May 2012
1 post
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looking back second time around
my company slowly and efficiently has established itself - drawing the attention of industry and investors - and as i prepare to launch a second more commercially oriented brand, and am invited to meet with major companies, i find myself on the verge of achieving everything i ever imagined.
as i began writing this blog, despite my fragility and uncertainty, for a while at least i updated...
April 2012
2 posts
5 tags
edinburgh unplugged
last weekend a friend gave me his season ticket to watch a local football team. not paying attention as i entered the stand, i mistakenly sat in what i’ve subsequently discovered was the corporate section - in the only 4 empty rows in an otherwise full stadium. as has so often happened in my past, looking and speaking a certain way, no one bothered to question me.
sitting alone, surrounded...
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like a rolling stone
some weeks ago our government, supported by all opposition parties - save for labour who chose to politicise this issue, ignore the clear public health evidence and abstain - approved in principle the introduction of a minimum unit price for alcohol in scotland.
arguments i had worked to construct against alcohol industry opposition were used in parliamentary evidence sessions leading up to this...
March 2012
2 posts
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don't let the bastards grind you down
this is an open response to several messages i’ve recently received.
this time last year i was drinking in the street with the homeless: hopelessly lost; remorseful for wasted opportunities; fearful of a future in which i saw no part.
an inability to physically consume alcohol, my body’s rejection of a poison, left me entering into withdrawal and hospital on an almost daily basis....
February 2012
1 post
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January 2012
4 posts
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hunter s thompson, kate moss & the bus
abnormal as it may seem recently it’s been the journey home following a night out that rates as one of its high points. it’s nothing to do with an antisocial personality or a desperation to return to an empty bed and my dog’s apathy; it’s that i now return home filled with emotions other than numb indifference, shame, humiliation or more likely all of the above.
while sitting on the night...
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Dining. Dating. Drinking.
sobriety creates an aberrant mood for dating.
it has been my experience, both recent and past (during the times that i still cared enough to try and hide my true consumption), that by simply ordering sparkling water on a date you may as well announce a disposition towards cat molestation or an intention to end the evening with forcible violation.
alcohol and dating, or perhaps even more generally...
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ready, set, go
life continues. it’s a frenetic race. i imagine it always was however with alcohol my pacesetter clearly i was running a laboured sunday jog. this time i find myself a finalist in life’s hundred meters, going for gold, but in this race i am perhaps considered favourite.
my break up with A has been hard. my default reaction following separations (generally self orchestrated) has been...
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dharma
as someone known to dissociate themselves from all major holidays i was uncharacteristically optimistic about 2012. from almost as soon as i stopped drinking i begin imagining a new year and its notional fresh start. i had long planned to enter into 2012 quite differently to how 2011 began. and it was. just not in the ways i had hoped.
since the start of the year i have asked myself the question...
December 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Happy Christmas Eve
A,
Thank you for helping me this year. When I realised it was Christmas Eve it dawned on me that I won’t be spending another Christmas tragically addicted to alcohol. I was suddenly very excited and very grateful for you standing by me when any sensible person would have walked away. You’ve probably been one of the most significant influences on my life.
I say this from the bottom of...
6 tags
eating myself ill
i recently read gincup in its entirety. had i not recorded my recovery i would now have completely forgotten how fragile and weak i was during those early days.
in under a year i have gone from being entirely subservient to alcohol to: creating and running a small, but successful tea business; as well becoming involved in the campaign to shape public health policy on alcohol in Scotland. while...
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Anonymous asked: In you're fat pictures you look like Tim Key. This is a complement!
November 2011
3 posts
6 tags
A Double Loss
a few weeks ago A and i separated.
of all occasions where society ordains alcohol to be a completely appropriate remedy, almost prescribed, it is surely during the time of a break up.
as i have done before in times of emotional disorder i search deep within myself for that desire to drink which had, less than a year ago, been all consuming.
perhaps this is a dangerous game however i’ve always...
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fighting for a working future
someone asked me this weekend why so much of my self worth was linked to the importance i place on work and career. i felt it were easy for them to ask this from their position of employment, their capacious talent and abundant opportunities not yet squandered.
recently i received an anonymous question asking about my past and my feelings towards the future. given where i found myself it was a...
October 2011
2 posts
7 tags
Anonymous asked: In the early days of this blog what made you resist the cravings?
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Anonymous asked: How did you fall into drinking so much in the first place?
September 2011
2 posts
7 tags
(don't go back to) rockville
and so yesterday came and passed with little ceremony. there was no celebration, not even a little champagne, as i reached an arbitrary milestone of 6 months without drink.
ironically, or perhaps synchronistically, yesterday i was scheduled to see my knee consultant at edinburgh’s royal infirmary. that exactly 6 months earlier i was waking up in their psychiatric observation ward - attached...
