And another thing

A very good thing happened last week and I forgot all about it. I've started playing football - in the pouring rain first time out. This is an overwhelmingly positive thing. Excercise produces endorphins, it's social and it's pleasure.

I'm signed up to be a regular player every Tuesday night, which will help with my routine building and building a sense of responsibility and I hope it'll decrease my feeling of physical fear.

Yes, football is a good medicine. They're a nice set of lads, it's a friendly game at just about the right standard for me. I'll try and stay on for a drink afterwards next week - I've even been told that one of the players is a freelance journalist who might be a good contact.

I've also asked my doctor to sign me as fit to work from November 1, the date my partner and I set for starting trading in our web business - there's lots to do and I alternate between extremely high hopes and blank fear. I'm working away quite busily on what we can do in advance and well, I'll let you know. I've got so much that I want to do - writing for publication, working on a novel, doing more of my music, running this website on a commercial basis and so on - that I end up paralysed and doing nothing.

I feel the latter right now. Hopefully, tomorrow will help me feel more of the former. I'm apprehensive because it's half-term next week and halloween, with fireworks night to come, giving the local feral youth plenty of opportunities for mischief - paranoia of course, they're really harmless, just a pain who need something useful to fill their time.

It'll be my five month sober birthday next week too. I committed myself to six months sober, but on advice, I'm going to stay on antabuse for at least another month to get me over the holiday season of good cheer and all day drinking to all men - I bet Jesus would be thrilled - and then we'll see. I haven't got my head around the concept of complete sobriety forever and hope that I'll have made enough changes to my mind, my basic being, my whole identity, that I'll be able to use drink (and all drinkers use it - it's a drug and has those effects) as others do, as a pleasant social lubricant. I need to be in a position where I don't need it as an escape from a life I cannot face, because if I start to experiment with it in that state, disaster will befall me - seeking the safety and warmth I can't find in myself in a glass.

Right, I'm going to have a bath and take my pills and watch Match of the Day - football again - and get some sleep. I really feel exhausted and dispirited, but rather than wanting sleep to make life go away I want it so I can start tomorrow.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Love, the Cardiff Drunk.