Drunk in Cardiff

One for the road dear friends

2010-01-04T15:50:00.006Z

A very nice man called Tom said some very nice things about my blog just the other day, for which I am grateful, very grateful.

I was so pleased that I showed what he wrote to Mrs CD. She knows I keep a blog about my recovery, or treatment, or whatever I feel like calling it today, probably someone studying medical coding and billing would know a better name. However, she hadn't read it, and then she did.

"There's quite a lot about me in it," was her first reaction.

Her second reaction was tears.

That's one of the reasons why for the foreseeable at least, Cardiff Drunk is ceasing trading.

I've thought for a while that it's possible that being Cardiff Drunk and writing a blog called Drunk in Cardiff might not be the most healthy of things. I think it encourages me to think about myself in those terms too much and it encourages me to think about myself too much.

I'm pretty much the picture in the book for 'Should get out more'. I live in my head too much and I live online too much and I need to try and do less of both. I have too many secrets and I need to start living in the light a bit more.

So, for the moment, I don't have anything to say.

I'm really grateful for all the nice things people have said to and about me and to all those Chinese blokes sitting at computers putting up comments every day - thanks lads. Particular thanks I think to Anybeth and Ana of Ana's fallen angel for being particularly well, nice... good luck on your own journeys ladies.

I've decided not to delete this blog for the moment, just in case in might be of use to someone, and it's a record for me too. The email address cardiffdrunk@gmail.com is still alive and I'll be back to reply to any comments from time to time. I'm thinking of starting an alcohol and alcoholism news blog, in my own name, and if I do I'll come back and leave a link.

I'm pretty well as I sign off. I've been sober for more than seven months, the longest period in my adult life, I'm on the road to Prozac but considering staying off all medication, I want to start working/looking for work at the end of this month, and I can do 25 press ups in one go, which I would have thought ridiculous at any time in my past.

I may be back, who knows. But for now, if you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD

Home is where the...

2009-12-27T16:41:00.005Z

"I'm at home," I told Mrs CD on the phone.

"Whose home?" she asked.

Good question. This, my parents' home, still feels like my home. I'm slow, I don't deal with change well, I can't cope with it so I ignore it and then it doesn't go away so I smash it in the head with binge-level drink and drug use and create a crisis that will send me home. Addicts and depressants are like this.

Just a visit this time, in order to see my brother, who has the bad fortune to celebrate his birthday on Boxing Day.

Mrs CD is in our home, which I only occasionally think of as my home - partly because of the SSFI's next door and partly because I didn't chose to live there (not the house, the street, the area, the city or the country, although I am delighted to be in the land of my mother's fathers), but I've never chosen to do anything in my life. This sounds dramatic I know, but, sadly it is true. This is why, when I think of change, and the changes I would like to make to my life I think in apocalyptic terms - this hasn't been my life at all, it has been the life of other people, the life of alcohol and drugs and the life of fear.

I'd like my own life.

I wonder what that's like? Perhaps you can tell me.

These posts should have more structure dontcha think? I do. I think I should start writing with more discipline, but I just sit and type - I enjoy it, so sod yer if you don't - with little thought of how it might read. This, you lucky person (in so far as you exist) is a sewage outlet straight from the mind of the Cardiff Drunk - although, as I've said before, you're not getting the whole picture, that would be too horrible.

So, now it strikes me that I was struck yesterday with a Pavlovian response that sent me salivating for a drink. I drove home (whose?) from Cardiff and managed to troll straight past my intended junction. No big deal, I have two choices and the second takes me through my old stomping grounds when I was a successful journalist (sod it, I've had too much regret about the way that time ended - in drink, in overdose, in solicitor's offices trying to put together an employment tribunal case - another course that was chosen for me by others. Digression again. But, yes, sod it. I was extraordinarily good at my job. You might not guess it from this, and that's why I worry that I ought to write more 'professionally', but I was a fucking natural.)

Where was I? I was driving through what I used to call my patch and as I turned off to drive past where I once lived so happily - in a place where I chose to live with a friend who I chose to live with - I started to salivate for booze.

The road I used to toddle down after work after having gone to the pub for a couple after the office shut and with a car full of Guinness and with a bag of the best quality green stuff waiting for me at home.

God, I thought I was really happy then, though I was almost certainly storing up trouble for myself. Much happier than I am now, I sometimes think when I'm down. Sober though I be.

Mrs CD asked me that the other day. She has a habit of asking these unanswerably big questions: "Am I alright for you?", "Do you want someone sexier?" and so on. And, the other day it was, "Did I force you to come here, were you happy there on your farm with your drink and your dope?"

"My life is much better now," I told her.

And, it is. I was in debt then, and it was mounting. But, I had a job and I was a functioning alcoholic, in fact my drinking was of concern to others - primarily my parents - but not to me. My lifestyle was not healthy but it was part of me and it was my part of me, the same with the smoking - both things I chose. Perhaps that's what it's like for me to chose my life, not very good. But I guess this is what this is all about, the self-esteem books which lie unread, the counselling, the antabuse, the trying to grow up.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Frilly crackers to yer.

Cardiff Drunk.

Minesweeping we have known

2009-12-25T18:59:00.003Z

Ah yes, mine sweeping. Do you remember mine sweeping? Do you mine sweep yourself? It's probably a teenage thing really, but I've always done it.

And, I remembered it today. All those half-empty glasses my abstemious parents, my sensible drinking Mrs CD and her near teetotal parents left round the place. It comes so naturally that I did in fact find myself scanning for them; the glasses I could filch, take out to the kitchen and neck on the way. The bottles I could fetch and open and sneak swigs from. I offered to go and get the brandy to fire the pudding with (none for me) out of habit, bad habit, dead habit.

So, this is Christmas and what have you done? Survived innit. Not too bad really and sober as a choirboy (I wouldn't have been, when I was a lad I was briefly in a band who rehearsed in a chapel - we stole the communion wine. Imagine our horror when we discovered our Methodist brethren got to God without the use of alcohol, fair play to them.)

It's a bit of a strain being around family, particularly when in counselling most of which is to do with things that happened a long time ago in a place just over an hour's drive away. I love my parents, as far as I feel anything at the moment, but I'm also in long and ongoing discussions about how they fucked me up - as, of course, every one's parents does for everyone. It's one of the reasons I will never have children, why spread the pain further.

Ah, but something of note has occurred! Christmas Eve was a day without dope. I went to make one in the kitchen - I go outside for all my smoking, legal and otherwise so there's no suspicion in that - and Mrs CD's father came towards the door so I stopped. I could have gone back to it I suppose but I was quite pleased with myself for just saying no. I think I'll do the same today. I can't remember the last time I went for a day without smoking; it's been a long time.

I find myself feeling relatively positive about things. I had feared that the local kids would be out in full force, but it's been very quiet around here lately, since the petition came round in fact and I've also found myself worrying less. I'm toodling along quite happily on my lower dose Trazadone, which gives me a good night's sleep. My appetite isn't very good and I'm down to two meals a day, but they tend to be somewhat substantial. Mrs CD's at home, so my domestic duties are shared and the house looks nice and I'm doing more than my share.

Still, there lurk the demons, the misery that can lead to drink, the regret that I can't really socialise without drink - yet, it's supposed to be yet you're saying, let's try and see change as incremental shall we CD?

Mmm, talking to self, time to go.

Somehow I feel large and positive changes are on the horizon.

And of course I wish you a happy Christmas.

Counselling again

2009-12-23T13:26:00.004Z

Counselling again yesterday and a mixed bag. At the very least it means I get up earlyish.

But, I seem a little resistant to counselling at the moment. When I was really storming forward and making progress I couldn't wait for it but at the moment it's hard work to get anything out of me and I feel for my counsellor (who I am now going to start referring to as L) who's pulling teeth at the moment.

I've come to the end of one batch of counselling and we had to have a review to check on progress and how I'm doing. I filled in a CORE form. Anyone who's ever been treated for depression in a serious way will have seen one of these. Over 30 questions on your mood - in the last week... I have felt terribly alone... not at all, sometimes, often, most or all of the time.

We compared it to the form I filled in when I first came in for counselling. L was a little shocked I think, as my score had rocketed from around 30 to 89, and the stuff about ending my own life, hurting myself, being bothered by unwanted thoughts and memories was all in the highest category.

I thought long and hard while filling in the form, and have to acknowledge that the timing was bad, coinciding as it did with a change in medication.

We talked about it - my thoughts about death - and happily agreed it's quite normal for me. I wrote about this the other day but it seems worth repeating so I shall. I think about suicide regularly and quite dispassionately, it's my escape card and it's always somewhere in my mind - well, if things get worse I can always take an overdose. I'm quite relaxed about it but people I tell are less so.

That was the main discussion really. I'm struggling to remember the session even now - it seems terribly important while I'm there, but it goes so quickly, I used to have a magnificent memory (although it's been a curse too, not letting me forget pain I'd be best read of) but it's certainly slipping. Daily dope probably isn't helping.

I was so brave back then - I'm going to change my life completely, live completely differently - and perhaps I'm coming to terms with the fact that I just don't have the courage for that and will continue largely as I have: saying yes when I mean no, keeping my thoughts to myself, anything for a quiet life.

Is that so bad? I'm sober and healthy, I don't have debts, I have a secure home and my thinking has become notably less apocalyptic and focused on burning down my current life in order to build a new one. I told my L how bad I am at noticing or acknowledging change, I can't think of it as something incremental - I don't think, 'Oh, it's good I got up at 9am, not 1pm.' I think, 'It's a fucking disaster I didn't get up at 8am, I am a loser and a failure and always will be, I might as well have a spliff and ruin the day'.

With Mrs CD at home, I'm smoking less and not at all during the day, and when I do, that's when I have my bad moods.

New year is the time for change isn't it, and there are things I want to do - I want to start to earn a living; I've been dependent on others my whole life and I want some independence and that's the big and scary thing I really want to face. I want to have a self, and a self with some self esteem.

I've nearly finished my Charles Bukowski book. I've read it before, many times, so I can't really say that it pressages a great improvement in my concentration, but it's something. I've also started watching a box set of series two (season is for Americans) of The Wire, and am loving it - in so far as I love anything while trying to pick it apart and analyse it as I go.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

If you're reading this because of your own problems with drink and depression I really am thinking of you and hoping that things are going OK - Christmas is a hard time, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE HAVING FUN, it's all about family and pressure and EVERYONE IS DRUNK, so remember to look after yourself. I can't offer any failsafe tactics but having somewhere you can be on your own, quite calmly is I think a good thing.

Cardiff Drunk.

A shop full of sherry

2009-12-23T13:18:00.004Z

If I'd have written this last night, as I wanted to, it would have been a mess of misey, a potage of pity and an, errm, pate of umbrage.

Now, however, I feel quite bright.

Mrs CD and I have done our Christmas shop and got to the supermarket in time to avoid the worst crowds and the shortest temperatures. I seem quite relaxed about drink at the moment - quite glad not to be in with the indulgent. We bought a bottle of brandy for the pudding, a bottle of sherry and a bottle of Cava and, as she always does, Mrs CD asked me, "Do you mind?" And, no, I don't mind in the slightest.

I haven't been to the pub for a while now and maybe that's helping too. I think my time for pubs has passed now. Of course, I still think about grog, and not in a healthy way - I don't think of a drink, I think of drunk. Hell, it's our national drug and it's everywhere. A story in the newspaper the other day recorded the falling of prices to such an extent that alcohol is now cheaper than water in some stores. Well, you're welcome to it, go and knock yourself out.

I've settled into some sort of calm. Is it a calm before a storm? I don't know, I thought for a while that it must be but now I can see that it doesn't have to be that way. Remarkable really. I'm even quite looking forward to seeing my parents and Mrs CD's too - normally a cause of much panic.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Restart the world, I might want to get back on again

2009-12-20T21:59:00.004Z

Another good day round Cardiff Drunk's neck of the woods (do woods have necks?)

Last night Mrs CD and I had a chat about what I should do with my medication next. I'd been on the internet looking at fora about anti-depressants and side effects and so on and managed to quite scare myself with what I was reading about Prozac/Fluoxetine - 'I'm in hell', '21 days in and I want to stop' and the like. I didn't have too many problems the last time I took the stuff; in the end I was taken off it because of very bad nausea but the mental effects as I remember them were pretty positive.

I can even vividly remember telling my then girlfriend that I was feeling better within hours of taking the first capsule - so quickly in fact that I wonder if it must have been a placebo effect of 'doing something'.

But, this lower dose of Trazadone is suiting me very well, and it's got me thinking about completely coming off all this stuff - or as much of it as I can manage.

I feel lighter, less lethargic, less despairing. Bitter experience makes me cautious of this, but I wonder how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy that is: I expect things to go badly, so they go badly.

I'm certainly, tomorrow, going to cash in my prescription for 18 100mg Trazadone capsules. When I last saw the doctor she was very keen that I should start the Fluoxetine as soon as I finished the Trazadone - although it was my keenness to make the change quickly that persuaded her that I shouldn't stabilise for longer on a lower dose of the latter.

I think I'm going to take her advice on that. "Come back in if you find you're struggling," she told, and was very insistent on the matter. I'd come in in a pretty low state and reporting suicidal feelings - "Although not with any serious intention of acting on them," I said in my stock response to questions about these thoughts.

It sounds dramatic to say that thinking about killing myself is a constant, but it's true - I'd go so far as to say I'm obsessed with death; what it means, what it feels like, and that's mine, yours, loved ones and so on. How to do it, do I have enough pills to do it, when will I do it, what will I do first and so on and so on.

But, it's rare that I feel I'm actually moving towards acting on these thoughts - why am I so fricking absent from my own thoughts and opinions that I don't even know this for sure, that I talk about it in such a distant and observing way? Don't know, does everyone think like this? I'd love to know.

Enough of the mordant tangent (good name for a band I think you'll agree), let's accentuate the positive. I'm calmer, I'm enjoying things more - things like music and the company of Mrs CD appreciably and almost exponentially more.

We talked the other night about what had changed about me - I would have said not very much - and she highlighted two things she thought were massive: "When you began to talk," and, "When you gave up coffee."

"Talk about what?" I asked.

"About what you think and feel," she answered.

Crikey. This is news to me. But, I suppose it's good news isn't it?

Six months alcohol free. Let's not forget that. I'm further away from a guaranteed downer I'd been drowning my brain in every day, I've been on six months of Campral and vitamins, I've been eating OK and now I get at least some exercise every week. Maybe contacting X helped to exorcise the most significant ghosts in my mind?

I'm not swinging from the chandeliers, nor any closer to earning money with which to buy chandeliers from which to swing when the time is appropriate, for example I was low this morning, but came out of it.

It can't be anything but a boost either that Mrs CD is on holiday and feeling bright and breezy herself. She's in quite a good and confident position with her work and the changes she plans to make there and we both seem to be coping with the idea of the Christmas influx OK. (I have my fears but they're less insistent than usual.) The house is together and tidy and we're pretty much on top of everything. She's been on her own new antidepressant for about a month and, although she was reluctant to go back on to any mood medication, she seems to have benefited from it.

But for me, it looks like a period of stabilisation for me at the moment.

You'll have noted that I still believe myself to be fascinating, so expect more updates of stunning mundanity as the days pass into 2010.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

The Cardiff Drunk

Double-plus-good

2009-12-19T18:39:00.003Z

Things have, quite suddenly, started going well. And, I'm inclined to think that reducing the dose of Trazadone has a lot to do with it - I feel more alive, less medicated, more emotional. Who, indeed, would have thought it.

I've been greatly cheered by reading some Charles Bukowski too. God, I love Chuck, and identify with him almost totally - whether this is a good thing or not is probably up for discussion.

It's nice to read something, and although it's re-reading, I've been skipping throught it with no problem with concentration.

Mrs CD has finished work for Christmas, and we spent a pleasant morning in bed, doing what couples are supposed to do and which we haven't been doing for a long time because I'm a miserable, stoned, self-loathing twonk.

Too much information, I suspect.

I managed to do my volunteering on Friday and go and see my partner in the website. I missed a couple of things, getting a prescription and taking my antabuse, but I'm quite relaxed about that.

I actually found myself (ridiculous phrase, never use it again) playing the guitar again; just for fun. JUST FOR FUN. JUST FOR FUN. These are big things in the Cardiff Drunk brain. I feel grateful for my good fortune in life without hating myself for being undeserving and just more relaxed and sorted all round.

So, stop taking so many happy pills, get happier.

We're on the road to Prozac.

If you spent it thank you for your time.

Much love,

The Cardiff Drunk.

Musical

2009-12-17T16:11:00.003Z

This is what I listened to to day: Rage Against The Machine, Bullet in the Head, and Killing in the Name Of, then a bit of Big Black Kerosene, then The Enemy, We'll live and Die in These Towns, and a whole lot of Wonder Stuff. A whole big gooey pie of nostalgia, anger and disappointment. Strangely, it was Rage Against The Machine that made me cry, a video of them performing over some riot footage, I was glad that the tears came - good God, I felt something!

Darkness descending

2009-12-15T21:31:00.004Z

I'm back. Back as a Cardiff Drunk after a brief four days as a London Drunk. Still not a drinking drunk but a drunk nonetheless, that seems to be the way of things.

I spent today in bed. All of it until about 5pm. I had two baths. I ate a plate of beans on toast then I went out and played football. Then I came home had two spliffs, made a cup of tea and came and sat here.

I'm still in the drumpers. Surviving in a world of grey. Hating the day and wanting only to sleep. No interest in anything, no pleasure in anything, only dread.

I have to try and have a better day tomorrow. Going to London was a mixed blessing. It involves being around successful people like my brother and my former best friend from school.

My main concern at the moment is that I feel no emotion whatsoever. I feel completely blank, that's the perfect way to describe my state at the moment, just blank.

