from drinking to drinking tea all day

looking back second time around

Wed, 16 May 2012 19:20:00 +0100

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 frequently with a raw and honest account of my life and hopes and fears for the future. more recently i never wrote the below story for fear of letting people down however, failure is part of life and it is how we deal with our failings that marks us as who we are.

months after A left me, utterly disconsolate (as i still remain), entirely alone, i chose to break free in the only way i had felt to be effective - consuming a litre of vodka. far be it the escape i desired i simply felt nothing. i didn’t get drunk; i didn’t get happy; i didn’t get sad. at the bottom of that bottle i simply found there was nothing in alcohol that could alter my life or my naturally numbed emotions.

despite what i have said in the past it was here i finally recognised i was free.

perhaps up until this point it had remained in my mind ‘you can’t drink’ however, like a child the surest way to ensure i do something is to tell me i can’t. from that point onwards my mind’s paradigm was permanently altered to ‘i don’t want to drink.’

for me this distinction is important.

despite setbacks, both personally and professionally, i have remained resolute with an unwavering confidence that i, and my company, would succeed. it’s with slight trepidation that once more i approach the waters edge, gaze off into the horizon, and prepare to throw myself into turbulent wash of fortune’s sea.

no longer drunk this time i’m prepared for the water. i just wish i still had A to swim with me.

edinburgh unplugged

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:41:07 +0100

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 by 18,000 other people, i felt this were a fitting metaphor for my current existence in edinburgh.

despite having a great social life, and rediscovered that I have many very close friends, i feel completely alone in this city. i disliked edinburgh growing up and dislike it more now. i don’t fit in here - in this city with no soul. i have commitments that require me to be here for a further 10 months but after that i plan on returning home to london. i can’t wait.

like a rolling stone

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:03:00 +0100

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 vote.

that less than a year earlier i was frequently hospitalised due to my own ingestion of the very cheapest of alcohols, the ones targeted by this legislation, i hope should provide inspiration for anyone struggling with their own consumption. as trite as it sounds, anything is possible.

despite the highs there remains the low. life with out A is simply that. i hate it.

dating in edinburgh is very different to that of london however, it would appear that comparatively to many i am sane and polite and therefore a rare commodity; it has been with remarkable ease that i have fallen back into the world of take a ticket dating.

i had wished to avoid this. playing carousel beds as i approach my mid 30’s feels nothing more than remarkably sleazy. as though i am living my own episode of an american dramedy, wherever i go i keep hearing jagger singing ‘you can’t always get what you want. but if you try sometimes, you get what you need’

for now, i guess, i shall just keep on trying (sometimes).

my company can now run from an iPad. today i made this my...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:05:00 +0100

my company can now run from an iPad. today i made this my office.

one year ago, precisely, i no longer had any idea where my place was in this world. i felt alienated from my past success. i could no longer see a path i was to follow. all i knew was - that were i to keep drinking in utter immoderation - my story would unlikely have a happy ending.

while for many this is an argument about semantics, i did not then, and do not now, consider myself an alcoholic. i was physically addicted to alcohol, sure, but i was a product of a media world where client expectations and unlimited expenses orbited a champaign cork. when i lost that microcosm all i had left, or so i perceived, was alcohol. that’s where my true decent began.

this time last year i was outside and lost. today, outside once more, i realised i had finally found my way again.

don't let the bastards grind you down

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:11:59 +0000

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. around this time i purchased a copy of sogyal rinpoche’s the tibetan book of living and dying. i felt my life - not just time, my actual physical being - slipping away. i was too fearful to read it then; i was scared of passing away were i to reach the end.

as today i walked to attend a cross party group on drugs and alcohol at the scottish parliament i knew i was where i was meant to be. as i drank i believed i would never return to this world yet, now i am here, i see it was only ever alcohol preventing it. (and as i can’t change my past it’s also alcohol that has made any of this possible.)

no matter how austere the future seems, or how disconsolate you become, there always remains a way back. we can all only live in the present but in this moment you can achieve everything you want. all you need to do is try.

today i am 340 days sober.

preparing for a meeting i have tomorrow at the BMA i grabbed the...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:21:00 +0000

preparing for a meeting i have tomorrow at the BMA i grabbed the last empty molskine A had given me. she gave me a pile of them for our anniversary last year; special at the time, they hold even more significance for me now.

some months ago, knowing i was feeling unwell, A hadn’t wanted to wake me one morning. i awoke to find this note attached to some books next to our bed. i kept it safe in this final molskine cause i liked it but had completely forgotten it was there.

recently i’ve been considering my past and realised that much of my use of alcohol was simply to avoid any form of painful emotion - basically any emotion - however imagined or real.