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July 2011
1 post
6 tags
chapter two
over the past few weeks I have procrastinated over the future of gin cup.
for many years i was defined by alcohol - or rather alcohol was defining me - i no longer feel like this. i can once more say that it is i defining myself.
gin cup was initially a cathartic process however, after one hundred days, i reached a stage where i was no longer sure what to say.
strange as this may seem i do not...
June 2011
8 posts
6 tags
my case in point
gin cup and sobriety began together. after a decade of dangerous alcoholism, and with no particular outcome in mind, i began writing simply as a means of helping myself. as i did so i began to find other blogs - better written blogs on addiction - and in their writing i found inspiration and comfort. i was pleased when some people said they found the same in my own words. equally i found blogs...
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when the drugs do work
sobriety brought with it an renewed appreciation for my body and a desire to change. in addition to exploring the multitude of mental reasons for my addiction i have also begun seeking to repair the physical damage i have caused over the past fifteen years. while i was consuming alcohol in hero’s doses the general welfare of my physique was one area i paid little regard to and thus i had...
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sobriety, seventy four days, and the charity
as i made my way along queen street, past the royal college of physicians, and into shaap’s offices i will admit that my typically impassive demeanor was masking a nervous energy i had long forgotten existed. scottish health action on alcohol problems, shaap, is a charity with international authority. an unyielding lobbying force for evidence-based measures to reduce alcohol’s harm;...
8 tags
the taste of alcoholic purity
A left to make a call and i was alone. the reasons for me being in this cubicle in the royal infirmary i cannot recall but we can safely assume they were alcohol related. barely able to move - yet so long as i was awake i wasn’t far enough gone - i began pumping the alcohol sanitizer that was bolted onto the wall into my mouth. such an opprobrious admission is hard to make when i know my...
10 tags
the price of tea and an alcoholic past
a left early this morning to make her way to hay-on-wye. clement weather once more has descended upon scotland following a recent spell of gale force winds. before venturing into the garden for breakfast i filled our tea gallery gaiwan with some li shan oolong. since adopting gong fu brewing in a gaiwan - as opposed to using the light oolong yixing - these infused leaves have been elevated to...
5 tags
the changing face of alcoholism
this photo strip documents a decade of debauchery and my changing face of alcoholism. i am twenty two in the first photo and thirty two in the last.
at my lowest point i was consuming over fifty units of alcohol a day and weighed in a corpulent 224lbs. today i tip the scales at 182lbs. i lost this weight simply by not drinking.
save for my knee - a fifteen year old rugby injury - i cannot...
May 2011
17 posts
8 tags
the alcoholic and my anonymity
as an employee my alcohol consumption was little different to that of my peers. it could reasonably be expected that most days we would drink for work, or after work, and we did.
of all my friends at that time i doubt if i were the only one that considered the extent to which we drank excessive. our drinking was hardly veiled and if anything an ability to drink in utter immoderation - yet...
7 tags
one step forwards too fall back
my knee has gone again. pushing myself at physio - an attempt to avoid an operation - my acl ruptured. it now looks as though an operation is inevitable. alcohol would stop this pain. i know this with certainty. despite being prescribed high dose opiates they do little to numb the swelling around my knee. i mentioned this today at the antabuse clinic. i was asked if any of this had made me want...
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its me and its you and its us
knowing my tardiness for friday’s flat viewing would displease A, in an effort to make haste, i took a short cut through one of edinburgh’s less salubrious alleys. a cobbled backstreet it stunk of urine and inevitably contained two drunks and their obligatory three liters of diamond white - the beverage of the forgotten, consumed to forget. there was a strange communion as we nodded...
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Anonymous asked: Your a fucking loser
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times are you can always count on alcoholism
i arrived breathless and five minutes late. A, my girlfriend, was waiting for me glaring.
we are in the process of purchasing an apartment in edinburgh’s new town. viewings and re-viewings are being arranged now on what seems like a daily basis. whatever we buy ultimately won’t be my decision, i am resigned to that, yet still i am required to attend these viewings regardless. that i’m never...
7 tags
Fr33dom, at last..?
prior to my writing this blog i thought addictions, where there were no external chemical influences, to be fairly erroneous in their nature. i simply didn’t accept that eating disorders or cutting to be genuine addictions. it has only been since i have read the personal and moving accounts of people on tumblr - as they speak of the same fears, doubts and hopelessness which i felt - that...