I'm going to see the doctor tomorrow. The plan is to complete my move from Trazadone to Fluoxetine. I've never really put much store in antidepressants. I take them and have taken them for years, but because I can't actually feel any drug-like high from them I don't imagine them to be doing much. Well, perhaps they are. Perhaps that's why I'm like this at the moment, because of the reduced Trazadone dose.

I felt a little lighter last week because my mornings were free of the Trazadone hangover. I wonder what the doctor will say? I had a good appointment with her last time and felt I was taken seriously, treated like someone with an illness rather than someone who should stop drinking, or just cheer up.

I'm going to try and tell her how seriously low I feel and tell her that unless I can find something that will help lighten the conversation I'm permanently having with myself, I'm very likely to start drinking again, because I know that shuts it up completely.

Arse.

If you spent it thank you for your time.

Love you all, as ever,

Cardiff Drunk.

Your hopefully, Cardiff Drunk.

2009-12-09T22:43:00.003Z

I feel I should write something after my last counselling session. In this big old battle, I think counselling is my potent weapon.

It was a good old session, but it was hard work. I was dragging words out of myself rather and thinking, thinking, thinking. There are some rather unpalatable things about my personality that I have to delve into if I am to change them and a terribly well-defined divide between Good and Evil (sorry for the biblical langauge, but that's the way I think about this) in my life.

It's all very screwed up, very bad, and very damaging. I felt the usual lightness that comes from a bit of confession but it's all kept going round in my head. I'm thinking too much, I'm brooding, I'm spending too long on the computer, I'm smoking too much dope (see recent posts), I'm all in a pickle and very distracted.

It feels like a big change is coming somehow. Mrs CD and I spoke about it today, I think she is unsettled too - she spoke about moving away somewhere and living a completely different and very green life, that's her dream - is it mine?

I'm going to London on Friday, to see my brother and I just see it as a chore at the moment, something to be survived. Although I had some wonderful times in the capital city I also had some terrible ones, very specifically in the area I'm going to be visiting. I feel I should be doing other things but I don't know what they are, and besides I have ample opportunity every day to do things and I just sit.

Sometimes I think this whole sobriety thing is just a little step on my journey and there's a big crash to come and a cleansing fire to burn. I mentioned in a comment that I haven't really signed up to the idea that I'm an alcoholic who just can't ever drink again and I know I may well be kidding myself. The thing is, that while I've been mentally in some very bad places, I've always been so molly coddled, so protected and surrounded by people who want to help me I've never, ever, really experienced the consequences of my actions, including my drinking - I've been sad, yes, and I've attempted suicide, but even in that I don't feel as if I've hit rock bottom. The kick has never been hard enough to really jolt me. In fact, my drinking has remained stubbornly damaging but not too damaging, I have been able to control it that much - I've never drunk in the morning, I've very rarely drunk spirits, I feel as if I'm probably going back there some day.

Bad times here, but I won't drink. I won't drink at least until the new year, if I do then - I think about it often, but I won't drink yet, I'm not well enough, not by a long way. The fact is if I think of drinking (as I almost constantly do in these rather troubling days) it's not the nice social couple of pints that should be my aim were I to start drinking again, it's being hammered, it's the magical thrumming of the blood that comes with the first pint of the day as morning turns into afternoon - nothing will ever match that feeling I don't think.

I'm not blogging terribly well at the moment, I'm blogging a lot but it's all rather confused isn't it.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Your's hopefully,

Cardiff Drunk.

Free?

2009-12-09T21:14:00.003Z

"Isn't it great to wake up in the morning and be free!"

That's what a lad said to me outside the Community Addiction Unit the other day. I think he was called Joe, and I really should remember because our conversation felt important at the time.

I gave him some tobacco because he'd left his at home, and he told me a bit about himself. His heroin addiction, losing his mother, alcoholism, homelessness. I feel a fake and a fraud when I hear what other people have gone through to land in addiction - my very comfortable life and my self-inflicted problems feel, well, lightweight.

It makes me angry at myself: I've had every opportunity you can imagine and I've pissed it all away, to this.

I think I've a long way to go to be free as well. A long way.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

The Cardiff Drunk.

Brightness. Badness.

2009-12-09T12:41:00.003Z

Yesterday's good stuff did leech into today. The full schedule, the physical exercise, the social contact and the reduced dose of Trazadone made my start to the day as bright as it has been for a long time.

The sun shone too and I was up fairly early, not long after 9am. I made it out too, and there was where the feeling of well-being really hit me: I was much less nervous of my surroundings than I usually am. Mornings are the best time around here anything, the people who are likely to cause me anxiety - young people, dodgy looking people, are either asleep or in school.

My mood does go up and down through the day and generally follows this pattern. Lets say this is a good day - there are days when there is no variation at all, it's just down - one where I manage to get out of bed properly and get about my business.

I start the day feeling pretty bright and this will continue until I have a low around 3 or 4pm. This coincides with kids coming home from school and I think I've learned to be anxious and fearful around this time. It's just struck me that another learned pattern may be contributing, and that is a drinking pattern. Around 4pm I'd have to start thinking about leaving the pub and returning home to make dinner for Mrs CD. I generally get a bit of an up in the evening too at around 8pm when I get a feeling that there's not going to be any need to leave the house again and that I am safe. Sadly, the day usually ends on a low after staring too long at a computer and knowing that going to bed at 11.30pm means at least an hour of listening to the SSFIs next door.

I'm still pretty bright, but, of course, I've done my best to sabotage it by having a spliff (something that was notable for its absence from yesterday's busy programme). Learn from this Cardiff Drunk, learn from it.

Counselling, my great hope

2009-12-08T22:01:00.002Z

"You can't expect to well every day, you just have to try and do well more days than not."

That's what Mrs CD just said to me. She's a wise old fish isn't she? I envy her sense of perspective. I'm quite tired now, and I haven't even taken my tablets yet, I don't know why I'm even sitting and starring at this stupid screen. I've got nothing to say, except I hate the SSFIs next door, and that I don't need another spliff but I'm about to have one.

Nighty night sweethearts.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

200mg and a good day-ish (it's always ish)

2009-12-08T16:59:00.004Z

Well, I took my two little 100mg purple and green capsules last night, cutting down my dose of Trazadone to 200mg.

So far, and I know it's early days - day even, nothing but good stuff. I slept well, which is a relief, Trazadone's warm and drowsy embrace are what I love it for. And, there was a notable improvement in my liveliness this morning.

That's partly chemical, and partly me. I'd made a list you see - things to do. A counselling appointment always helps and whenever possible I make these as early in the morning as can be arranged, 10:30 today, because I know counselling is the one thing I absolutely won't ditch on.

So out I popped and on with the list. Some shopping, then home and it's lunchtime - and I ate lunch! Cooked something and sat down and ate the thing. And, then I washed up afterwards! Another note for the file: perfectly normal things everyone over 12 can do but Cardiff Drunk never learned.

So far so fanfare for me - oh, and a drumroll for putting the washing out too.

God, this is a dull old post isn't it. I was going to write about my counselling in another post because once I get going I've got a million things to say and I've been gazing with envy at other bloggers who can write concisely.

So, that's about it really. All I have to do now on my list is make a meal for me and Mrs CD, go and play football, come home and do some writing and then I'll have done EVERYTHING. Amazing, unprecedented, sod your Copenhagen summit the big news is in Cardiff people.

Let's see if I can keep it going - the much cherished, often spoken of but seldom believed in ROUTINE, has made it's first steps into the light.

Laters people.

If you spent it, thank you for your time,

Cardiff Drunk - who really, really loves you all.

Pill dilemma

2009-12-07T23:16:00.003Z

I intended to call one of my previous posts Pill Dilemma.

I'm aware that the amount of blogging I'm doing at the moment is possibly a little extreme, but I've got a lot going on and I'm trying to cut down on the several thousand word rambles, so this ones about my medication.

The one drug I've never neglected to take is Trazadone - sleepy, lovely, Trazadone, and SSFI-neighbour-proof sleep too.

But, I'm on the way to SSRI land, next stop Prozac, and have supposed to be cutting down my dose since the doctor's appointment.

I hadn't until tonight, but, in the spirit of, 'one more things won't make much difference' I've just taken 200mg rather than 300. These come in capsule form rather than tablet and I was going to say that I don't know what effect that might have on the medication, but, if early signs are to be believed, it might mean it works more quickly.

One of the reasons I want to change from Trazadone is that I'm aware how reliant on it I've become - not to manage my mood, although, I would say (and, I've tended to find that this is all an antidepressant can do) I think it has stabilised me to an extent. No, I need it to make me sleep, I'm addicted to that aspect of it and I get in a mild panic if I think I'm going to run out of it.

Bugger.

My dilemma is I'm not sure how good an idea it is for me to be changing anything at the moment - and I'm also aware at the stultifying effect on my recovery this kind of fear is having.

Scared to do anything.

Well, 200mg it is, let's see how it goes.

Night, night all. Nos da as my mother's tongue would have it.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Ready, steady, f**k!

2009-12-07T22:35:00.003Z

Excuse my language in the title. I tone down my language considerably on this blog; were you to meet me in the flesh you'd probably be disgusted by my course and foul speech.

But, that expletive is deserved and, as ever in self-loathing land (which is where I seem to be living this week) it's aimed at me.

It could have been so different, it could have been so much better, but then idiot man had to try and get out of bed.

I'm really starting to feel more and more like that in my doltage.

So, what's the best way for me to start the day? A spliff and a hot bath? No, that's not the right answer. I won't go over in great detail the extent to which that is NOT THE RIGHT ANSWER, but suffice to say that the psychologist who gave me such helpful and splendidly useful advice about dealing with anxiety would be shaking his head at the stupidity of it all were he here to see me.

I had two things to do today. Some little bits of housework and a trip to the Community Addiction Unit to take my Antabuse.

I have, after managing to pull some sort of self-respect out of my wretched arse, managed to make a decent stab at putting out some washing, cooking a meal, picking up some books and stuff. I managed to make it out of the house, just about at around 4.30pm, which is when I got up.

I missed the pills again. I can take them myself perfectly well of course, and sometimes I do, but if I'm honest, usually I don't if I don't make the walk to the Community Addiction Unit (this setting up of rituals the falling apart of one part of which renders the whole excercise spoiled in my mind, is common to much of my life).

This starting to get a bit Russian Roulette-like. I haven't sorted out my other medication either - ritual: it must go in the pill tray on Sunday - and, it's only writing this now and being slapped in the face by my own staggering ability, and even desire to create difficulties for myself that I'll take at least some of it tonight.

Two things I logically know will really, really help me in every way - getting a routine and keeping busy, and I can't even manage that.

I'm making a bit of an attempt tomorrow. I've written it all down. The tasks and appointments I have would cause little trouble to a child of average intelligence, yet to me their completion will be a cause of celebration. I'm probably setting myself up for a fall by even attempting so much, yet, really, I want to be better and I want to live an ordinary - damn it even an interesting, fullfilled and productive - life and this stuff is that at its most basic.

Two of the things on my list are among my big positives: counselling and playing football.

Of everything on that list it's counselling that I simply will not miss. It's been very important for me lately - hard work sometimes, but giving me a taste of the great release I think I'm going to have to go through on this li'l ol' journey of mine (sorry, hateful reality tv bogwort that journey stuff).

Anyone who's been reading this at all regularly of late will have seen a lot of self-criticism on here and that I fear is going to come up in the session tomorrow - I don't like myself, and what do you have to say about that?

I'm looking forward to it and will no doubt tell you all about it.

If you spent it, thank you for your time,

Take it steady youngsters, Cardiff Drunk. X

Bigmouth strikes again...

2009-12-07T22:24:00.003Z

X has replied after my third email. Good old self-obsessed, selfish me, of course, didn't think for a minute that someone might possibly have other things to do than indulge in long, intense, very personal, not particularly pleasant wallows through the sludge of my mind.

She sent a lovely reply and I'm mortified to hear that she's not good - she too suffers from depression and anxiety - and I'm causing further not good by essentially stalking her.

I must admit I feel somewhat the heel.

However, we have ended our little exchange on quite friendly virtual terms with a hope to talk a little more when she feels better.

She too, I think, shares my pain at the way we've managed - with some of the best intentions ever known to man - to misunderstand, miscommunicate with and cause hurt to each other.

It has been selfish of me to try and contact her, and to do so with such doggedness, but I have to say it's something I have felt compelled to do - if you can train your brain and completely control your thoughts, then I'm a long way off managing it and I was thinking about her every day, I have drowned a lot of memories in drink so, now, they bob up.

I hope it can help us both in the end.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk

Here brain, here!...

2009-12-07T22:08:00.005Z

I could probably, at a very long stretch, say I'm a good multi-tasker, but the reality is probably that my magpie mind has a magpie mind (smaller I presume) all of its own.

I can't do one thing at once. Simply can't. I always have to be listening to something, or doodling at something, or playing at something, or something at the same time as I try to read or write or work.

I'd love to have a calmer mind you know. It has served me well and the hustle bustle world of knowing a little about a hell of a lot of things of the journalist was where it really came into its own.

In these less busy times however, it's got a tendency to be a bit of an enemy (I did once write a line in a song which talked about being 'At war with your own mind' - don't worry, you'll never have to hear it). It's got a lot to do with my anxiety - I'm always scanning for danger, looking ahead, preparing a defensive response, looking for exits, preparing my excuses. But with nothing to fill it's time it gets nasty, the negative voice in my head is the result of too much time to think. The feeding this negative unicourse (new word ok - I didn't want to say monologue, cos there's definitely an argument of sorts going on) gets from my canabis intake is another debit mark for my current drug of choice - the case against is becomes compelling, but then I've known that for a while - perhaps telling the blog is a way of moving closer towards actual action.

I always said that staying sober would require me to be busy. And, I haven't done all that well at that. I do have things to do, but when my mind is freed from drink it runs around like a lunatic looking for twenty exciting, compelling, things that are going to make my life fantastic. Faced with all of them, I do nothing, then I hate myself for doing nothing.

Meditation is one of the many things I put on that list to do and it's something that might well help me calm my mind - I've got the book... I've got the time... Really, I've got no excuses.

So, what's stopping me? See above.

If you spent it, thank you for your time,

The Cardiff Drunk - I really loves you man, yer me bessht mate

Who the hell did that then?

2009-12-06T22:56:00.003Z

I feel I should be clear about something now. I'm not completely honest on here.

Yes, when I'm blogging well and regularly, I do tend to write an awful lot of my life up on here, but it's far from being a complete picture. What I do, particularly in so far as it relates to my alcohol-related life, is here.

But not everything. There are thoughts I have, and indeed, things I do, which I don't touch upon because they trouble me too much - I am ashamed of them. They worry me and, particularly in the bad times, and particularly when I smoke too much (and, I do, frequently, and if I were completely honest I might start to admit to myself that with canabis, as with alcohol, one's too much) these thoughts make me fear a little for my mental health.

I know I'm depressed, but I'm starting to believe that a lot of that is within my control - however feebly I try to take that control over my life. But, I'm starting to worry that the way I've managed to compartmentalise my life and my thoughts mean something a little more serious.

I've spoken to my counsellor about my splitting of my life into two component parts: one, a public and very, very, controlled and watched life, lived primarily to the end of pleasing others; the other a secret life (much of my drinking life for example) where anything is possible if it's possible to get away with it.

There are parts of my life and myself that I cannot cope with and I think I have convinced myself that someone else is living that life.

Oh joy, it's just gone 11pm, so the children next door - aged at a guess, 3, 6 and 9 - have been moved upstairs before they go to bed. I wonder if tonight they'll watch the telly, loudly, in the room adjoining our bedroom, or perhaps have one of their screaming fights again? It's a school night, so they'll almost certainly be asleep by 1am. I have invented a new secret nickname for them, it doesn't contain any nice words, so I have turned it into an acronym and used it as a label for this post.

Tis the season... Stormy weather....

2009-12-06T20:54:00.003Z

Ah, Christmas shopping... because the chief thing Jesus was trying to get across in his teachings was, and I think this comes across particularly clearly in the Sermon on the Mount, that we should all have more stuff.

Bah humbug! But, I shouldn't be so cynical, and the last time I posted anything even vaguely religious I got spam comments trying to save my soul, which I truly appreciate believe you me.

But, I don't think Christmas in its modern form brings the best out of us really, and it's not a time of year I enjoy.

It's also - because this is another key tennet of the Christian message - spazzed central.

This will be my second sober Christmas, as, although I hadn't been detoxed and I wasn't really engaging with any treatment for alcoholism last year I was abstinent at the time. It didn't survive long after that.

Actually, the whole bloody set-up seems designed to throw the unsuspecting recoveree (as I am moved to style myself today) screaming towards the nearest gin palace for a 12 day bender.

You're expected to spend money - in fact it's your moral duty and if you fail to do so you are a despicable failure - so any financial problems you may have will be racheted up a notch or two.

Family will come round. In my case two sets of parents who've only met each other once (last Christmas) and to me seem to have little in common. Mrs CD considers herself hostess, which she loves, but which also puts her own often delicate equilibrium under heavy stress. And, of course, everyone drinks, all day.

At the moment, I just want to bugger off somewhere quiet on my own. In fact, it would be perfect! My mum and dad could come here and I could go there. No bother.

Counselling on Tuesday, which, as ever, I'm looking forward to - there's a lot to talk about and at this very moment in time I feel the prospect of it all rather exhausting.

No reply yet, of course, from Ex - is that good or bad? Who knows. It's pretty upsetting - but, knowing the history quite understandable - that someone who means so much to you is unreachable. But then, when I fuck up, I tend to fuck up big time.

Not happy thoughts.

So, this Sunday, I think it's safe to say that while there are some minor improvements in the routines of living, the big picture is one of stormy weather.

