Off the drink

It's twenty days now since the last alcoholic drink was swallowed by me. No problem, no sweats or shakes and no big deal so no fuss.

Do I still have the problem, both social and medical, that I had before? I don't think that I do but I know that I have to consider myself as an alcoholic until my dying day. If I don't then I will insist on behaving like one whether I choose to or not and I would rather stay away from that sort of caper from now on :))

Who thought that they'd conquered the drink?

I had been doing so well in staying away from the drink, in not wanting any, not having any problem with it. Yesterday I got out of the hospital after landing there on Tuesday evening because I was pissed, yet again.

All these hopes, all these beliefs and then the truth comes out. I got well and truly pissed as a fart again. Not too good, eh. Perhaps I do have a problem here after all, perhaps I am a raging alcoholic after all.

Now it’s time to really do something about it. I’m not sure exactly what yet but I’ll find out and take action. Can’t let this continue because if I do it will just get worse and worse.

That would be no good, now would it. Dr Unsworth would give up on me!!!

I need a drink, because of love

My girlfriend just gave me the flick and it hurts, right in the heart. Makes the alcohol kind of necessary, if you know what I mean.

Haven't had anything to drink yet but things may well change. This is what love and emotions, thing like that do to you. The pain and the heartache come in and remind you of how you were yesterday.

Really shouldn't let the drink in because that does even more damage, causes more pain, more problems but what the heck - Cheers!!!

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 :))

A difficult bit that I'm going through

There is a difficult bit that I'm going through at the moment. Some years ago, I was told by my wife that I was an alcoholic and that I would have to go to Alcoholics Anonymous to deal with it. Now, at that stage I would do anything that she wanted me to do. She was my wife and I loved and trusted her so off to AA I went, only to find that they were all practising christians - practising right in front of me.

I stuck it out for six weeks until, hallelujah, I was converted and stopped going but now I wonder what that did to my drinking. Was I an alcoholic when I was sent to AA. I certainly wasn't a christian and it was not easy for me to put up with these freaky, raging, holier than though supposed believers, a good few that were born-again idiots.

I wonder what damage that has done, if any I must admit - but I certainly do not believe that it did any good.

When she left me I promptly went on the piss for a year but then stopped for just over a year, and when I say stopped I mean that I drank no alcohol at all for what, thirteen months and it was done with no problem.

The question at the bottom of my heart though, did this cause me to have a problem with alcohol, or to take on or gain a problem with alcohol.

I do wish that I had never gone anywhere near AA.

I also know that prior to that, there was no problem.

Minimum pricing bill for alcohol

Spotted a very interesting point agreed by the Scottish government just now. The minimum pricing bill for alcohol will pass its first major parliamentary hurdle without opposition.


Personally, I think that is great. The sooner that alcohol stops being sold at  ridiculously cheap prices to lure in both ordinary customers and alcoholics like me, therefore making the problem some have even worse. 


These cheap prices, designed to encourage customers to buy there, are probably very effective but the damage that they cause is massive.


This will help to diminish the problem. It won't end it but it will help. 

I'll skip it, this time around

The last wee while has been alright regarding alcohol. There are always problems, of course. Either you don't want to or can't afford to pay a bill, or the cat, dog or the pet orangutan won't stop pissing on the carpet, regardless, there are always things to bother you but at the moment I'm doing pretty well. I haven't got an orangutan!!!

And the biggest thing that is going the right way? I don't want any alcohol. I could swing for a cup of tea but booze? Nah, I'll skip it, this time around.

If things change then hey, I'll let you know, but at the mo' it's good so, fingers crossed, I'll beat the thirteen months that I did before.

If I die before I drink again then pass the word around, will you?

Survived last night

Survived last night but it was a bit of a bugger. I made sure and went to bed early so that I wouldn't - couldn't -  fall astray. If I had stayed up then I could have gone to the St Magnus Bay Hotel which is only a couple of hundred yards down the road from me. And the result of that? Poverty. Poverty and pissed, pissed as a newt but I held out on it.

I'll hold out tonight too. I might feel pretty desperate for a wee dramn tonight but it's not worth giving in. It may well be desperate but staying sober causes fewer problems than getting pissed so, although it might hurt a bit, I do know what's good for me.

I've got eight tins of coke in. I'll drink them instead.

And taking the Campral should stop me moaning too.