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sobriety and society
as surprise guests of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra - to clarify we were surprised at being invited, suspect they weren’t impressed by our attendance - A and i spent this evening at the Usher Hall watching Mozart’s requiem. James Gaffigan’s kinetic conducting generated a rousing production.
unfortunately my own performance was not quite so strong. the intermission reception was the first...
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from signing snow patrol to...
several people have asked what the story i mentioned yesterday was. here it is. for four years i lived with a hollywood actress and her husband - one of the uk’s most notable mental health journalists - in their north london home. there is a certain irony that his work from home office was meters away from where i quietly drank myself into oblivion. his work often brings him to the royal...
5 tags
second time around
i finished telling my story and threw back my sobriety shot. she said that i’d lived more in the last ten years than many people manage in their lifetime. now i have a second opportunity. there is nothing holding me back. her words were meant kindly but instead they filled me with fear. the future scares me or rather my future scares me; what happens if i can’t get back into the loop?...
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raulrants asked: Your blog is great, they way you write is awesome. I wonder if you wrote this well while under the influence or did this skill appear as sobriety came. Better yet did you always have this writing talent and did it simply get smothered by the alcohol. Also I was curious to know if A, your Alcoholic Therapist and A, your girlfriend are the same person, And if they aren't why are they both A. I...
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baclofen or buddha or sheer bloody mindedness
over the weekend i discovered something which i’d rather not have known. the magnitude of said discovery is such that i actually don’t know how to deal with it. formerly awakening had been enough cause to drink. society’s hegemony would suggest that in these cirucumstances i should now - alcohol is after all life’s clichéd fix. i find such appetite no longer exists within me. scenes from movies...
11 tags
switching my addiction
despite that i remain crippled, my leg in a splint and my movement greatly constricted, when this morning i heard the postman approaching our drive i sprang out of bed. I tumbled my way down the stairs, avoided stepping on B who was sleeping in my path and hopped furiously to the front door.
as i waited for him to reach me i stared at the bundles held in his hands trying to identify the parcel i...
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i woke up this morning hungover
confused and guilty i rolled over looking for A. i was in bed alone. i had always known she would leave were i to start drinking again. considering my malefaction i questioned what had driven me to show such enervation of character? my lungs exhaled dragon vapour breath and i tried to reconstruct last night. where had i been? who had i been with? little was returning but then always there was that...
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Anonymous asked: First of all I want to give you a HUGE congrats on your soberity!! Im currently 10 months sober!! I was wondering if your planning on "dieting" or "watching food intake" to prevent the weight gain.. I did 50 pounds in 4 months.. still working to get this weight off :/
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alcoholics anonymous made me drink
at brunch this past sunday i was offered mimosa. while the mere advance of alcohol invoked some atavistic desire, with A by my side and antabuse in my blood i had little option but to decline. in its place i had orange juice ensuring i was at least fifty percent the same as the rest. brunch was wonderful. not being drunkenly numb i conversed with A’s family with erudite elegance and come...
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Anonymous asked: I like your writings, honestly and humility are hard to obtain. Writing is sooo key, get used to it now though! Are you going to meetings?
April 2011
28 posts
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Anonymous asked: I don't really want to ask anything, I just wan't to say how incredibly moving i find your writing. You have obviously been through so much and are so brave to be facing up to what you must do to turn your life around. It is incredibly inspiring and you should be very proud of yourself. Not many could even hope to achieve what you have so far. Have you ever considered writing a book?...
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one month matcha
thirty one days of sobriety i felt merited some form of celebration. champagne immediately jumped to the forefront of my mind. how else do you celebrate? such thoughts were compounded as scotland’s clement weather continued and my mind teemed with vivid memories of summer garden wine. i am quickly reminded how ingrained alcohol remains in my psyche. moving on i contemplate a darjeeling i...
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bukowski's last drink
there was no fanfare or celebration. so caught up in normallity, the regular activites i’ve missed for so long, i completely failed to observe that yesterday was my twenty eighth day of sobriety.
time is not tangible but this i can grasp - on monday, four weeks ago, i lay in the psychiatric observation ward of edinburgh’s royal infirmary. i don’t remember my ending up there.
at...
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Sillisa: Alcoholics and Others in Recovery →
sillisa:
Here are some quotes I found. I think they can apply to pretty much all of us in recovery, whether it be from alcoholism, mental illness, addictions, eating disorders, self-injury, etc.
Only an alcoholic INSERT YOURSELF HERE would believe that the solution to loneliness was isolation.
Alcoholic: Someone who refuses to give up a life of failure without a fight.
An alcoholic is someone...