Good blog, nice, positive blog... Plans for simpletons in life... Change...

2009-12-05T22:04:00.005Z

Well, after those worrying ponders about the blog, and the wisdom thereof, it seems as though the fit of writing yesterday did seem to help my mood; I almost instantly felt better.

So here we go again.

Today has been a pretty good day too, and I really needed it to help lift that recent gloom and that awful feeling that something was going to crash. It showed me, in the head-crashingly simple and straightforward way that seems to work best with old stupid here, that I can do better and I can help improve my mood.

For starters, we - Mrs Cd and I - had a plan. That was the last thing I was given to do by my counsellor before I went into the darkness - an agreed attempt to try and get through one day with some sort of routine and reach the end of it feeling as if I'd achieved what I wanted to. It didn't need to be a lot - the aim was to get three meals, not do anything that would make me hate myself, and go to bed tired but happy.

Today there was a list with an early start - well, 9am, which for me is early. And, I just about made it out of bed and into the desk to 'work' for 9.15. Then, once I'd woken Mrs CD from her much needed slumber, I managed to eat breakfast and we set off to face the big wide world.

And, we managed really well. Got through a couple of tasks, made it home and Mrs CD made a lovely meal and went out while I went back to the computer.

Small steps. But steps in the right direction.

With the rushing in of reality so assiduously ignored, there's an overload in fresh sobriety. And, I'm also willing to admit now that I'm pretty fucked up in many ways - there's lots about me that I don't like, there's lots about me that I want to change, there's lots about my life that I hate and regret, there's just lots of everything.

But, it's down to me now. I force myself into pain and regret because it's safe and it's familiar, I flirt with the idea of drinking because it's safe and familiar, I don't change anything because it's safe and familiar. Safe and familiar and the coward's way out and the easy option.

Now, today, I had a better day and I know why I had a better day. So, and this is a new idea this one, let's try and do it again. And then again. And consolidate this valuable little lesson and stop being such a hidebound, monstrous fool.

Fercrissake I might even take that lower dose of Trazadone tonight and forget the fear of not sleeping and just fucking get on with things.

Some wise words I probably need to consider.

2009-12-04T20:50:00.004Z

I hadn't blogged for a while, it always comes in fits and starts, so when I do I end up having a little trog round the blogosphere, usually through the wonderfully slippery process of clicking links on followers, and blogs I follow, and comments on those blogs and so on - you could get lost for days, and I can certainly manage hours.

Well, off I trotted today, and I ended up at a very good and moving blog about depression, which exactly described my experience and feelings of depression - here is the address: http://www.strayblackdog.co.uk/

And, there in the comments was this, which may even be even wiser than the original post:

However, there are things you can do for yourself which might help. I don't think you'll like this suggestion but I might as well offer it. Reconsider the blog. Really. I know because I speak from experience, that although writing a blog is a way of communicating with people in what can be an extremely isolated existence, it's also an extremely effective way of convincing yourself that things can never be different. Because every day you're repeating a mantra of depression; every day you're telling yourself that you *are* depressed, *still* depressed - God when will this end?!

I promise you, it can get better and you can have times that don't hurt quite so much. But for me, in order to get to where I am today, I had to let go of some of the things I used to think helped me. And that included reading and writing about depression almost daily. I'm not suggesting you should abandon your blog all together but think about what I have said perhaps. It's little wonder we stay depressed when all we think about is being depressed!

Now, there's a thought! I have been making my occasional bloggeries with the thought that it is theraputic, and two counsellors, including my current one, have suggested it may well be so. I've also had the pompous stated aim of 'helping others in the same situation', and that still stands, although I don't know if it does. I also enjoy writing - more than that, it really is my natural first language - and used to do it for a living and want to do it for a living again, so I consider this practice of a sort, working on my skills even. I love the fact that some people read it and it feeds my ego.

What if that's all so much smoke? I'm really going to have a ponder on that one - I note that the blogger to which the comment was addressed hasn't posted since that post. I can't stop writing, but I do have other outlets for that, and it is certainly true that each of these posts, if they slip easily enough off the keyboard, involve a lot of thinking - invariably thinking about alcoholism and depression.

There's also a sense in which I'm aware of slightly using my depression and alcoholism - to gain that attention my needy, weedy ego demands. Alcoholism and depression makes me 'special', and it's been the source of most of my freelance writing commissions to date - it's always newsworthy in this country.

I'll still blog - I certainly need to start up the blog I really want to write, the humourous interesting one, the one that will get me work. I've been stressing about not writing here and I kind of hoped to get into a routine of doing it, as a positive thing. I've even thought of doing some little things to promote it - setting up a facebook page or joining some of the blog networks, or taking a more active role in the ones I've already joined, but all that does even more to define me as ALCOHOLIC, DEPRESSIVE... After all, I do this anonymously in order that my name shouldn't become associated with it, in order that I can't be googled and pop up as ALCOHOLIC... Damn, I just finished the post and have to label it, label it and its writer - alcoholism, depression, anxiety, antidepressants, regret...

Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't. Mmm, much to think about. In many ways this is a time of great uncertainty and of big decisions I feel, an important time. Cue Husker Du if I can find them!

(If they did one of those textual analysis clouds you can have done on your Facebook profile, the main theme of this blog would undoubtedly be ME, and the most used word would be I - now, is that healthy?)

I was going to post Husker Du playing These Important Years, but I found a lovely clip of a young lad playing the song very well and very seriously and, you can hear the words better and easily learn the chords if that's your thing....

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Love,

CardiffDrunk (cripes! even my pseudonym is negative. Egad.)

Out of the past

2009-12-04T20:10:00.002Z

Ah, or aaarrrgggh even! It's my life. Yoiks! That's me becoming sober. I'm not going to try and universalise my experience, but for me drinking has certainly been a good place to hide from some of the more unpalatable truths of my personality and my history.

And, drinking has gone. My little cave is opened to the elements, my own horrible self is in the sunlight, all naked and revealed. And, it's not very nice. Twenty years of drinking leaves a lot of regrets. It's partly, I believe, why alcoholism is described as a progressive illness. Medically, it's physically progressive and there's tolerance too, but I think the longer you drink the more you have to regret and a very, very good way of avoiding thinking about that is to drink more - "Nurse! The anasthetic!"

Anyway so here I am. I had a career, but I drank it away. I had the opportunity for a very good education, but I drank it away. I had a very significant relationship, but I drank it away.

Now, I know the common sense advice is to acknowledge these facts, accept that thinking about them can't possibly change anything and accept the exciting new opportunities life has on offer. I don't know why I'm qualifying that as advice, it's just damn true, and I know this, so why am I wallowing in the misery of my past? Because, I'm an idiot that's why. (Let's have a kinder version too: because, I've been very, very ill and I'm only just coming out of it.)

It's the significant relationship that hangs over me now, as it did the last time I got sober, and my regrets and my attempt to do something about them ended horribly for all concerned with much pain that could have been avoided spread liberally around - with me being the chief spreader.

But, I can't seem to leave it alone. It's partly guilt and the need to receive absolution and fogiveness from someone who means a huge amount to me and was very important in my life, who made me very happy and who I made very unhappy. It's also partly a matter of the strength of those feelings - they just won't leave me alone. Now, the common sense advice would be to just move on - she doesn't want to hear from you and is probably quite happily getting on with her own life, which is probably now a damned sight happier for your absence.

I have emailed her twice now. Once, a short pithy, 'I just wanted to see how you are' and 'I'm sorry'. I got a very short and polite reply congratulating me on getting sober and wishing me well for the future. So, I sent a long, self-obsessed, self-justifying, moaning email - I said I wanted to explain and apologise, but probably did neither. I haven't received a reply, so I sent another - truly lengthy, but trying so hard to be less self-justifying and expressing more of the sorrow I feel about what I did. I also asked, rather pathetically, for her friendship. And, promised, rather sinisterly, to phone her if she didn't respond.

Stupid? Yes, it probably is, but I feel I can't help it, I need to try, if not to put things right between us achieve some sort of closure or even civilised adult contact. (Isn't that stupid - you can't help it? That's what little children say when they're caught doing something naughty like picking they're noses. I can help it of course, just as I can help having bad days by smoking dope in the morning, just as I can help getting angry and disappointed with the things I haven't done, I can help by doing them - it's not impossible, it shouldn't be.)

But, I really don't know how to live. I was never taught and I have never learned. I have learned to get away with things, to get by on the least, to hide from hard things in drink and drugs, to avoid responsibility by relying on others or using my 'illness' as an excuse and a hiding place - I can't work, I'm a drunk, I can't go out and do things, I'm a drunk...

God, I'm not a very likeable person, and I'm going to have to change into someone who is if I'm going to have any self-esteem. So, talk about those things that shame me with my counsellor? It's probably a good idea.

The days of harm reduction

2009-12-04T17:24:00.003Z

Harm reduction is the result of my last counselling session, the verdict of my counsellor on what I have to be doing at the moment.

As ever, counselling felt a good and releasing thing, and some big things came out - big things about my life and what I want from it. Too big to manage at the moment, so at the moment my task is not to harm myself.

Not to drink is the best way to do this and, I admitted I had come very close to drinking recently. It seems to just happen, but of course, that's not how these things work, it was me who just happened not to go to the Community Addiction Unit to take my antabuse and then, all of it sudden, it just happened that I was a day short of not taking it for a week, and a week is a long time in Antabuse. After I left counselling, I passed a pub I used to drink in and had the worst cravings I've had this sober period. I went straight home and took my tablets. Of course, not taking my medication also means not taking the anti-craving drug campral and maybe that had an effect too.

What did we talk about? Me, me, me... great for the over-analytical and self obsessed (I do sometimes think I should just stop and start living - just forget labelling myself an alcoholic and a depressive and live, but I'm just not able to). I spoke about the unhappiness with the life in which I have woken up after 20 years drinking and the shame I feel for that life - if I'm OK with it she said we can talk in more detail about this next time.

So, harm reduction for now, just staying alive and staying sober. Staying alive and staying sober.

The long dark tea time of the soul.

2009-12-04T16:37:00.004Z

I can't find the full quote from Douglas Adams' wonderful, Life, the Universe and Everything... But, I know the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul strikes on a Sunday and comes, 'after you have had all the hot baths you can reasonably have'.

I've had two baths today and it's only five o'clock. Is that reasonable? I know it's not good, in fact it's bad. But baths are all about safety and comfort and warmth and that's why I crave them, they are an antidote to fear.

When I got that wonderful advice, psycho education (typically, I can't be arsed to link back to the original post but I did write about it at some length), on dealing with anxiety hot baths were a pretty big no no. The physical symptoms of anxiety heat the body up, to counter it you should be cooling the body down, drinking water for example. I, on the contrary, am currently indulging in as many hot baths I can have - reasonably or otherwise - smoking dope, not eating properly, not getting out of bed and drinking giant mug after giant mug of hot tea.

It's even physically bad for me - the one thing I know, guaranteed and for sure, that will make my eczema worse is having a bath, and the more I have the worse it will get.

Do I want to be ill? What kind of an idiot am I? No, I don't want to be ill and, yes, I am all sorts of an idiot - but we know this don't we... evidence, as cited above, has shown.

I really have gone into quite a serious down, which is why I've come back to the blog. I'm hoping to purge myself of some of this stuff, it's weighing down heavily to the extent that it feels almost physical and it feels exactly like it felt last time I felt like this, which is the last time I went loopy, got in my car, drove to London and did a huge number of stupid, self-destructive things that were supposed to culminate in suicide.

Don't worry, this is not a cry for help in that direction, I feel sure I won't end up there again, but I'm in the same continuum and I need to get out of it.

Positively, I had a really excellent appointment at the doctor's on Wednesday (was it Wednesday? Time's a bit blurry and loopy at the moment but no matter).

It's a lottery who you will see at the surgery I use and, while none of the doctors I've seen actually been bad, some are better than others. I won the lottery this time with someone I'd never seen before and had the longest GP's appointment I can remember: it was a good 15minutes and it was actually a conversation - she listened to me!

She agreed a trial timetable to change my antidepressant to something that is less sedative - I think it's going to be Fluoxetine, which off the top of my head has had its fair share of horror stories in recent years. We'll see, I've convinced myself that Trazadone isn't doing me much good at all - I get a good night's sleep, and I know that's important, but I think it's contributing to my general lethargy through the day.

So, I'm headed towards uppers. She's also continued my Antabuse beyond the six months it is usually prescribed for to help me get over Christmas and the New Year without recourse to dry sherry, and that's a relief. I went in for a blood test today to see if it's damaged my liver (call the irony police) at all and if I can continue safely. I'm going back in two weeks to see how I'm doing at reducing my dose of Trazadone. She signed me off sick for another five weeks - aiming for the New Year - and gave as the reason depression rather than alcoholism.

Well well, in order to check the spelling I've looked up Fluoxetine, and it's Prozac, meaning I was wrong when I told the doctor I've never taken it. I have. It was the first antidepressant I was ever prescribed in fact, all those years ago. In the end I had to stop taking it because it made me so nauseous, but I do remember it made me feel better - up, even. That would be great, and I think I can cope with feeling a bit sick if this mood will lift. It came in a rather snazzy yellow and green capsule when I was necking it too.

And, as I am now going on too long, I shall split my posts, and start a nice new blank sheet.

Better starts to the day. A stupid thing? Timing tablets. Damp nights.

2009-11-15T10:31:00.005Z

I feel a bit brighter this morning - working on changing my morning routine is having an effect.

I've still got my ditch and it takes an effort to climb out of it, the pull of habit and routine is mightily strong, but I'm making small steps.

This morning, for example, I got up and instead of going downstairs and sitting smoking in the moping seat, I got up, had a fag and came back upstairs and did 10 minutes on the exercise bike and 10 press ups.

I've started in on my first self-esteem book. I chose the thinnest one first, Gael Lindenfield's Self Esteem and I've read the introduction.

I recognise a lot of the examples of poor self-esteem she uses and the causes. Next I'm going to have to do some work on emotional healing. I love the idea of this and I'm excited by it - so many things in my past fester and rot in my mind; that's what I do on the moping chair.

I'm a bit at a loss about what to do about the expression of some of this past pain that needs to be exorcised, I just don't have those sorts of friends at the moment. But, I'm going to find a notebook for self-esteem today and damn well do it - not just think about it, not just read about it, but actually do it. Hell's bells, that'll be a step in the right direction all on its own.

Quite independently of this I've emailed my ex-girlfriend. This might be a stupid thing to do but somehow it felt right. She's my biggest emotional hurt - a terrible break up and a terrible attempt to get back together that were the immediate triggers for two suicide attempts.

She was my first love and my biggest love, I still think about her every day. I thought if I could establish some sort of adult contact with her as a friend I might find some peace from it.

She's emailed back, very tersely, and I'm guessing that she doesn't much relish hearing from me again - I was an alcoholic all the time we were together and I must have made her life hell. Must have? I know I did.

We'll see how that goes, it might be a huge mistake to even pick at those wounds and it's led to disaster in the past, but I want some sort of closure and the ability to move on properly, which I'm yet to do.

The timing of my Trazadone is still off. My antidepressant 'causes drowsiness' according to the box, in fact it whacks you over the head with a sleepy hammer. Its action used to be so fast that I couldn't take it at any time other than when I was actually ready to sleep. Now, I've got some tolerance to it and as a result I've ended up taking it too late, leaving me with a terrible pill hangover in the mornings. I need to find a better time and to make it a routine.

I'm sleeping as well as ever with the Trazadone but in the last couple of weeks I've been suffering from night sweats again. Mrs CD assures me it's not as bad as when I used to drink but it's a bother and I'll ask the doctor about it when I see her at the end of this month.

The probable reasons I've come up with are the lake of tea I drink every day, lots of fluid. Perhaps it's the dope (another routine I'm changing, I don't smoke during the day if I can manage it - which on many days I don't).

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

So, this drinking thing

2009-11-14T18:59:00.003Z

I haven't regaled anyone much with anything on drink of late have I?

And for a drunkard's blog that's not flipping well good enough. It's always there in my mind though - a constant hum and siren song. Time's the trigger. Some mornings I might walk past a pub at around opening time and remember the endorphin rush of the first drink of the day.

Sport too - always a good excuse for me to go to the pub in the past - strums a few strings. I've managed to watch a Wales rugby international in the pub, but all the way through I was thinking how much better it would be if I had a drink.

Occasionally too, anxiety has made me want to drink. When the streets are full of shrieking youths in the afternoon and I'm confining myself to my room and praying for sleep, I'm aware of how much better I would feel if I could just go and hide in the pub.

But, I haven't drunk. Not a drop. And, with Antabuse in my veins I can't. Without the Antabuse I don't think I would have done it and without the supervised way I'm taking it I don't think I would have managed to stay on the pills for so long.

I'm committed to the six months I've almost managed - about two weeks now. I'm also likely to ask for an extension to my Antabuse to see me through Christmas and the New Year too.

At the bottom of all the efforts to get well is the knowledge that I want to get well so I can drink again - enjoy it, socially and responsibly, not as an instant cure for fear or a hiding place from self-hatred, but as a social lubricant.

That may well make me an idiot, but that's my feeling at the moment, that if I can fix my messed up head I won't need to self-medicate and won't be an addict. There are medical opinions both ways, but, I think most professionals would, after looking at my history with drink, advise me to not drink ever again.

The big thing is, that in a couple of months it will be my choice.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Deciding to be happy

2009-11-13T18:52:00.003Z

I have decided to decide to be happy - ok, no-one gets to walk through the flowers under the sun every day of their life, but I have decided to be happier.

Taking this decision is, I think, an important change for me.

I had previously believed a number of things about my illnesses (for want of a better word), which I no longer believe to be true.