finding this is horribly painful, an all too real reminder, yet the idea that alcohol could in anyway improve this situation, or how i feel, is completely alien to me.

i like that. i like that i can now feel something other than numb.

today i am 312 days sober.

hunter s thompson, kate moss & the bus

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:07:00 +0000

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 bus, surrounded by drunken couples and high spirited youths, i no longer find myself piecing together an evening’s events where my behaviour, influenced by alcohol, would no doubt have resulted in embarrassment for myself or those i was with.

i am now a witness to the inebriated’s stretching of social boundaries; in these acts of others i am apprised of my past. a boorish drunk is no less a boor simply for wearing a £2,000 suit. tragically i saw myself very differently at the time.

there is nothing i did drunk that i cannot do now. i can hold conversations with strangers and talk proudly about what i do - and i can laugh, and i can dance, and i can joke - yet now i am also able to return home euphoric simply for having had a nice time and an evening i’ll remember. it took me a while to realise this was possible.

as a teenager i was struck by the line in hunter s thompson’s fear and loathing in las vegas: ‘my attorney has never been able to accept the notion… that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them.’ that quote always appealed to the antihero in me.

in an early gincup post i tailored a kate moss quote to suit my needs: ‘no drink will ever taste as good as sobriety feels.’

today i fully fall into the camp of the latter. today i am 308* days sober.

*I stopped on the 28th March 2011. this figure has recently been out by a month. apologies for that.

Dining. Dating. Drinking.

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:50:00 +0000

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 alcohol and socialising, now seem so entwined in society it is i whom has become the victorian circus freak choosing not to imbibe.

by this time not succumbing to society’s hegemony and drinking; justifying my doing so simply to keep the status quo (again as i have so often done in the past) my confidence has risen exponentially. i’ve realise the crutch i once believed brought me so much strength was no more than a cancer eating the backbone of my spirit. today i am the person i want to be, the person i tried to be, yet the person i ultimately never was while alcohol promised the moon while stealing my earth.

for once i find myself making the choices i know others, the friends and peers i consider successes, would make too.

loosing A has been hard. perhaps appropriately in the vein of the extremes we went through it is the single biggest emotional upset i have experienced, yet, simply by indulging my ego - dating girls that approach me through my site (my business and not gincup curiously) - i am simply reverting to type.

no one can yet replace A so why do i find myself trying?

for once i realise i can actually be single. too much of my self confidence and self worth has previously been tied up with whomever i shared my bed. instead of dating i am discovering an alternative route to happiness via friends, travel and career.

this may not seem like much, and perhaps shows the true degree of my own social retardation, but for me this is progress.

today i am 331 days sober.

ready, set, go

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:56:00 +0000

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 to drink and to date and to disremember - mere moments after the fact - but this time i couldn’t.

whatever i write will come over as no more than adult onset teenage heartbreak, the stuff of poets and songs, however for me it remains very real. what i will write is with A i thought our relationship different. how tragically clichéd. i opened myself up and revealed my soul. i think it is from here that the hurt arises. in the end she rejected me and not the facsimile front the world had known.

i have started to move on; the pistol’s fired, the race begun yet one foot remains in the blocks. strangely it’s harder for me to reveal and write this than it ever was to speak about my drinking.

perhaps this is where the real recovery begins? it’s certainly been the biggest test of my resolve and character but inside i know, i now have the stamina to win.

today i am 326 days sober.

dharma

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 21:51:00 +0000

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 ‘were money no object what would i do?’

while i may consider certain aspects of my life not to be perfect, i have enough cognition to know (as a spoiled capitalistic westerner) i have experienced material wealth beyond the imagination of 90% of all previous and current human existence - and yet no matter what my situation, i always seek for more.

as i look beyond my own current domestic arrangements, certain personal losses, and my desire for yet another pair of leather soled shoes i see a world in which: i finally am utilising my communications skills for the greater good. i am helping to drive and deliver changes to public health policy. i’m no longer simply creating further affluence for a prosperous minority; additionally i own a small, but potentially highly successful tea brand where i drink and i work and i share my passion.

were money no object, i wouldn’t change a lot. today i realised i am living my dream.

today i am 323 days sober.

Happy Christmas Eve

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:06:00 +0000

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 my heart - thank you for helping me. As I drank I saw no future and the truth is, had I continued drinking as I was last year, it’s unlikely that I would be here now.

It bewilders me that the previous statement is at all possible.

I’m sure in time we will be friends again however for now I will express my gratitude here for you to find if or when you want.

