time goes by. Sometimes I walk past a pub, or I pass one on the bus and the heart thumps but I can't ignore these places, they won't disappear and I cannot avoid them. I often go into Da Wheel Bar when I have an hour or so to wait for a bus home, I think of it as a good way to become used to being around drink, after all, my friends often have a couple of pints and there's nothing wrong with that. What am I going to do, apart from waiting outside. No, I have to be able to sit in the pub, or stand at the bar and drink coffee or coke, whatever, but I have to be comfortable doing it.

I am getting there, sometimes it is difficult but it is going in the right direction.

I'll maybe see you next time. I'll have a soft drink, you can drink what you like, ok.