I still believe that I suffer from clinical depression - that is, I don't believe it's all psychological, I believe there is probably a chemical element to my sadness, adiction and anxiety. But, I now accept that's it's down to me to do something about it.

I used to sneer at self-help books, and part of me believed that depression was a political act - it's your duty to be depressed in this world of war, injustice, suffering, Manchester United title wins and so on.

Not any more.

I came back from the library today with three, count 'em!, self help books. All recommended by the local alcohol and drugs service.

They are:

10 Days To Great Self Esteem by Dr David Burns
Self Esteem by Gael Lindenfield, and,
Overcoming Low Self-Esteem by Melanie Fennell

I'll let you know how I get along with those, I feel uncharacteristically excited about reading them.

I heard an interesting show on the radio about happiness, three journalists but one was a doctor and another a Positive Psychologist.

Again, I used to sneer at the idea that you could control the way you feel and I actually considered it cheating in some way. Not any more.

The positive psychologist was interesting. Practise feeling good and you probably will.

She kept a gratitude diary she said, and I'm not yet ready to go that far, but I am pleased with a couple of things in the last couple of days.

I have managed to break a couple of unhelpful routines; I spend much less time sitting in the moping seat for example.
I've attended nearly all my appointments and kept up with my blogging.

So, I'm not swinging from the tree tops in the unalloyed joy of an Oran Utang's giant ginger hug, (Anybeth) but I am coming round to the idea of taking part in this battle. I'm more accepting of things I can't change and learning a little to ignore some of the things that were previously making me anxious.

Long way to travel I guess but I feel like I've started.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

The Cardiff Drunk.

Why I am so sad when Jeff Bridges can make me so happy

2009-11-11T21:18:00.003Z

We went to the cinema the other day. Quite spontaneously! Wow. We were just in town and I just said, why don't we go to the cinema, and we did! The exclamation marks are justified, this happens literally almost never. Never!

We were just in time to catch The Men Who Stare At Goats - a comedy about United States military research into the use of psychic powers in warfare. Not you would have thought an obvious subject for the comedy film maker. Well, it turns out you'd be wrong. Acclaim and Oscars for screenwriting shall surely rain down upon this film.

I always get a bit carried away if I like I film because I currently like so few. I say currently because I hope that's yet another of the things I can put down to my illness and whatever it is that makes my head such a donkey's nest of twattery.

So, that's a good thing then. Yes. It is. Indeed, part of my homework after my last counselling session was to try and engage with my withered and neglected emotions in a 'safe' way by watching a bit of a weepy now and then or by laughing to the point of vomiting (I paraphrase) with some super funny DVD.

And, laugh I did. Out loud and genuinely! (The exclamation mark is more for the genuinely than the out loud - I often go through the physical act of laughter, I rarely feel the rumble of real mirth currently - another hopeful currently.)

Jeff Bridges just makes me smile. If I could buy a Jeff Bridges and let it roam around my house and garden, I think I'd have the best cure for what ails me there is. Can't this be done in this magical internet age? I suggest someone starts working on it with the highest priority possibly imaginable.

I won't drag you by your hand through the whole plot - and I hope you go and see it - but, I ended up crying almost uncontrollably at this comedy. I currently do when I see goodness - and Jeff plays, in his beautiful bouncing bearlike way, a good person who believes in love and peace and gentleness. Goodness makes me horribly sad. So does happiness and I'm not just being flippant there, it's true.

It's not conscious. I had to explain to Mrs CD that I had tears in my eyes when I looked at some photos of her as a little girl because she looked so happy.

Something about goodness and happiness brings me out in the weeps and it's that I feel so alien from it - even in joy I feel the sadness of its passing. Goodness makes me so aware of all the badness there is in the world.

I could, I think, bore you now with a very long and tedious recitation on why I think I feel like this but I don't think I should bother because I would, bore you.

I'd like to change it though and over thinking is a big part of it.

Sometimes I think I'm just a miserable bastard.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Still a bit down in sober towers

2009-11-11T20:39:00.004Z

You tell lies thinking I can't see,
You can't cry because you're laughing at me,
And I'm down,
I'm really down.

Thank you Macca for that, very nice. Unlike Beatle Paul no-one's hurling obvious falsehoods around, or writing them on placards seeing as Paul reckons Miss Down-Causer (as we shall call this horrific slattern) thinks he can't see them. No-one's chuckling either; sniggering while they should be joining me in empathetic melancholy.

Yet still, I'm down. Yeah thanks Paul, you'll get paid mate don't worry - yeah, thumbs up yours too.

A bit melancholy me. I'm sure the reasons are the usual, which are too archetypal to bother listing again, and it, like all things (royalties for George!) must pass.

The atypical, and therefore interesting factors in this, of all the downs, are a bit of cognitive dissonance (I'm quite verbose tonight aren't I) and the fact that I feel more relaxed about it than maybe I should feel.

I'm probably misusing cognitive dissonance, but, never mind, it's a phrase I like so I'll go on merrily misusing it all I damn well like. I've been down the pub (orange squash) this evening and discovered I've been misusing winsome. I'd been saying my mate D liked winsome girls, thinking I meant rather wholesomely appealing women. D said he'd looked it up and it just meant pretty - I'm not convinced.

Cognitive dissonance though, I'm a bit stronger on. Down to D again. I gave him a book called The Psychology of Military Incompetence which he, an anarchist by leaning, has devoured and praises so highly that he's lent it back to me to try and get through it again.

Cognitive dissonance - which quite often afflicts our martial leaders so the book would lead us to believe - is an inability to cope with a change in circumstances which contradicts the plan of action. In the case of our generals it would appear this often leads to massive tragedy - sending troops to die futile deaths after an objective has become unreachable because the commander simply cannot accept failure is a possibility.

That sounds just like my favourite film, Paths Of Glory, an extraordinarily moving account of an episode in the First World War in which French troops are tried for cowardice for failing to take an enemy position against impossible odds. I get the feeling the First World War is filled with cognitive dissonance, and on Armistice Day it seems right to mourn all those who have died in war, whether the reasons have been given a fancy psychological name or not.

My cognitive dissonance is of a much smaller order with far lesser consequences, but I'm sure when I get round to reading this fascinating tome of which D is such an evangelist I'll discover that the outcomes for individuals with a touch of the old cognitive dissonance are Not Good Things.

So, I'm having trouble matching the man who tells his counsellor so brightly that he's going to do this or that, and the loathsome lethargist who spends most of the next day in bed or sitting, spliff paralysed, by a window or in joyless masturbation (apologies for the unpleasantness, I'm trying to be honest here).

The loathsome lethargist seems to be winning the battle at the moment, so, I've got to make sure he doesn't win the way.

In some ways I think I deal too easily with these dual personas of mine - and do occasionally worry that it could be a sign of a more serious mental health problem. With over-protective parents and terrible social anxiety I've grown quite the expert at appearing to be not what I am - oh, the disguises and deceptions I've played out. And, I think of this as quite natural, to the extent that I believe that if I'm not observed then nothing I do matters at all or has any consequences - at it's crudest level this is why I so often fall apart when Mrs CD is away. There is no reason to appear kempt, clean, engaged.

And, as I said, I feel quite relaxed about this, it's another routine in which I can hide, like not going to the doctors if I can't get there by noon, like always walking the same way to the Community Addiction Unit, like always going there before anywhere else, like always listening to Radio Four on my headphones as I go to sleep and countless, countless others.

Something to be thought of there. And, something to be challenged: my weapons? Well, I'm awaiting my three book prescriptions on self-esteem and if I start to believe I matter then there will be motivation to look after myself, enjoy myself even - God, that would be good, I miss enjoyment and it comes along so rarely now.

Perhaps, as my other two bestest imaginary friends say, I should turn off my mind, relax and float down an octopus's garden in my yellow submarine?

Now, there's a thought.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Hello keyboard, whatcha knowing?

2009-11-10T15:49:00.003Z

It takes such little effort to blog and I know the good it can do for me that I don't know why I don't do it more often.

A rhetorical question that, because I do.

The little effort is a teensy weeny blob of a falsehood. It comes easily once I'm sat here tapping away but getting into this seat with this window open and something to say takes a fair amount of soul searching, which is why - today being an example - I'm much more likely to blog after counselling.

The rhetorical answer to my rhetorical question is that I know why I don't do it more often and it's because I stop myself from doing it. As I know why I screw up so many days by having a recreational cigarette before lunchtime and sending myself into misery - it's me. I do it. It's not alcohol, it's not a symptom, it's a choice which I make.

Now, I'm not about to turn into one of those - what's the word? The word is too rude for a family blog, so I'll leave it at git. One of those gits, who I've seen of late, publicising books claiming that alcoholism and the like are simply bad choices made by bad people.

Nah. That's enormous bollocks of the worst kind - way to attack the 'therapy industry' by the way founders of the anti-therapy industry, you unconscionable feckwits.

However. My recent down - guess the trigger? Mrs CD going away - did precipitate me giving myself a stern talking to about some of the choices I make.

I think getting better is going to have a lot to do with taking more responsibility and making some better choices.

The reasons why I don't do so are simple. Same as the kids round here have the manners of Greek dogs and can only communicate by shouting obscenities - that's what they learn off their parents.

I'm not going to go down the whole miserable childhood path, because my childhood wasn't miserable, but it did leave me with a terrible lack of self worth and belief.

So much for self knowledge. Now, let's change it.

Counselling this morning, so I've got something to work on. My task after the last session was to try and get through a structured day, which I haven't managed to do so there was a fair amount of talk of regret and self-loathing as ever.

But my counsellor is a star and she gets me onto practical solutions - this is cracking and quite new to me. I want to get better and I'm starting to take little staggers towards it.

I haven't managed to get through a day, so let's try changing one little thing - my sitting in the moping seat first thing every morning. Change that. One little piece of the huge framework of safety catches, routines, time-tabling, avoidance and rituals that makes me feel safe - miserable, but miserable and safe.

So. I'm on it.

I've also been given a book prescription list. I've written about this before - I think the scheme is gaining popularity - and I'm enthused again.

Sadly, I went to the library and successfully ordered my three books on a better self-esteem before browsing and spending a good half hour reading a couple of books on societal breakdown and yob culture which left me fearing for my safety on the streets again.

Hey ho. At least it was different.

Back soon, cos this is good for me. And, I'm playing football tonight too, which is also good for me. Hells bells, I'll be prime minsiter by this time next week.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Four days lost

2009-10-30T14:04:00.004Z

Just checking in and I see I haven't blogged for four days, which is fine, although not quite the once-a-day I'd planned for.

Not a disaster though.

My down has continued a little and last night I managed to explain it to Mrs CD a little - hey, perhaps I should try talking to real people more and put less emphasis on spieling at you imaginary friends out there? Just a thought - which I think helped. Talking's good we're learning.

I'm pretty sure of the reasons for this blip. They are:

The weather and changing seasons. It's been pretty good lately, but Autumn's coming on and we lost an hour of daylight this week as the clocks went back. The grey skies and early evening haven't helped.
Five months of being sober. The euphoria has definitely passed and now you're left with both the 'what now' and also the 'what have I done'. We all know the hangover version, but when you come round from more than 20 years on the pop it's a bit bigger than that. I'm awake in my life, looking round somewhat bewildered and having to take stock of where I am, what I am and so on. A lot of it, it nearly went without saying, is regretful and that's tough to deal with.
Five months of being sober, b. I miss it. Of course I do, it's been my love, my everyday and my extraordinary for so long. I know I need to try and fill that gap and I'm obviously not completely there yet. I've also used drink as a means of escaping the responsibilities and realities of life; now they're here and I have to deal with them - or try to - and I'm not used to it. My benefit is constantly being withdrawn and reinstated and I have to complete an appeal for example. Undoubtedly, I am getting better at this and practice will continue to move me further towards perfect but the short of is that at the moment, I'm not very good at anything - which is no natural high.
I'm doing a fair amount of unpaid writing at the moment - experience and with the possibility of going into business in that way - and It's starting to feel like a pressure. I feel guilty when I'm not at it, this weight isn't lightened any by my partner in the proposed business, who is at it 24-hours-a-day; it's his obsession.
Counselling. I now accept that this is doing me good. I also accept that my depression is to a great degree in my own hands. I have to make changes in order to, for want of a better word, defeat it. This is painful, it's a healing pain but it hurts just the same. I'm wallowing around in my past and coming up with the deficits in my character and personality - try it, it's not big smiles.
I'm lonely. I'm new in Cardiff and don't have many friends and I've started to get into a bit of a rut. My old rut was lubricated with a big old stream of high strength lager and involved a fair amount of social interaction. The new one has less. I spend too much time at home, and in trying to get into a routine I've quite limited myself. I'm either staring at this screen or meeting people involved with my treatment. Playing football should help, but it's obvious my new sportsmates' primary social environment is the pub.

I managed to snap myself out of it yesterday. I'd been out in the morning but come home had tea and stupidly had a spliff (see self-inflicted damage vols 1-1,000,000) and got on with my computery business and just got stuck there. I finally came out of it at about 7.30pm (Mrs CD has been working late a lot lately - add that to the above list) and forced myself to make a nice meal, that helped - smoked mackerel fish cakes with stir fried vegetables as you ask.

I apologise if this blog is getting rather tedious at the moment - that's the nature of my life at the moment. Attempt, fail, attempt again. Treadmills used to be a punishment for a good reason.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

And another thing

2009-10-25T21:20:00.003Z

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.

Counselling - part two

2009-10-25T21:01:00.002Z

The second part of my homework is much more practical - to build a framework for this new life.

I explained to my counsellor the trouble I have motivating myself and the time I waste in bed just moping and self-loathing.

She has suggested getting into a routine.

I've made my first attempt and failed, but I'm under strict orders not to let this get me down, so I'll try again. The first attempt was stymied by what we'll cause the usual, dope and lethargy. It's another hangover (ahem) from being over-protected as child and having my life so run for me - I'll do stuff when other people tell me too but when that is removed it's as if a great weight has been lifted and I go into massive self-indulgence.

This is a good start though. Trying to get into a simple routine for myself - getting up, getting through a day doing what has to be done - really simple things like eating three meals, washing up, putting things away. I reall am a child, more than a child in fact, I'm a baby, and I need to learn the whole living thing from the bottom up. Now, feeling a bit low, it feels very hard - a baby is safe and coddled and protected and spoiled and doesn't have to worry about anything.

Tomorrow's a good chance because I have to go out to go to a business course, so I have to leave the lovely warmth of my bed early and do something. In fact, I've got a couple of these courses this week, so I should be quite busy, it's trying to keep that going once I'm home. With my ambition being to run my own business as a freelance writer that's going to be important - it's all down to you after all.

We shall see.

One routine I could get into - and I've written this so many times I've lost count - would be to make half-an-hour every day to update this li'l ol' blog of mine.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Love Cardiff Drunk.

Counselling again - part one

2009-10-25T20:48:00.003Z

Councelling continues to go well, and I've split the last session into two parts, because my homework from my counsellor is in two parts, and you know me - I just go on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

We talked about my mood, and the fact that I had gone into a down when Mrs CD went away - went to bed for a couple of days in fact. It's not so bad, and I'm not drinking which is a good thing.

My mood's very volatile at the moment, I alternate between huge self-confidence (rather vainglorious really) about my future and finding work and so on and black, black, black depression.

I've gone into a down just now to be honest - the result of going to the shop past the local depressing kids. They don't do or say anything to me, they just exude an air of stupidity and pointlessness and lack of respect for anything or anyone.

Hey ho. Stupid I know.

I also just watched a Youtube documentary on racism, which wasn't such a cracking idea I think. He and again ho again.

Well, the talk at counselling is about connecting with my emotions again. They're locked away you see - I was never encouraged to express emotion as a child and I need to turn my thoughts off in order to feel, in order to feel real pleasure, or pain or happiness even. I'd love to get angry once in a while, but I just can't.

So, I've been given an exercise. Get in touch with them through film - it's a nice idea from my counsellor (writing's another one) - who sees it as a safe way to reopen those pathways. Watch some sad films, watch some funny shows, have a good cry and a laugh.

We'll see how that goes. I've just watched a film - not a particularly sad one - and managed a tear when the antihero died (it was This Gun for Sale, with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, based on the Graham Greene novel). I'll have to try laughter soon.

I'm too bottled up; that's the problem. Encouraged to be quiet and not make a fuss and be ultra polite and care about others more than myself. And, then, as I grew up I learned to keep myself secret - the things that became mine were things my parents disapproved of - drinking, smoking, drugs. Now, I see they're not the greatest things in the world, as I once thought they were, but they were mine, my own independent life and my whole identity. This world was secret and I became adept at keeping it so and this persists - I'm good at lying (not a pleasant thing to admit), hiding things and appearing as people wish me to appear.

I'm annoyed now - angry with myself and determined to find a new me who isn't like this. I don't have any old model to look back on because there's never been one, just a long history of shite.

Oh well. We're learning to improve these things and it's slow but steady I hope. A couple of months ago I wouldn't have gone outside at all for fear of these people, now I just walk past them but today has shown I need to do an awful lot more to build my confidence and my sense of self.

There may be troubles ahead... Finding a new self... Why I write this bobbins...

2009-10-02T17:49:00.003+01:00

Friday, and blogging again already, wow, that's good. Although I can remember the days when I used to do this once a day.

Anyway. A good couple of days after a bit of a down - important times ahead though.

Thursday I went to counselling, which was great, really productive. I've talked more about my lack of self-esteem, self-respect, self-confidence and indeed self and also my inability to cope with or express my emotions - I consider them my enemy.

And, I did manage to ask my question: Does this work? Well, my counsellor said yes, but then she would say that wouldn't she. But, I agree. I've seen what it can do already, my confidence has been improved by visualising a metal ball as my core - silly isn't it, but it's worked, and by constant, nagging, mantra-like repetition of the belief that I do not need to fear, I have reduced my fear.