Thank you again for helping me save myself.

eating myself ill

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:11:00 +0000

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 doing so i have once more discovered and remembered why at one point my services were very much in demand. (i thought i was good when i drank but being sober life is so much easier)

my health has significantly improved from those early days but, nearly 10 months on, there are certain aspects which haven’t that i’d always expected would after i stopped drinking.

my biggest issue has been my levels of energy and motivation. i can motivate myself, attend work meetings and be focused however, to do so i generally starve myself beforehand. my energy peeks and troughs which has been hard for me for years. i had assumed such malaise continued after i stopped drinking due to depression, a lack of purpose and a lack of money however, as i’ve worked through these, the underlying symptoms have still remained.

as a young chef i believed that food allergies were mostly psychosomatic. i was an incredibly arrogant young man. in a remarkable twist it now appears i may have an eating disorder of my own. i may have coeliac (celiac) disease. a biopsy in the new year will confirm this for certain but the side effects fit and even my own cursory review correlating my diet to symptoms, and blood test results, seem to support my doctors initial diagnosis.

many of the symptoms are similar to damage caused by alcohol - numb weak muscles accompanied by tingling in the hands and feet - as well as weight loss, stomach problems and depression. given my past it was easy to see why this wasn’t first considered however now i’ve studied it, it certainly explains a lot.

my going to work meetings hungry rather than eating a sandwich before, or accepting biscuits during, now actually makes sense.

today i am 297 days sober. (this is now once again accurate as apparently i had been weeks out and i’ve been alcohol free for longer than i was suggesting!)

In you're fat pictures you look like Tim Key. This is a complement!

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:52:00 +0000

anonymous how i long to know who you are?

personally i don’t see the resemblance but it’s strange that you should suggest that. in a story i don’t think i’ve ever written about here, shortly after those photos were taken, i found myself living with and then engaged to a girl who had apparently dated tim key while she was a student, and he pretended to be one, at cambridge during the late 90’s.

at the time of our engagement i think we were both hoping the other would solve our current lifestyle induced deficiencies.

amazingly that didn’t work out!

that final act was probably a fitting end, summarising quite perfectly where my life in london had ended. there was certainly no need for an encore.

does anyone know why my old posts are disappearing?

A Double Loss

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:25:00 +0000

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 taken chances, doubled down and rolled again. with this in mind i’m still looking for answers. alcohol was my longest relationship, the hardest break up yet now i feel nothing towards her.

alcohol services helped me stopped, and it may be i should leave it here, but i want to know why for over a decade i was helpless in alcohol’s captive embrace?

it is perhaps my longing for answers that has made me decided to follow up my treatment and see a psychiatrist for a year.

knowing that A is moving on i decided to follow suit and return to my former world of daisy chain dating. today i placed a profile on an online dating site, the same site where A and i met. her old profile had never been removed; apparently with almost all boxes ticked she remains my perfect match. jesus weeps. i removed my profile.

today i am 236 days sober.

my sister suggested recently that if there were before and after...

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:02:00 +0000

my sister suggested recently that if there were before and after pictures of me from when i stopped drinking i could use them in a campaign to suggest the tea i sell has some magical weight loss potential.

well it’s true; i have lost weight. a massive 4 stone or 56 pounds and perhaps tea has helped me lose this however, i suggest it only contributed as far as i substituted alcohol for tea.

not drinking 3000 calories a day is perhaps where the real benefits were gained.

reminiscing earlier i began searching through old photos and found the last pictures i’d taken of myself in london. looking at the date, save for a couple of days, they were taken almost exactly two years ago in november 2009. the reasons for taking these these photos i cannot remember. perhaps there are none. this was not a happy time in my life and was shortly before i were to enter into the turbulent wash to the end.

back then i guess I was playing the odds.

if i had to appear in a photo i made sure a lot were taken. i was aware of what i looked like. terrifyingly this was not me at my worst however, perhaps thankfully, few images exist from that period.

today i took 4 photos of myself. as narcissistic as this sounds i was pleased with all 4.

to walk i currently require the support of crutches. while my life may not be exactly where i want it to be, i do feel my old self returning. i once more find i have a confidence and self assuredness that i can achieve everything i want. this is what i used to feel like however this time i’ll make it without alcohol’s supporting crutch.

today i am 229 sober.

fighting for a working future

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:23:00 +0000

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 question i wanted to answer publicly yet, at the time found myself unsure of what to say.

i fear latterly i have allowed myself to linger but it’s been all too easy to justify.

despite the success of the operation on my knee, recovery remains painful and slow. driftwood’s orders are steadily increasing so - for someone who 7 months ago had nothing save for a pretty girlfriend that called ambulances as her boyfriend drank himself close to death - it’s easy to pretend that i’m a lottery winner.