My next task - should I agree to accept it (and I think I did) is to unleash those emotions and, baby, I'm looking forward to it. I'd love to feel, what's it like?

Sometimes when writing this I have a real sense of my own ridiculousness. I'm extremely pleased and proud that 15 people 'follow' this blog (hello, I love you!) and so get little updates every time I post, but what the flibbety gibbet does my w*****g on about counselling sessions achieve?

Well, I always wanted to be honest in doing this, and, although it sounds ridiculously self-aggrandising, I'd love people to find some help from this. I felt very alone for a long time and found the best help I'd had to that point on a website with a forum - it's called Brighteyes and it's on my sidebar - for drinkers. I've also found strength in the writings of others, more than from any of the self-help (self is the word of the day, 50 uses and I win a tin star with a picture of David Cameron on it) book I tried. So, do say hello if you're reading this, it's great for my ego if nothing else.

And, if you're looking at blogs about alcohol and depression because those twin seven-sided bastards are on your case, I hope you do get some hope from this - I now firmly believe that it's kind of in my hands and it'll be in yours too. The treatment I've received I believe is typical of what you'll get on the NHS in the UK and the main plank of it is going to be counselling.

That's one of the reasons I asked the doctor this morning about coming off antidepressants, and the lady at the Community Addiction Unit (CAU) about coming off Antabuse and trying social drinking again - again is a misnomer, I've never drunk socially or sensibly.

The doctor urged me to at least complete the six months on antabuse that is the usual course before thinking about tailing off the Trazadone - and then probably not until the new year. The CAU lady was even more cautious, advising considering extending the Antabuse course until the new year because of our delightful national habit of celebrating the birth of a now little-regarded religious figure (whose chief message was, so it seems to me, to turn our backs on material things and seek joy in a life of love and its promulgation) by drinking like lunatics and consuming, consuming, consuming.

We shall see.

I feel positive now and hopeful that the changes in my personality that are going on will be GOOD, will be MIGHTY, and will be PERMANENT. Essentially that I'll be a new person. Now, that would be cool - a whole new life.

The interesting times I refer to above are Mrs CD impending departure for foreign shores, leaving me to my own devices for getting of for two weeks - my parents will harass me to visit them, or for them to visit here, but, largely I'll be alone.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk (four months sober yesterday.)

It also helps me and maybe it will help you

Antabuse works! But, does it have its dangers?

2009-09-30T18:32:00.004+01:00

I can now say officially that Antabuse works.

I don't mean that of course, I'm not an official of anything, barely even the boss of me and I don't wear a uniform or have a clip board.

What I mean to say is that I accidentally ingested some alcohol - nearly a week ago now, last Friday - and the Antabuse in my system reacted badly to it in the promised way.

We had someone over for dinner and Mrs CD cooked. I remember her asking if anyone minded if she put some wine in the sauce (our guest had a couple of food allergies) and no-one did. Least of all me, I believed it would be cooked off.

Sadly, dear reader, it was not.

So. Later that evening my heart started to race. I did notice it at the time, but didn't pay it too much attention. I'd had a couple of spliffs and found the experience of having a guest over (both she and Mrs CD drank a bit of wine and got a bit tiddly) nerve wracking.

In the morning however, it was obvious that this was more than a passing little bit of physical silliness.

I woke up with the racing heart still racing and a headache. I went downstairs to make a cup of tea for us both and the effort made me light-headed and shaky. Mrs CD tried to take my pulse when I told her and reported that it was too irregular to count.

I must admit I wasn't overly concerned. Apart from anything, I pay my physical health very little regard and, through all the years of drinking as much as anything, I'm used to being in bad physical state - it's my default setting. But, we did phone NHS direct, who were very nice and said if it got any worse we should call an ambulance.

It didn't, so we didn't.

It had passed by Sunday and on Monday I had the strange feeling of being hungover.

I mentioned this to my website pal when I went round - it put me out of action for a whole day after all - and he popped Antabuse into google and got up the wikipedia page.

It turns out that Antabuse stops the breakdown of dopamine too. I am not a chemist, I'm not very much, but I am starting to get more and more wary of the stuff that's going on in my brain and wondering if it's part of the reason that I feel so grey and flat and emotionless at the minute.

My brain is being treated by Antabuse (as it turns out); Trazadone (a sort of SSRI antidepressant), and Campral, and I don't have any emotions! Really, that's how it feels - I've spoken about it in counselling in terms of my lack of anger about anything, and recently my lack of pleasure in anything, and it's put down to the things the rest of my addiction is put down to - stuff from childhood. But, maybe there's a chemical thing too. I wonder what it's like to not f**k up your brain chemistry, to just have the natural stuff in there? I wonder, because I don't know - I've been taking antidepressants for a dozen years.

I'd like to find out. I'd like to be normal.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

At the lip of the slough of despond.

2009-09-30T18:15:00.003+01:00

I've never been to Slough (which may have been unfairly maligned in all sorts of way), I have been to despond quite regularly and I don't wish to go there again, have I ever been to me? Not sure, I'm working on it in counselling... In fact, I think I have - I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how terrible/awful/cowardly/stupid/pointless and so on and so on I am, and, I've thought a good deal about how to change that.

I did go into a down recently. People who read this at all regularly will be unsurprised that it coincided with MRS Cardiff Drunk going away for work again.

I haven't drunk, so that's a good thing. But I overdid it on the wacky backy (I was at the Community Addiction Unit this morning and got talking to a lad who was weaning himself off Cider, and, with the help of an increased marijuana intake, he reckoned, had got down from 16 pints a day to four or five) and got lazy and scared again.

Idiot!

Not as scared as I have been actually and here I can see that the work I do after counselling does have some effect, so a plus point in the 'does it work' debate. Constantly visualising myself as having a strong core really is helping. In anxiety terms I'm not so bad.

But dope makes you introverted and makes your thoughts more important - that's the effect on me anyway, others claim to be immune and we're all our own unique little balls of chemicals and neurons and string and paper aren't we. So, it's ergo, a bad thing for me, who is far too inclined that way.

I slipped into that slough for a couple of days and was coming out of it today - getting out of bed, going down to the CAU to take my Antabuse, doing some shopping, feeling a bit busy - until some loon shouted at me from a passing car. It happened a few weeks ago too, when Mrs CD and I were walking along a busy main road near here. Now, I'm pretty convinced that this was the same car and I'm wracking my brains as to who I might have offended. It's not great, but I could cope with a bit of random abuse and put it down to idiocy, but why twice? I haven't come into contact with anyone who, offended by me, would act in such a manner. All I can do is hope it goes away, but it's a tiny little piece of grit in my pearl.

So, I do feel better today and I have counselling tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to. My homework was to be more assertive in my day to day life, which I don't know if I've achieved.

I think I'm going to go back to the does it work question with my counsellor - we've come to a fair few conclusions about the whys of my addictive behaviour, and I think I know a couple more I've kept to myself, but I really want to know that it works.

This post is going on a little bit, so I shall consign my other two thoughts (that's a lot for me) to another post.

If you spent it, thank you for your time - if you're struggling with something you have my love. Leave a comment, I do try and reply when I can.

Nos da.

I haven't drunk anything - er, that's it really.

2009-09-25T14:53:00.003+01:00

I haven't been on here much of late. That's a bad thing in its way but not a disaster - I enjoy writing this and it feels like useful therapy. When I can't face it, that means there's something going on I can't face - facing things, we have been told, is a good thing.

I haven't drunk, I'm still sober. I haven't come close to drinking; I still think about it every day - the taste, the warmth, the freedom from fear.

My work on anxiety has gone on pretty well, I'm visualising myself as a super powerful metal ball and forswearing strong coffee has been a great success. The local children are much less a source of absolute, go-back-to-bed misery. They still make me jumpy, but I'm learning to cope with that.

Mrs CD went away last week - the first in a series of trips off - and I survived OK. I kept what appointments I had and took my medication with a decent amount of regularity. I cooked for myself and tried to keep busy. I wasted too much time in marijuana-monged, not quite misery, but nothingness and I need to watch myself with dope - you name it, I'll overdo it.

I've also had another counselling session since I've been here and that too continues to be useful and productive. My homework this time was to be more assertive of my own needs in my relationship with Mrs CD. Have I done much on this? No, not really. It's tough, I'm so grateful to her for her support and love that I don't want to deny her anything; usually that's OK, but it does mean going along with stuff I'm not so enamoured of - nothing like slaughtering whales when I don't think you should slaughter whales, just little things.

I'm looking forward to the next session. I always come out a little drained, in a good way, and feeling I've talked about something that I needed to talk about. I've been busy-ish on my other blog - the one that might become a business at some point, but I find myself shying away from it too much - thinking I'm not up to it and therefore not even trying anything.

There we go, quite a long way of saying I haven't drunk anything.

If you spent it, thank you for your time and I hope you're good too.

Hey, what's that noise

2009-09-10T21:41:00.003+01:00

I'd say I'm going along pretty well at the moment. Considering. Considering what? Considering that I only stopped drinking three months and a few days ago.

I'm still jittery as hell and fearful and I still have up and down days - Rome wasn't built in a day and if it had have been it would have been crap and we wouldn't be making proverbs out of it.

I still don't like noises in the street. I still probably smoke too much dope - any dope may well be too much dope. Should I worry about this? I do, of course, and when I'm having a bad time with my nerves and racing thoughts then I worry about it and swear I won't smoke so much. And yet I do. Part of me justifies this as nothing too bad - nobody, or not many people, are completely clean and sober and it was drink I was physically addicted too. I know there's a basic human need to alter consciousness and I probably need to indulge it in some way or another. My intake is modest but it's quite routine now and not related to any particular ceremony or treat. We shall see how things go on that - alcohol and coffee gone, will I make it three?

I'm kind of looking forward to going to counselling. It's opened up something in me and I want to find out more. What I really want to know is will it work? There's something pretty clear we've identified, a deep-seated lack of self worth which almost certainly has its routes in my childhood. But does knowing this - which I guess on a subconscious level I already knew - make it go away. Is there a catharsis in which all that changes - poof, as if by magic. I f*****g hope so, that would be cracking - going through some sort of tearful door and walking out the other side with the self worth that should be there, with the wall to expressing any feeling, emotion, opinion or even acknowledgement of my own existence and importance as an individual broken down.

I'm guessing it doesn't work like that. I'm guessing I have to build that myself, which is fair enough, but it seems like quite a process at the moment; a long road to walk and I don't know if I have the energy for that.

I'm going to ask. I've managed to be more honest with this counsellor than I have before. I'm thinking about what I say rather than saying what I think she wants to hear.

This seems to be a post quite like life at the moment. Not a great deal of point to it really but quite slow and thoughtful. I think I'm marking today down as a bit of a low one really. I hope tomorrow is better. It usually is and I'm usually better in the mornings, then the day just seems to slip downhill somehow.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Better times

2009-09-08T10:17:00.003+01:00

Things have improved here at Cardiff Drunk Towers.

Stopping the coffee has been a big thing. A very big thing indeed. I'm writing this with a cup of green tea at my side, so I certainly haven't forsworn all caffeine, but ditching the enormous pot of syrupy black stuff with which I used to start each day has been so beneficial.

I've got more energy, I sleep better, I'm avoiding the hideous jitters that used to plague me, and Mrs CD has been delighted to note that the bags under my eyes have gone.

There's also been a circumstantial change that has made a huge, in fact the biggest, difference, and that is that the kids have gone. Where they've gone I don't know, but gone they have and that's fantastic. There are still kids around, of course, and still noisy and I still have to walk past them in the street, but apart from a flutter there's not much for me to deal with.

I've been back to counselling too and had another good session. A lot of it relates back to my childhood, when I got this idea of my own personal worthlessness - how this is defeated I don't know. But, I've done some good positive work with visualising - I was skeptical about this but it's working.

I initially chose a tree as the image of my inner core but that changed to a shiny steel ball. I don't really know why; it just came naturally and I guess subconsciously.

I've also done a little exercise. Nothing major, but more regular than I have done in the past. So, I now do 15 press ups-a-day. There's a big test for me today. I've been talking about going to a martial arts class for a while - talking and talking in fact - and this time I've gone as far as phoning an Aikido guy and tonight's the night of the class. Will I make it? My counsellor asked me how likely I thought it was that I would go - I said 50 - 60% and I reckon that still stands. My worries are about meeting new people and going out at night - which, up to now I've largely avoided.

I also stopped smoking dope for a few days when my nerves were at their worst but now I'm puffing again. In fact, I had a bad weekend in that respect - Mrs CD was away and that's always been a signal for binging while drinking. Nothing bad happened, apart from the fact that I was rather lazier than I should have been. I still ate properly and took my medication but I have to avoid this now I think. Mrs CD is away quite a bit over the next few months and, if I am to be able to say that I'm getting better and working hard at it in order to make a new life then I can't have times like these when I switch off my life and indulge myself.

I'm also keen to get into more of a routine. The website work is becoming quite an issue - there's simply too much of it for me to manage and I run away from it too easily thinking it's a big scary thing. But the web guy and I are now meeting regularly and looking at ways we can make a business out of this that might pay us both. In fact, tomorrow, we're both at a business start up course which is exciting.

I've also been asked to do some writing for another project - an exciting new sort of political movement. I've so far just managed to get myself into a tizzy about all this, but, hopefully we'll see the improvements continuing, and, if I make it Aikido class tonight I think I'll really have something to congratulate myself for - the obverse must not result in too much in the way of self-recrimination.

Mrs CD seems almost blissfully happy with how things are going with us and I'm quite a good house husband, keeping on top of washing, washing up and bits of cleaning. Next weekend we're going to try and move some stuff around to give me a proper office in which to work.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

What anxiety is doing to me.

2009-08-24T15:14:00.005+01:00

I want to be sick. Right now, I want to throw up and it's all because of anxiety.

I spoke in my last post about what counselling had dug up - a heart, not even of glass, but of nothing. Now the counsellor said that the amount of skill and energy I devote to my anxiety shows that, in fact, I am at least a capable person. Building that core is going take time and I've only just started.

So, at the moment, I am trapped in anxiety hell.

First of all, I should make clear, some of this anxiety is rational, the consequences I create are not. It has a very specific focus at that moment but I've always been anxious around other people and feared them to a degree that is out of all proportion to any real threat.

This fear, of course, is much worse in cities simply because there are more people.

At the moment my focus is entirely on a group of kids who gather and play in our street; I would guess they range in age from six to 11. The rational part of my fear is that they are bad, nasty, naughty kids (or so I have convinced myself, maybe I am wrong and they're just mischievous and noisy). However, I know that they roam the streets till around 10pm or 11pm each night. I know their language is appalling, that they bully each other and fight terribly, that they throw rubbish wherever they feel like throwing it, including our garden and that a couple of them I've seen getting up to other stuff like throwing stones at people's doors. They run in and out of people's gardens, ride their bikes like lunatics up and down the pavements and basically show no consideration for anyone. Their only means of communication is screaming; which like everything else they get from their parents.

You'll see already what anxiety is doing to me. How much time I've wasted on these kids and what they do. And that's what it's doing to me - it's eating my life.

It's the consequences I create that are the reason that I am so upset by this. If they shout at me (as they have not, as they show no signs of doing) I believe I will be destroyed. It's hard to describe what I mean by destroyed beyond what it says on the tin - I will in some important way cease to exist. My mind races on to this conclusion without regard to logic or evidence, something like this: they will shout at me, I will shout back, they will follow me shouting this abuse, they will follow me home, I will be forced to confront them and say 'shut up' they will wait outside the house shouting this abuse and throwing stones at the door and window and what? And, blackness. I can't imagine anything or describe it as anything other than destruction, inside I know I mean running home to my parents, losing my relationship and any good I had done in my life, and a suicide attempt is likely.

I'm paranoid. I won't go in the front room without the blinds down. Whenever I go out - and it takes a while to get up the courage to do this - I scan for them everywhere. This is bringing me to their attention because I'm always looking at them and in my mind I believe they can sense my fear and will therefore see their prey. I go through an elaborate mental dance each time I have to walk past them - should I cross the road early, possibly showing fear, should I carry on and possibly invite words, should I try and say 'all right' to them in the vain hope they will like me (this pathetic craven belief has been with me for a long time; as a child I sought the approval of bullies in a desperate attempt to escape being their victim - the upshot, I made lots of crap friends.)

So, this is killing my life and endangering my recovery. I have no appetite and I often feel sick. I'm putting a lot of things off limits and I'm exhausted all the time for this expending constant nervous energy. It is upsetting Mrs CD and spoiling our relationship. I'm getting headaches. It takes me ages of psyching to get out of the house and when I do I stay out all day stopping me getting on with my volunteering on the computer, I shelter naturally in the pub and that's not a good thing.

But, I am fighting it. First of all, I have started repeating mantra-like to myself that I am strong and using the visualisation techniques I've been taught. I am forcing myself to do what I have to do. I am turning up radios and television in the house so I simply don't have to hear their noise. Today, I've gone cold turkey on caffeine, which is why I currently have a splitting headache.

It's hard and it's dangerous and it will take a long time. This helps. I have historically used alcohol to self-medicate for anxiety, but I've never really had it this badly - when I was drunk and living here I didn't notice them so much. It has got worse lately as two little groups have made friends and they gather round our neighbours' house.

I want a drink so badly and were I not on antabuse I would have had one by now. (I typed one, that's ridiculous, I would have drunk myself insensible).

The struggle continues. I have good times too, but they are getting increasingly fleeting.

Counselling again - a much better experience.

2009-08-22T15:16:00.003+01:00

I'm back in counselling, through the Cardiff Alcohol and Drugs Team (CADT). My last experience was bad: alienating and even damaging to my mental health, although the caveat must be added that I was drinking and fighting a fruitless and painful battle to control it.

This time has started better. I went on Thursday and saw a very nice lady who had given me my assessment interview. I was amazed at the speed at which things happened and how skillfully she guided the conversation.

Initially, she just asked me how I was. I told her I thought that the entirely positive golden days of early sobriety were passed and my anxiety was ramping up and endangering my sobriety, because my way of dealing with fear is to drown it and it works, in the moment as my counsellor said.

From there it went so quickly that I'm struggling to recall the session properly. I'm sure she asked me what the cause of my anxiety was - I told her about the noisy local children. She asked me what I was scared of - I told her I feared being mocked. She asked me what would happen, what could be the worst thing that could happen in that event - I said I would be destroyed, my being would vanish.

Again, it was so fast and so emotional - and I've waited an unpardonable three days before blogging it - I can't recall everything, but, I broke down when she asked me to start visualising. See yourself as a little child she said - and that was enough, I broke down, describing how scared that little child was. "No-one ever told him things would be safe and it would be alright," she said. And it was true so I cried.

Before long I was visualising the children. I told he I would think of them as angry chimpanzees turning on one of their own number, bullying and victimising. She asked me to think of a more positive image and we agreed on baby orang utans playing. As to myself. My inner core became dust - nothing, blown away in an instant by the slightest breath of wind, by any criticism or mockery or conflict or abuse.

And that's my homework. To work on visualising myself as having a stronger sense of my own worth. And, that will take time. I have tried however, trying to tell myself my core is first a tree (what we agreed on in the session) and more recently as a metal ball and I'm trying to work on it. She pointed out that my constant monitoring of the world for threats was, in itself, a capability of a sort - a debilitating and exhausting one but one requiring some sort of skill.

This may sound ridiculous, particularly to those who don't have much time for counselling and who will find all this talk of trees and orang utans ridiculous, but to me it felt enormously powerful.

As a result, I've had a bit of an emotional week. My anxiety hasn't of course vanished, like my dusty inner core, but I felt those tears presaged some breakthrough and I know that my self-image is the one thing I have to change if I am ever going to learn to live in this world without smashing my self out with drugs or alcohol, if I am able to live without fear being my constant companion.

Ever since I can remember I have wanted not to be myself, to alter my consciousness in whatever way I possibly can. As a child by spinning, then by hyper ventilating, then by drinking, later with drugs. So, I need to go back to that to sort this all out - and it's going to be frooking hard, but it feels like the start of something.

I got myself a book on meditation out of the library and have collected another couple of numbers for martial arts groups - a way of building self-confidence. So far no call has been made, but I've made the first steps in meditation and Mrs CD very kindly just gave me a very calming massage. Both of which helped in a small way.

Because it's there and it's a real danger that could so easily push me to breakdown. The noise of children has already made me far too ready to leave the house and stay out all day to escape their noise and their conflict, and I often shelter in the pub. I do sincerely believe that a certain amount of altering of the consciousness is an entirely natural and healthy thing and maybe something like that will come through meditation. My other alternatives of choice - coffee and marijuana are starting to assume damaging characteristics. Coffee you might thing is nothing, but the amount and strength of it I drink is quite enough to cause a high - it's a cause of anxiety, so I'm an idiot inflicting pain on myself. I'm so nervous already that a spliff brings the terror of paranoia to the table, added to coffee and I'm off to the bath (the quietest room in the house) and then to bed. It's a shame, but in this state I really can't be doing with it - my intake is incredibly minimal, especially compared to my friends, but it's going to have to get lesser still.

So, a good start and two weeks to work on what I've learned about myself.

A bad day and a slipping mask...

2009-08-18T09:30:00.004+01:00

WHEN I go and take my antabuse every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I am breathalysed - and I pass. No health professional wants to poison a patient of course so that's understandable - I do smile at the nonchalant "Avoid Alcohol" warning on the tablets, like the warnings I've been so gaily avoiding these past twenty odd years, seeking out in fact in the hope that there might even be an extra buzz in the interaction.

They also check the tablets; seeing that they come out of an official looking bottle and looking to see that the logo on the tablet itself is the real deal. I asked one week why that was.

"Does anyone ever fake it?" I asked.

Well, it turns out someone once did and that is why they now check the tablets.

"I wonder why?" I asked, "it seems pretty pointless."

The answer the nurse gave me though was quite simple and immediately I recognised the same symptoms in myself.

"They wanted people to think they were doing well," she told me.

This patient had been doing enough to get through the breath test, coming in and then getting drunk on Monday night, then stopping and being clean again on Wednesday and clean again on Friday. Until, maybe inevitably they failed a test and their subterfuge was revealed.

We're all like that I would imagine. I want people to think I'm doing well, that I'm being successful in my new life and my treatment is going well, to the extent that I have probably, if not exactly lied, then gone out of my way to accentuate the positive even on this blog - anonymously! To people I will never meet and who don't know me from David Beckham (to whom, of course, I bear a striking resemblance, we are the proverbial peas in the proverbial pod).

I think staying positive, is a good and important thing and part of getting better. I enjoy the praise I get, which I even get in my local pub - 'we're very proud of you' a couple of people have told me. But, beneath the super-happy, all is progress mask, it is a struggle and some days are more struggly than others.

Yesterday is the first time I can say I really had a bad day. When I really got depressed and upset. And it's days like those that make the yearning for drink stronger and stronger.

I always knew I was drinking to treat anxiety and depression, and it works let me tell you, in its own way and in the short term if there's a better courage than dutch courage I don't think I've found it - not even when I was shoving gramme after gramme of amphetamine up my nose. So, now I'm a sober anxious person. I have my skills, my toolkit I've been taught - question the anxiety, deal with the physical symptoms and remember that what you fear is almost certainly not as bad as the possibility of a full-blown panic attack. I try to use my skills. It doesn't always work and then I start to remember the foolproof 5% proof anxiety medicine.

I've managed to get myself extremely anxious this week. The local kids - some of whom, and their families, I flat out fear and despise - are on holiday and screaming obscenities up and down the streets all day every day. My terror is that they will see me, they will mock me, they will see my weakness and prey upon it. Some of this fear is, by the way, entirely rational - I've seen some of them do it to others. They live lives entirely free of discipline or control and seem to fear nothing - children of about six are out on the streets playing at 11pm. We've got a friend staying - he's working at Mrs CD's work this week - and he's brought his 11-year-old son and I fear (not for him, don't go thinking I'm altruistic) he'll go out and about and have some sort of trouble with these nasty kids and it will come back on us, actually even that's too altruistic, it will come back on me.

However, the local kids haven't bothered me - not at all, not once, not ever. And some of the fear is irrational - most of them are just what I was when I was their age, a bit noisy, a bit unconcerned about upsetting other people, a bit into themselves and their game and nothing else.

I also do it to myself (I do and that's what makes it worse) - the best anxiety treatment I had I wrote about at length and the lovely psychologist who provided it was unequivocal on one point: caffeine is like amphetamine and it is terrible for anxiety. Cigarettes are too. So what am I doing? Yes indeed, every day a pot of the stuff, nice and strong too; add to that a paranoia inducing joint and there you go, the perfect recipe for a quaking Cardiff Drunk hiding behind closed curtains and looking for incoming attacks from every angle.

However. I AM NOT DRUNK. My physical health is MUCH MUCH BETTER, my eczema (which was making me so miserable and paranoid in itself) IS UNDER CONTROL. I am not working and that causes me a great deal of pain some days - BUT I AM DOING VOLUNTARY WORK AND DOING A GOOD JOB HELPING OUT AT A WEBSITE. I haven't got round to doing all the exciting physical things I was going to do, martial arts to help my fitness and confidence BUT I WALK SOMEWHERE EVERY DAY AND I EAR THREE MEALS EVERY DAY.

Is that overly accentuating the positive? I don't know. It feels more honest to admit that, yes, this is hard and may be harder as time passes - maybe it'll be easier, who knows?

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD.

Onwards and upwards and thinking of drink

2009-08-17T10:42:00.003+01:00

Oh Cardiff Drunk, you unfaithful blog whore, you give all your time to your other blog and never caress my blank pages with your lovely Trebuchet characters.

Ah, yes, 'tis true. I have been very busy in other parts of the blogosphere. I shall, again, promise to make time for my first and only true blog. I miss it actually, and would go so far as to say it's been a useful part of my recovery. If people read it (and feed my ego) by posting comments all the better really. It's working as a form of counselling for me at the moment - talking to the air. That's what counselling is really isn't it. They listen, they're not supposed to judge or lead the conversation, but maybe make suggestions, so essentially they help you heal yourself. And this is what this here blog does - it's my empty room.

That's reminded me actually, I went to the local counselling folks and haven't heard anything. I must give them a ring and check up. I say that now and mean it; it's just a phone call, it's no big deal, a couple of months ago it would have been an insurmountable obstacle and a source of great fear and anxiety. I also plan to phone Pathways, the agency that helps ill people back to work, and from which I was gaining a deal of confidence. I was thrown off my benefit as, despite what my doctor says, despite what the alcohol specialists said, the department for work and pensions say I'm well enough to work. I've appealed against this and I think that now entitles me to go back to Pathways for some more help - they offer advice on self-employment, and that seems the best route to me now. Yep, the thankless slog of rejections and no money that is freelance writing. The work I've done at the other blog has been a great help in restoring my confidence in my ability to write and edit - things which I do naturally and speedily and these are skills that are in demand.

I've been lucky I know. I have no financial worries, no housing worries, no physical health worries - in fact my skin has continued to improve and is now little more than an occasional annoyance.

I also know I'm walking in the lovely green fields of fresh sobriety. Their green will fade.

I think about drinking a lot. Sometimes I crave it fiercely. But, antabuse has been a great help - I can't drink. Some days I have a great feeling of NOT WANTING TO DRINK AT ALL EVER AGAIN, of remembering in pristine clarity what it's like to wake up with a car in your head and no escape but to drink again. Other days I envy drinkers. I was warned by fellow blogger Anybeth about my regular visits to the pub, and perhaps that isn't helping. Although my policy of going only during the day and not for great long periods of time is a good one. But, yes, I envy those who enjoy their drink and don't let it wreck their lives.

Anybeth, of course, had a drink problem and now drinks in such a way that it doesn't wreck her life. And, recently I've met two people who have done the same. I'm not sure what to feel about this. On the one hand I think - as I have always secretly thought and prayed - look! Damn good evidence that people can come through problem drinking and return to 'normal' drinking. Make no mistake that's what I want - no-one could love drink as fiercely as I did and not want to have some sort of relationship with it. But another, and quite possibly wiser, part of my brain wonders if I can. If I'm just one of those people who for reasons psychological or genetic, just can't stop, that no matter how much I sort out the rest of my life (and I'm doing great things in all areas of my life at the moment) and my anxieties and my depression, as soon as I drink a switch will flip in my brain and that will be that.

It's the age old problem and I think everyone who treats us and everyone who has treatment thinks about it a lot. In hospital most of the people I met were of the opinion that they had to stop and stay stopped. I never directly asked a doctor, but they were certainly encouraging abstinence over moderation, and I believe the illness model is the current fashion.

A couple of things tilt me in this direction - my absolute joy and delight at first being drunk as, I believe, a 12 or 13-year-old. And, my seemingly natural tendency towards addiction in other areas of my life - be it writing, reading, dope, coffee whatever. It's a cliche of alcoholism - the reformed drinker who becomes a gym addict, the love of strong coffee (however mild, it's a psychoactive drug and a very fast acting one) among alcoholics. In hospital I also noted that a lot of people were absolutely delighted to be off the drink, but equally committed to maintaining their dope smoking. I can't preach, and I wouldn't want to, but this seemed to be a swapping of addictions rather than a cure. Despite its many advocates I know regular and heavy smokers who are to all intents and purposes addicted to their weed - I know one who bitterly regrets it: "It's a killer of dreams," he said to me, mulling on what he might have achieved if he hadn't have been so stoned along the way. It's probably a less destructive addiction than alcohol in many ways but I think it can be just as pernicious.

You might boggle at this, but another part of me (isn't your mind segmented too?) thinks that I'm just on the road to recovery from alcohol and drinking again will be part of the process - this sort of thinking is partly encouraged by the very non-judgemental style of a lot of alcohol treatment, especially counselling. Despite the misery of some of my life, misery caused most obviously by drink, I've never hit the fabled rock bottom and known and acknowledged that drink was the cause and started on the way up. It's a tempting thought isn't it? Drink, I'm not through with you yet. Mm. It sounds crazy I know, it's not at all the most dominant of the parts of me...

Of course the answer will probably only come if and when I drink again - and both are equally applicable at the moment.

You see Drunk in Cardiff blog, when I come to you, I come unfettered and full on - that's true blog love... I really will try and write something every day, but it's something I've said before.

Well, if you spent it, thank you for your time.

I don't know how you feel, but I feel a hell of a lot better for getting that off my chest. Now, I must away to the siren call of my other blogs.

Cheers,

Cardiff Drunk.

The Daily Happy - Future of the Left

2009-08-07T07:34:00.003+01:00

Magnificent Cardiff band, they remind me a little of Jello Biafra in Lard, Primus, The Fall but are entirely their own magnificent thing to my ears. This is Manchasm, which has invaded my mind to the extent that I had to find out who Mark Foley (who is right, apparently) is. Apparently he is the co-owner of a Cardiff studio, which is disappointingly prosaic I had hoped for some Marxist idealogue or notorious criminal. In a strange piece of coincidence I heard the name in the pub yesterday evening and rather wish they had been singing about this Mark Foley, who's father is called Mad Axeman Foley. Press play now!

Free alcohol everywhere... Exhaustion and my enourmous penis... Strange dreams and strange enthusiasm...

2009-08-07T06:52:00.003+01:00

I wonder if my rather cynical mis-naming of this post will lead to a spike in readers here at Drunk in Cardiff? Whatever, I'm delighted with my total of around 1,000 views a week. If you do read thank you and I hope you take something from it; if you comment doubly so, it's a great thrill and very much encouraged, I always reply.

If you were searching for enormous penises, I apologise, there is related discussion to follow but it may not be your penile cup of tea.

A slight alarum yesterday on the Antabuse front. I've taken it without trouble for a couple of months now. Apart from some initial teething troubles all has been well. There was something approaching what the medics, with their arcane verbiage, call a funny turn with those first tablets, but the lovely hospital staff thought a residue of eczema cream booze in my system was to blame. A previous bout of Antabuse aided sobriety was also pretty positive, the one blip came through some antiperspirant which like Arthur Dent's planning notice ('behind a sign saying beware of the leopard) hid its contents ever so demurely. A couple of days of splitting headaches though and some unpeeling of labels to find the contains alcohol notice and all was well. Note to cosmetics companies - I'm sure it's a growing market, so why not proudly proclaim that you are alcohol free.

I've had headaches again in the last week. Something I never suffer from and yesterday I had quite the spacey episode after going into a builders' merchants and smelling some very fumey fumes. I'm not sure why I mention this, it's only in passing as it's all passed, but it's a concern. Mrs CD and I abandoned a planned Chinese cooking adventure last week because we couldn't find an alcohol free recipe. I know that alcohol burns off once you heat your dry sherry, but with half a bottle of the stuff in a braised belly pork recipe it seemed a risk not risking. I'm going to try and find a definitive answer from the manufacturers' website.

Tiredness struck me too over the last couple of days. I've seen the acronym HALT used a lot on alcohol treatment websites - Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired - as danger signs for relapse. If you've read here recently you'll know that angry and hungry aren't too much of a problem for me, lonely a little more so. I don't think of tiredness as a trigger for drinking - so much of my consumption was 'drinking to unconsciousness' and as an aid to sleep, but, as I think about it now I can remember the slothful lethargic fug that used to engulf me until a few energising pints went in. This tiredness is far better though. It's from my recently discovered and much-loved busy-ness. Yesterday Mrs CD and I slumped out in front of the PC to watch a couple of TV programmes and I realised that it was the first time I'd switched off for several days.

Don't for one moment get the idea that I'm working-working-working, I'm not. But, since I started helping out with the website I've spent an awful lot of time thinking about it or logged on to the computer ostensibly doing things about it (even when rivalling Archimedes in the displacement activity thang). My mind naturally hums with thoughts of things that SHOULD be done, projects that MUST be started - otherwise I'm a loser and a failure - and simply slumping and watching without too much thought was a great relief. That it was the marvelous film Man on a Wire, about a superbly vivacious French tightrope walker who crossed the chasm between New York's tragically missing Twin Towers was even better. An excellent film, if you haven't seen it I heartily recommend it.

Time for my enormous penis now I think. Well, it's a red herring (I do like the British penchant for double-entendtre and sniggery pokery) of sorts. This is about Trazadone, my antidepressant. The sledgehammer blow of sleep it delivers is a boon at the moment but it does leave a drowsiness in the system which can persist. I've complained previously that if I'm tardy in popping my last-thing-at-night pills I lose pretty much the whole of the next morning. If I take it too early Mrs CD ends up with a slurring wreck as a companion - charmingly she finds this rather sweet and funny.

I'm trying to find the perfect time to take it. If you notice things like times of posting, you'll see the early hour of this one - it's 7.18am here in Cardiff, which is fantastic, it's a beautiful morning here - which is only possible because I took the Trazadone before 10pm last night.