perhaps i’m being greedy but, i actually want more.

i miss working and the ancillary benefits that creative employment provides. these go far beyond mere monetary remuneration: the creative process, the winning of accounts, the working all night for clients across multiple timezones. i miss being part of a team and the close friendships there that are formed. i deeply long for a return to all of these things, especially the latter.

i wrote before about returning to work but back then it was far too early. i was still involved in another fight.

my fight with alcohol is over - for those who’ve missed it i won - and like a traumatised soldier that has bore witness to horrendous conflict, i cannot find it within myself to return too that war. i do however remain a soldier.

events this week have once more brought clarity to my mind and reawakened my desire to succeed. with the same rigidity of purpose i placed on stopping drinking, i now intend to employ on a return to work.

thomas j watson, founder of ibm, once gave the following quote: “recently, i was asked if i was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. no, i replied, i just spent $600,000 training him. why would i want somebody to hire his experience?”

i feel my own training has now been pretty comprehensive too.

today i am 228 days sober.

In the early days of this blog what made you resist the cravings?

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:41:00 +0100

antabuse. while i would love to say it were my own strength of character, or some form of epiphany, but it was antabuse’s blunt force - its absolute removal of the option to drink - that proved so effective.

i neither wish to endorse nor encourage antabuse as a treatment; each must find their own course however i believe this drug of last option proved to be, if not lifesaving, certainly life changing in my own journey to sobriety.

having twice experienced antabuse in action - both times accidentally, neither time from drinking - i can attest to the effectiveness of its preventative powers.

even without these experiences simply the knowledge that were i to imbibe alcohol, in even the smallest of quantities, i would be running a gauntlet of nausea to coma to death was enough to depose alcohol’s craving dictator.

antabuse provided me with respite from my mind’s constant refrain of ‘when will you drink today.’ it simply removed that option and in the beginning that’s what i needed.

today i am 209 days sober.

How did you fall into drinking so much in the first place?

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:49:00 +0100

i floated through school always somewhere in the middle: neither popular nor unpopular; intelligent nor stupid; neither confident or shy. at 17 i left home and school. i moved to glasgow and enrolled on a music industry course where you signed a band and released their first single. i signed snow patrol.

in glasgow my world changed.

my scruffy burton clothing, that most likely my mother would have bought, was suddenly indie cool. my long blond curtains had become the staple hair of the cute one in boy bands. where puppy fat had once resided i became lithely muscular and grew to be 6’3” tall.

in glasgow i met S. S was the most popular girl in college, filled with a natural confidence and style, she remains one of those girls who society’s eyes follows whenever she enters a room. somehow she picked me out and we became, and remain, the very best of friends. for that year in glasgow we were almost inseparable. she introduced me into a world of individuality, and dare, and girls - that for the first time ever - suddenly wanted me too.

i greedily welcomed popularity, and its ancillary benefits, yet my confidence remained retarded. as cliché as it sounds i turned to alcohol, as so many tragically do, seeking that illusive venier.

over the next decade i felt invincible. i doubled down every at every opportunity - and i kept on winning - yet, my stature, my career, my place in society were all based upon a facade of confidence that arose through my consumption of a drug. that inevitably it would fail should have been obvious however in the midst of addiction clarity is rarely found.

i know where it started, and i know where it ends, but the middle is somewhat of a blur. i cannot not fix upon one particular drink that suddenly pushed me into oblivion; there was never an absolute where my ‘socially acceptable’ student excesses became - what the alcohol industry would like you to believe - anomalous problem drinking.

perhaps addiction began with my first and ended with my last.

today i am 191 days sober.

(don't go back to) rockville

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:49:00 +0100

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 to machines, surrounded by overdosed junkies and the failed suicides - all now seems like a world away to me.

that yesterday i could arrive of my own volition, with some dignity, and still now recall doing so was quiet celebration enough that i’d actually achieved something.

today i am 181 days sober.

recovery in action. this operation was probably the biggest...

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:21:00 +0100

recovery in action.

this operation was probably the biggest decision i had to make since finishing with drink but, since stopping meant fixing my past, getting the knee done was inevitable.

i’ve written before that alcohol remains probably the most effective analgesic i know - and perhaps this is true - yet despite having had little respite using prescribed pain killers, i’ve never found myself thinking that perhaps alcohol would help in this instance.

i did so before. i guess for me this is progress.

this hold especially true when you consider i no longer take either baclofen or antabuse. it is now i alone who prevents myself from drinking and while i can think of time when i’ve been healthier, and happier, i can never think of a time when alcohol has appealed to me less.

today i am 165 days sober.