Where's the penis I hear you cry. OK. Well, at my last appointment with the Community Addiction Unit, the doctor again raised the possibility of raising the dose towards the maximum. My GP had refused to do this until he received a letter from the CAU confirming their request, saying, "That dose isn't normally administered outside psychiactric hospital". I am concerned that my slight daytime drowsiness might now become Day of the Living Cardiff Drunk. (OK, we're here now) The CAU doctor also warned me about erections - large and long ones (snigger) - which would very likely occur at this larger dose. (Just that, and I only came here for the title, you misled you shout - well, welcome to the world of journalism and bear this in mind next time you read a newspaper say I). Every antidepressant medication I've ever taken has warned of some sort of sexual effect - spontaneous orgasm i one case - but I've never been troubled. Trazadone's effect in this area (one of great enormity to me (oh dear, sorry)) is more to do with blood pressure than mind I think. We shall have to see.

My dreams continue to become more lively and I'm so glad to have a dream life back. Last night's was odd and involved one of my mum and dad's neighbours and a return to the detox unit at Whitchurch - what it meant I can't begin to fathom; although I have thought more of booze in the last few days.

Also coming back to life is enthusiasm - something that has been absent from my life for an awfully long time. In my cheerless cups I became a nasty, cynical, dismissive, bitter old git. I'd never have been so positive as to watch a film as I did last night and enthuse about it, I would've railed against it, picked fault and sneered. Isn't that fantastic?! It feels like it. I'm loving listening to music (part of my life blood as a youngster, but latterly something to over-analyse and destroy with my own negativity). It's not something I normally do here, but I'll recommend wholeheartedly a Cardiff band who have really grabbed my throat, they're called Future of the Left and were also amazing in a previous incarnation as Mclusky - they are today's daily happy and the words that spring to mind when I listen to them are Ferociously Intelligent, Monster Funky Basslines and Quite Frightening - all of which, as you know, are good things.

If you spent it, thank you for your time. (And it's quite a long time on this one - I considered splitting this post, but decided against it, it's just all pouring out and I'm loving it).

CD

Too busy to blog

2009-08-06T10:24:00.003+01:00

By too busy to blog you can be assured that I seem to make plenty of time in my day still for sitting drinking coffee while looking out the window and other such necessities. However, I have been busy elsewhere and it's an entirely positive thing.

I now rejoice in the title assistant editor at the website and am loving writing their newsblog - it's unpaid, but it's fun and will certainly be a feather in my CV's rather raggedy cap. I'm actually experiencing something rather strange - I want to get up in the morning! Unprecedented, at least of late.

Otherwise all seems to be progressing nicely. I do think of and crave for drink regularly - every day in fact. But not savagely and those who told me that keeping busy is the best thing were entirely right; I'm hugely lucky to have chanced upon something that does just that.

My confidence is improving too. I mentioned I'm doing the 'city walk' and my fear of surroundings is dissipating - not so jumpy, not so paranoid. Mrs CD was away for a couple of days this week and I did OK. I wasn't quite the domestic goddess I've become of late and a worrying coffee mug mountain started to grow in the sink, but I got through each day, I ate, I took my medication I made my appointments - nil disastrum.

I had a friend round too. He's a sound engineer and always grubbing around for work so I wanted to show him what he could do online with a a load of free web pages - facebook, blogs, myspace and the like. He was quite impressed and wants me now to help set him up online - another CV enhancer, plus it's nice to do something to help someone out.

I'm due to go volunteering again tomorrow. At the moment it's little more than photocopying and filing, but, it gets me out of the house and used to being in an office and with other people after my two years of isolation without a drink inside me.

This is by necessity a quick post, but I must try and say something at least every day. In the past, a hiatus at Drunk in Cardiff meant a really bad binge or an horrific depression low, now it means much better things.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk - sober and learning to be happier.

How to be angry... Maybe a brain is reborn... Walking the city walk... Busy is good beware the facebook.

2009-08-01T19:37:00.005+01:00

I WAS quite the angry blogger in my last post wasn't I? That's a good thing I think.

We did a deal on anger management on the therapeutic day programme in hospital but it was wasted on me. Knowing how to control anger isn't a problem, knowing how to have and express any anger at all is what I need. I'm just not angry - ever. I'm a bottler upper, a seether and a brooder, a churner and a sitter upon, a doormat and a push over. Not healthy, oh no, I know that, it just doesn't come out of me.

I've been angry of course, you can't walk down these mean streets without getting angry. Hell, you can't listen to the radio or read newspapers without getting angry, can you? It's not working for me. My anger has only really come out when I'm drunk, the times I've expressed rage when sober I remember vividly because they are so few. When drunk the top has come off the bottle in alcoholic blackout - I've been told afterwards what I've said and done when I crawled back into the pub to apologise.

But, I've a feeling it will come. My mind is coming back to life I think. It's getting more of a workout for starters; I'm enjoying my new webtastic writing stuff, I'm busier on here (and spend far too much time smart-arsing around on facebook) and I've been helping Mrs CD sort out financial stuff - a thing I would have previously filed as not my thing - run away! Lets see if I can get some anger then and stop this automatic slinking away and secret tears with an it's-all-my-fault seed sprouting in my brain.

I'm working on my nerves more successfully too. I really took on what I was told by the psychologist at Pathways and I try, try is the word, to put those techniques into practice when I feel the fear frothing up. I'm also starting to walk a city walk. That's a bit sad really but it's helping. I wouldn't paint my upbringing as bucolic and untroubled - it wasn't, the town I'm from is rural and smallish, however, it has tracks and they had a wrong side. There were bullies at school as there are from Eton down. But it's different from city life and it's a lifestyle I prefer - slower and smaller, I knew so many people in my home town that I would say hello to someone every time I left the house.

I've lived in Birmingham and London in the past, and fell under an alcoholic steam train in both cities. Strangely though I enjoyed the anonymity of London (I was drunk most of the time remember so the anxiety was being medicated) and the feeling of being an atom amid an ever revolving, remaking, ridiculous whole. Yes, I was very drunk.

My city walk, by the way, has more of a head down gait to it. I look around me less, I look where I'm going, I don't look at people, I don't listen to them as much as I normally would. It works for me. Cardiff is small and almost village like in character but for me, at the moment, this is the best way forward.

I'm busy, and that's the best thing that's happened to me since my detox. In fact last night, once I'd done all I had to do I was exhausted and needed to go to sleep because I'd been busy all day. More of the same please.

If you spent it thank you for your time.

Here's a lovely song about controlling anger.

Much noise signifying nothing.

2009-07-31T19:56:00.004+01:00

I listened to a show on Britain's binge-drinking culture the other day and learned next to nothing.

To be honest I was disappointed with Radio 4 with broadcasting this, and you can consider this an open letter of a sort as I'm breaking my Feedback virginity on this (next the Moral Maze). They chose as our guide PY Gerbaut, best known in this country as the man who saved the Millennium Dome, and now CEO of X-Leisure - Britain's largest leisure company, which runs leisure facilities, including bars and nightclubs.

The chief qualification PY (I'm sure he won't mind) had seemed to be that he was French, and in continental Europe they don't binge drink. Fair enough. We heard nothing of any expertise he may have picked up as CEO of a company that is 'in partnership' with, he didn't chose to interview any of his own staff to ask them what sort of problems they encounter in the business, or explain what his business did or was going to do to stop binge drinking associated with their premises. I'm getting used to the 'name' presented. No subject it seems can be explained to the public without a name - expertise is not enough, celebrity carries more weight and 'a journey of discovery' is even better.

The answer at which he arrived - and in fairness to M Gerbau he has written a much more considered article on the subject here.

M Gerbau promised us lots of people and lots of evidence on binge drinking and we got:

Tania Glide, who we were told used to call herself a binge drinker - we weren't told she's an author and journalist who's written a memoir on the subject. OK, I haven't read the book, it's had some good reviews, but is its author typical of the youngsters who are the chief 'culprits' if binge drinking's the crime? In fact, Ms Glide is now teetotal, suggesting she considers herself an alcoholic who simply cannot drink at all - alcoholics and binge drinkers are not the same. Why not walk down a high street on a Friday night and ask some teenagers why they're getting smashed out of their heads and how they afford it and if they have any worries about its effect on them?

Then a brief chat with an addiction psychiatrist who told us lots of people were getting sick from drinking. He identified price and availability as the key drivers to the increase in alcohol related illness.

Then a funny story from PY's taxi driver about a woman so drunk her clothes were falling off.

Then some students.

Then PY, his wife Kate, a television presenter, had a dinner party and talked about it. How nice - is this lots of people and lots of evidence?

"Scene seven, the drinks industry," says PY. And off to meet the Diageo chief to ask him what he thinks of Scotland's proposed remedy - higher prices. He doesn't like this idea. PY asks him if the industry is doing enough, he says they are making progress. Oh, that's good then.

Our addiction psychiatrist is back - although he's still not being asked anything about the psychology of addiction. He says again that price and availability is the thing, and that's where government should act on for quick cheap solutions.

Oh! A politician. Home office minister Alan Campbell. Stop people being sick says PY. People being sick is bad says Alan. Alan says eduction. PY says yes. Alan says changes in the licensing laws have helped. PY says nothing apart from "I totally agree with everything you said," but does raise cheap booze. Alan says people work hard and deserve a drink at a reasonable price. Bye Alan.

Then people - students, dinner party guests, Tania Glide? Who knows, I think they're PY's mates though, what exactly their qualification to speak on this matter are is not clear, but they're clearly having fun so that's OK.

"It's been a fascinating journey this last few months," says PY. You took months over this? Jesus.

And, the final word of PY. Lots of progress has been made and we can do more if industry, health experts and government work together, but in the final analysis (I'm joking there has been on analysis) we need to completely change the British culture as it relates to alcohol. OK. Job done then.

Please don't waste my time like this again BBC Radio Four.

Euphoria goes... Trolling along... Work and unwork... Faces, welcome and unwelcome.

2009-07-29T08:31:00.004+01:00

THIS week, the euphoria of being sober has started to wear off. I've written before of the 'and now what' reaction and the feeling of the realities of life which I had so assiduously avoided in my insobriety crashing around me.

I've mentioned it to the nurses who supervise my Antabuse. They've been sympathetic and understanding: "Remember why you stopped drinking in the first place," one said, and it's good advice, so on it I shall try and stay focused.

Frustration and self-loathing, over sensitivity and anxiety are now my chief problems. I do get incredibly angry with myself if things even start to look like they might be deviating from the planned golden path (with apologies to any Peruvians reading). Freshly detoxed, there is a belief in one's own invincibility and power; released from the shackles of a daily dose of a strong depressant the mind starts to soar.

My way of thinking is scatter gun; my magpie mind has made me a pub quiz champion, but, now I crave focus. So, I'm full of ideas - poetry, articles I can write, screenplays of long-loved books, comedy. But, none of these ideas are given anything like the appropriate amount of attention needed to bring them to fruition, before another ten pop into the brain space. Result? Massive disappointment, a subsiding into the "Well, you can't do anything can you" mindset that is such an enemy to staying sober and the concomitant self-loathing.

I raised my anxiety problems - I genuinely do believe I'm more sensitive to my surroundings than many other people, I'm constantly jumping at stuff in my peripheral vision and earshot - to my key worker at the Community Addictions Unit. Also my worry at being kicked off the benefit I was on. He said there were drugs I could be prescribed to help with the anxiety - he mentioned Prozac, which I've taken as an antidepressant and didn't have a happy relationship with - but it was something for the future as they wouldn't work well while I was on Trazadone. Fair enough. I'm not keen on mixing chemicals at the moment. The other prescription is more natural - relaxation techniques, like breathing and mediation, and that's on my list.

So, to be positive, here I am BEFORE 9AM, writing my blog - one of the few tasks I have set myself and had any success at keeping up.

Life has been going OK. And, indeed, in the spirit of celebrating achievement rather than brooding on failure, I do remain on top of domestic duties and have made a few potentially difficult phone calls regarding benefits, appointments and the like. Hoorah for me - hold on there Cardiff Drunk, don't get carried away.

Oh, ok. I've also been emailing off for jobs, wasting far too much time on facebook (a new enthusiasm - I signed up ages ago, but never really used the site, but now it's in danger of joining the bad list), and I've been appointed as Assistant Editor of a website.

That's the biggest plus I guess. It's not paid, but it's a substantial and popular site, I've really enjoyed writing for it and I'm getting regular emails of stuff to edit for their blog - good CV-filling stuff.

Mrs CD is on holiday this week and next, and suffers no such problems with filling her time. After a day's rest to recover from recent over-exertions, she took me by the hand and led me gently to the local DIY superstore where paint and brushes were purchased, and as I glow virtuously with my early start at the keyboard, she's slapping blue round the walls of the kitchen - it's bringing her such pleasure and looks great.

We broke the pattern yesterday with a walk and a lunch out. I managed to locate the community centre which hosts the martial arts class I was interested in attending - this is another step in that direction, the removal of another excuse for not going, I know myself very well and I'm terrible at coming up with reasons not to do things.

I saw two old compadres. One, a drinker from the pub I used to go to but no longer frequent. He was on his way for a drink, but seemed happy enough to see me and we had a brief chat about the evils of the world. The other was far less welcome. A fellow patient on the detox ward - the one who stormed out then returned drunk and shouting to scare the life out of me. He was drinking in a courtyard in City Road, and I could tell from his voice he was well along. I heard his voice but we didn't speak and I'm pretty sure he didn't see me. I held Mrs CD's hand tightly, put my head down and virtually dragged her past his perch.

Seeing him was the last thing I needed.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

The Cardiff Drunk.

Yeah, I like whimsy, so?

2009-07-25T10:40:00.002+01:00

The very lovely Candylion by the very Welsh Gruff Rhys, who may, I believe, have said hello to some marijuana once or twice. Absolutely beautiful stuff... Enjoy.

So now what?

2009-07-25T10:21:00.002+01:00

Being an experienced detoxer, I like to think I'm fairly aware of the snares of sobriety, that is those things likely to spark a relapse. And, I feel one of them now.

I've arsed on and on about boredom and anxiety being my chief enemies and they're playing their part in the sheer ordinary complication of real life. That's the danger. Good lord it can be dull being sober. Don't misunderstand me, if ever a routine was deadening, limiting and dull it was my drinking routine. My mind loved it though, my mind was in a safe place.

I told one of the nurses in hospital that I used drink as a way to run away from real life - to avoid responsibility. "You've got a head start by admitting that," she said. (I was, and remain, a fervent self-analyser so can come up with this stuff like falling off a log).

Maybe so. And, now I've stopped running, here is real life in all its crushingly tedious monochrome.

That's why cannabis is a danger - forced to face what we'll just call stuff for now, it's another escape and I give in far too easily to its temptations. That it's not physically addictive and one doesn't wake with a terrible hangover gives dope at least two positives over alcohol - but my character is still that of an addict to escape and altering of consciousness and that's what it is, another means towards fleeing.

I mentioned all this to the nurse when I went to take my Antabuse at the Community Addiction Unit yesterday. "The novelty's wearing off," I said. "I need to find something to do."

She recognised the pattern straight away. "There's a real feeling of invincibility when you first detox," she said.

And it is that which is leaving me. Her chief suggestion was the Therapeutic Day Programme, which I completed, for the second time in hospital. I'm also on the list for counselling with the Cardiff Alcohol and Drugs Team, a possibly double-edged sword I'm rather wary about.

So. There is danger and there needs to be action. There needs to be a change beyond, I'm not drunk.

So, that is what I'm trying to do. The nuts and bolts of life I'm coping relatively well with. I've just finished the washing up, put away a load of dried laundry and cleaned the house - tasks which might as well have been the finding of the Holy Grail and the slaying of several particularly tetchy dragons to my alcoholic self. I still have a social life - via the pub, but that, counter intuitively, doesn't feel a danger to my sobriety. So now, that emptiness needs some filling up.

I've got my volunteering once a week, for two hours. I've got my appointments, at the very least three trips out a week, and now I need to write - and do so for money again.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

I saw Welsh celebrities!

2009-07-19T11:09:00.003+01:00

I completely forgot to report two not at all exciting sightings of famous Welshmen in my last two outings - I shall have to become a paparazzo.

At last week's International Food Festival it was Wales's premiere thespian and seeming heir to the Burt's throne of an unfortunate personal life: Rhys Ifans. He swaggered (so I thought) into a Chinese restaurant and was heartily shaking the hand of the receptionist. I can't report on his state but D swore he was as drunk as a loon. I don't care, I hope he's happy.

Then yesterday in Penarth's main drag one of our fabulous rugbyistes with a nice but of synchronicity. I was coming out of a shop after buying my lottery ticket and having a quick read of the South Wales Echo on the stand at the door. The front page reported that Wales, Ospreys and Lions scrum half Mike Phillips had been arrested in Cardiff after a dispute over a taxi (such things are not uncommon it must be said, I'm sure the Welsh management would love it if all their players swore only to go out in England. Me, I'm quite glad that such heroes are still out and about with their flocks; even if they're fighting over taxis with them). I was distracted by the arrival of a very glamorous young woman at my shoulder, who started flicking through the Western Mail and laughing to her companion, who, on exiting the shop I spotted was said Mike Phillips - looking, as all professional athletes I've ever encountered do, enormously and glowingly fit and healthy and not at all perturbed by any arrest or scandal. I can report that he then headed in Gregg's the bakers, while his companion remained being glamorous in the street.

This is my second celebrity/apposite newspaper story encounter. The first was in Highgate Village in north London (I was only visiting with a friend on our way to see Karl Marx's enormous stone head, I certainly could never afford to live there), we were sat in a pub with The Observer on the table, the magazine of which featured a portrait of the Kinks' Dave Davies, when who should walk in but the Kinks' Dave Davies. I wonder if our double-taking stare at paper, stare at the Kinks' Dave Davies, stare at paper, stare at each other with open jaws routine had anything to do with his decision to use the gents and flee? I still wish I'd asked him to sign it, I'm a big Kinks fan, but was probably on the wrong side of the hungover, drunk equation that was my permanent lot in life then.

A bit of a blow... Out and about... No blogging no cry... Work...

2009-07-19T10:38:00.004+01:00

No blog yesterday, nothing wrong, perhaps just a bit of a bloggage in the system. Mrs CD returned from her work assignment on Friday night and pronounced my chicken with butter bean soup excellent - all was smiles.

Yesterday, a visitation from the Drunk parents - both of whom are practically teetotal as it happens. This always makes me nervous and jumpy. I know what pain and worry I've caused them over the years; how much I am indebted to them in many ways, financially not least; but I know also that I have a few problems with them. I said that in going back to counselling I don't want to dwell on the past so I shouldn't do here. However, I do remain angry about some of my growing up - nothing but the tiniest of things, but they weigh heavy on you sometimes.

And. And, we had a super day out. We drove to Penarth (it's walkable if you've got the time) to find the town celebrating its summer festival. Mrs CD wanted to visit an exhibition by Joe Magee. Normally, a modern art show would trigger an automatic sneer in me, but the absence of drink seems to have sent my cynical side on a stroll. It was only a small show, but the premise was clever and the pictures produced were haunting and affecting.

Magee took films of passing trains and captured the faces of passengers, sampling them and overlaying them with reflected images from train windows. The faces, rendered in black and white with very heavy shadows, framed in the curved squares of British train windows and swathed in leaves, trees and so on from the passing countryside had quite an emotional impact. Trains and train stations carry this weight - places of departure and meeting and journeys of hope, expectation or dread accompanied by strangers. I used to love watching my fellow passengers on trains and wondering what their stories were.

We ate at a little sea-front Italian, listening to another table complaining about their food - no garlic and no chili she said. Our pasta was just fine and dandy thanks.

Then a stroll up to the clifftops for an open air art show by local club members - lots of water colour views and even some semi-erotic oil paintings, which certainly stood out in genteel Penarth. My mum can't stop being a geography teacher many years after retirement and surveyed the North Somerset coast where my father spent his youth - largely holidaying at Weston Super Mare, a favourite day trip for us all when my brother and I were small enough to be entertained by cricket on the flat sands. I seem to recall my brother being quite a ruthless batsman on such occasions, being happy to compile enormous scores against a fielding side of just Dad and I.

I'm still jumpy about the neighbours, but am learning to live with it. Saturday night saw a stream of kitchen roll dumped in our front garden, triggering my awful we're-under-siege-paranoia. I dread weekends because I know that children will be about and doing their screaming thing all day but yesterday was quiet as can be. The school holidays will kick off soon and I'm trepidatious but determined to develop Mrs CD's insouciance - they're NOT INTERESTED IN YOU, don't be so interested in them - narcissism and persecution are close friends I think.

The blow came in a letter from the Department of Work and Pensions, who have decided I am well enough to work, and informed me that I'd already received one letter telling me this. I haven't, so will have to ring them on Monday morning and try to lodge an appeal. I saw my doctor last week who told me another two month sick note would be appropriate. They sent me the results of my questionnaire and I was far too easy going with it - I was drunk at the time, of course, so I can say my condition has changed. The greatest disappointment is that for the moment I can no longer access the services of Pathways which felt like a gentle and ordered progress towards returning to work.

The stark alternative of course is to work. Freelance writing's the aim, so, that must start.

I hope you're as well as can be expected and if you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD

A small bad... small goods too... counselling... on the piss with the boys.

2009-07-17T18:14:00.005+01:00

If I don't blog for a day or two that's always a sign of a small bad in my life. Nothing major though, just slipping into drifting and boredom slightly. It's coinciding with Mrs CD working away, so, must do better next week when she's away again.

I'd love to delight, shock and entrance you now with tales of sober derring do and edge-of-the-pintglass thrills, but there's little of that going on. Antabuse you see, if I drink, I'm in hospital and I don't want to go to hospital.

Things have moved along though.

The big news treatment wise is my first counselling session. Not a full blown talkathon but rather an assessment to see how I am and if counselling is for me at the moment. After my previous bad experiences I honestly ummed and aahed quite a bit about whether to go back. I was honest enough to tell the lady from Cardiff Alcohol and Drugs Team (CADT) that one of the reasons I was thinking of coming back is that I'm benefiting greatly from having things to do and appointments to keep. I told he about my excellent experience with the anxiety man at Pathways and that the short, sharp, practical nature of it had really helped.

Talking about the past isn't for me at the moment. I'm finding the longer I'm sober the more able I am not to wallow in painful memories. The blights of my youngsterism are mild compared to many and I'm in a position now where I think I want to say - that was then and thinking about it is not going to help me now. What I need is a future, I've spent too long as a victim of perceived slights in the mists of memory. There are a couple of things I'd maybe like to get off my chest but, avanti!

The waiting list is around a month, so we shall see what we shall see in due course.

That was about it for appointments this week. The other biggie this week has been a successful afternoon out with M and D. This really felt like a big step for me. I've been popping into the pub, but not for sustained lengths of time and just to chat. But this was my friends going out for a session - meeting in a pub and then going to other pubs.

And, it was great - I honestly can't remember having laughed so much in, well, in years. And that felt very good. My menu for the afternoon was:

One Pint gingerbeer and lemonade.
One Applejuice, to wash down some of all you can eat for £6.50 Chinese buffet in Queen Street - another first for me, and lovely.
One coffee.
Two teas.
Another coffee, a glass of water.

Too much coffee there, and I'm going to have to try and get out of the habit that there must be a full drink in front of me. It's a hangover from alcoholique days - as a drinker I always saw the glass as on its dregs and I'm sure others have faced the panic of NO MORE CANS AFTER THIS ONE.

We met at two and I gave a massive double take when I was told it was gone 6pm as I headed home while they went on to another bar.

And that's that. The screaming of children still perturbs me and was a fly in the ointment of that lovely day but I'm getting a little better with experience and I know one way to not make it worse - lay off the dope you idiot.

I've also met a fellow about writing for his website, and he's very keen and encouraging and also did my volunteering today - nothing more than putting stuff in envelopes but a welcome change from walls and computer screens.

Maybe more tonight, but I'm hoping to have a good long session on the music machine.

I hope you're all well and if you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Duck in burgers... Weather, effect on mood of... By the skin of Monty's teeth

2009-07-12T18:59:00.004+01:00

Nothing to see here. Move along. More unremarkable progress going on here.

I overslept this morning and that's about as dramatic and difficult as it has got. I know why. I took my Trazadone too late - Trazadone says on its lovely little side effects leaflet, along with skin rashes and as with every antidepressant I've taken does sexual malfunction of various sorts (one included, I think it was Effexor, spontaneous orgasm, which sadly didn't trouble me), that it can cause drowsiness.

This, as understatements go, is up there with calling Pol Pot a little cranky. You take it and about 40 minutes later you're asleep. I've mentioned recently that I've noticed I'm dreaming again and that's new because with Trazadone I've been going LIGHTS OUT, then, about 10 hours later LIGHTS ON! It's good for me that I'm getting good sleep, so don't think I'm moaning. But last night I was a little tardy in popping my pills, so didn't surface until 10.30am.

And, as I say, that's it for dramas, triggers, crises today and that's pretty small potatoes I'm sure you'll agree. [Going through the spell check, I've just realised I've made it through a crowded public event with bugger all in the terms of panic - beyond having to go back to the car to make sure it was locked, of course it was, and that's worth noting - well it is to me.]

We pottered around happily enough, Mrs CD in the garden, me in the kitchen and then drove down to the Bay - Cardiff's version of the redeveloped docklands that have sprung up in pretty much every major port in Britain, usually replacing ships with the arts and restaurants and stuffing warehouses with bijou apartments and lofts. This, apparently, regenerates the economy of the area. It wouldn't be too cynical to suggest this is really gentrification. There are jobs of course, as waiters and the like, but, aren't you just shifting problems elsewhere. I'm not really qualified to pontificate on this, but that doesn't usually stop me. Still Cardiff, as a capital, at least had the chance to pop a rather swish National Assembly there and the Opera House which seems constantly busy. Cripes, who am to moan anyway, I like the Bay (I know older Cardiffians who refuse to countenance this term and gruffly correct me: "The Docks!"), it's aimed squarely at a Guardian reading handbag like myself. So good luck to Pizza Express, the Glee Club, Gourmet Burger Company and all who sail in them.

It was the International Food Festival today, hence the duck burger. Very nice it was too. A nice wander and we caught a bit of music, for one of which M was doing the sound for. We gave C and D a lift down and popped them back to the Pub afterwards. All pleasant enough.

The weather was superb. After listening to the cricket this week, I'd been briefed that it was going to rain today, but it's been perfect. The sun beat down, but the Bay always benefits from the cooling effect of the sea breezes. Everyone seemed to be having fun.

I got back just in time to catch England's fortunate escape with a draw in what was quite a thrilling finish. (Ah, American readers, you don't get cricket do you - that's a shame, you're missing out on one of the world's great games, I suggest you get a copy of the rules forthwith and cast off baseball as the pointless waste of an afternoon it so obviously is).

I've done a bit of arsing around on this ol' machine and that, and that's about all.

On the drinking front, sober as an umpire of course. The only time it struck me was at the festival where I was assaulted with bibuliscious alcohol of almost every description but had to pop to a local corner shop to get a bottle of water. And, I do still miss the damn stuff - every day to be honest. That rush of I don't want to drink the other day is anomalous - that's why I remarked on it I guess. Almost every day I will at some point think, I wish I was drunk, and it's not a craving for a sensible couple of pints, it's for being drunk, drinking to sleep, or that glorious feeling of being in the pub in the early afternoon having got down the four or five pints that make you feel first human, then mmm, quite tasty really and knowing you've got £20 in your pocket and nowhere to go and some decent spliff and some cans at home. Oh yes, I still miss that.

Still. Getting sleepy already from all that sunshine.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Not enough hours in the day for filling up all the hours in the day

2009-07-11T22:04:00.003+01:00

It's a flipping full-time job this sober lark innit? I'm finding more and more that I'm coming to the end of each day thinking, I should have done... I haven't done... I still want to.

All good stuff I guess. Boredom's the enemy here. So, what with my almost constant low-level housework going on, taking medication, going out to a garden centre today (at Mrs CD's behest - she loves her gardening and we both want to get a Lemon Verbena plant. I love the tea, which seems to have vanished off the shelf of late, if anyone knows why I'd love to know - a bad 'bena harvest, a run on lemony herbs or a revolution in the Verbena growing outposts of Mexico; I miss it.)

Of course a fair amount of all this busyosity is no-good-time-wasting bobbins by most standards. I, despite being a man, am fantastic at multi-tasking. I say I'm fantastic at it, but what that really means is I do lots of things at the same time which means that the thing I set out to do takes four times as long. So, I pop onto the computer to write this blog, or send an email or find something out and while there check Facebook and Myspace and decide to try and write some music and read the Guardian comment page and I MUST, simply MUST have the radio on while I do this and bless my soul but it's three hours later.

Still, I'm 10,000 times less a prevaricator than I was, when a huge chuck of at least four hours of each day was red inked in and underlined as 'Sitting in the pub.' And, along with all the time-wasting feats I make little steps forward - I'm meeting someone early next week about writing for his website; unpaid but good for the CV and hopefully enjoyable. I've sent a couple of emails and made some steps towards cancelling an account I no longer need - and, a message for British Telecom here: the way you hide details of how to cancel accounts both on your automated phone system and your website no doubt makes commercial sense in that people will, as I certainly would have done two months ago, give up, but it's snidey, cheap and tawdry and makes me hate your company.

Today's been OK. Up early, breakfast, coffee, garden centre, nice lunch cooked by me, cleaning up, computering, including writing a piece of music for to submit to a library music site and even doing something for a no-doubt foolish, quite possibly pretentious and awful arty project.

I will bore you with the details. I write and record (on extremely cheap software) electronic music, abstract but quite tuneful, retro-futurist popadelica things which I enjoy and which have even had minor public outings. Well, I thought I'd like to do something with words, random words, which is why I spent a good chunk of the afternoon picking out every third book on my bookshelves, going to page 33, skipping three words and writing down the next three. I then emailed a load of people asking if they'd be willing to read out said snippets into a microphone for me to digitally mash, loop, reverse and generally mess about with before crunching them into some sort of, err, sound.

Then I cooked a very nice pasta dinner and now I'm shattered.

It's all very inconsequential but I'm enjoying myself in a self-contained and level-headed sort of way.

It struck me very powerfully the other day as I was walking to the pub to see C. I don't want to drink. I'm not saying that's it, I'm cured, Drunk in Cardiff will now become an even more tedious litany of the pedestrian and prosaic without even a light panic attack to leaven the mix. Neither am I saying, although I'm noticing every day how much more at home I am with moderation, well, I can have a drink now and be sensible about it. That's the last thing I want right now - I'm scared of drinking and happy to be not drinking. I'm lucky that so far the tests and triggers have been relatively few and far between and they've only been little bumps in the road - tougher tests are as inevitable as an England batting collapse but really, so far, so good.

I wanted to get a little counter for the blog to tick away the days since I last had a drink. I couldn't find one (any clues gratefully accepted) but as I had my last drink on May 31, I think that makes 41 days sober, so tomorrow it'll be six weeks without a drink.

Champagne corks ahoy!

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

Ohhwaahoo, dunnananaah dannannaaah ooo.

2009-07-10T21:47:00.004+01:00

I'm entitled to join Ice Cube today in saying this.

Not, of course, in Ice Cube's beep getting, drunk but not throwin' up, basketball playing way - although, it is true that none of my friends have died in South Central LA today, not that I've heard anyway.

It just all went pretty good, pretty busy, pretty eating three proper meals, doing washing, cleaning, doing the shopping I needed to do, restarting my volunteering again, sort of way. Woohoo. Pleased I yam, oh yes.

Oh, yeah, and with minimal rain delays I've been able to listen to the mighty Test Match Special, which the caravan being in Cardiff even told me when it was going to rain and I had to get my washing in.

I won't bore you with the tedious details so unremarkable are they in any even close to normal life but to me these things are new and doing them a thing of wonder, boring yes, but boredom's been sloughed off with Mr Strongbow and Uncle Stella before, now it's just got through.

And, I didn't even have to use my AK.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk, smiling.

I bet something goes horrible wrong tomorrow though ;O)

A couple of days off air in the smoke... Very much better ta.

2009-07-10T18:42:00.004+01:00

Drunk in Cardiff went off air for a couple of days there. Silence. Of all the things I put on pointless lists of what I ought to be doing - every day, every week, this particular day - blogging ought to be the easiest to do. I clucking love it I do and, whatever it might mean to you my lovely 13 or so readers, I do think it's genuinely therapeutic for me. I get stuff out of my head and in the getting do some mulling and such and I love writing so it easily fills time and feels at least useful in a silly old sort of way.

Much more useful than what I did over the last couple of days which was smoke too much dope. D'oh! Nothing too spectacular I should add and I still feel on an upward slope from the bottom of the ditch. However, I did end up doing far too much just sitting around doing sod all. Still, being gently to one's self being the watchword of early recovery - I forgive myself. There, that's that then... This whinge has now ceased to be.

On the Wednesday I had to toddle into town at the unaccustomedly (is that a word? Let's see what dodgy Mr Spellcheck says (Mr Spellchecker say no, Mr Cardiff Drunk say sod yer)) early hour of 10am - I mean, for god's sake, what do they think recovering alcoholics are among Britain's worse at? Enjoyed it really. It feels good to be part of the working, walking world and out of the triangle that my life had become - home - pub - corner shop - home - and getting round a bit more.

The occasion, for it still demands an occasion, was a course at Pathways. Called rather nebulously Directions, it was, in fact, a damn good day's work - well, 10am till 2.30pm is as close to that as I'm likely to get for a while.

As with my little anxiety session, things started well with the course leader (for a dozen of us too-sick-to-workers there was one leader and two 'facilitators', although I think one of them was just sitting in as part of her induction to a slightly different job) telling her own story of depression. As I signed up with a nod to all the confidentiality stuff I won't go into any details, but it was rather moving. As we went round the room we all had similar stories - I think of the 12: one left early, one left at lunch time and of the survivors all but two were there with mental health problems and those with physical ills spoke of similar problems.

It went well enough all things - including my own cynicism - considered. Kind of motivational, kind of self-helpy, a smidgen of positive thinking, a spot of CBT-esque language. I've gone through all this sort of thing before but my own situation is such that I'm so much more open to it now. It helps that the people are coming from the right place - Pathways is proving positive so far, in the preparing you for work, we'll see how touchy feely they are around offers of work and as the time ticks along.

Thursday was OK too. I overslept and missed what should have been my second session of the course, but I've got in touch and they're going to send me some literature. I need another pile of paper to sit next to the other 13, so that's good.

So, I pottered around and did a damn fine clean up in the bathroom - you could indeed eat your dinner off it. C came back from the pub with me to listen to a CD and have a small smoke with a coffee. It went a bit off the rails there - I'm still anxious and jittery enough that cannabis is very much a hit-or-miss mixed blessing. It's probably a good thing, but I'm definitely tending towards paranoia and expecting the neighbours to batter the door down with axes, guns and bits of hosepipe stuffed evilly with the very small, crystalline gravel you can buy in garden centres. So, another area of my life with more moderation in it.

Yes, off the rails, like this very digressionary post (that's got to be a word surely, it's staying whatever Mr so-called Spellchecker says). Got a bit nervey so had a bath and went to bed only to have to get up and eat half a reheated corned beef hash - a taste acquired in hospital.

However, in the be-gentle-with-yourself, all-is-forgiven mood of the moment, I still feel better. Things slip a little but I'm more able to stop myself from total annihilation.

So, yes, I'm very much better ta.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Kerdiv Drunk.

Psycho education for anxiety. A begginer's guide.

2009-07-07T21:30:00.003+01:00

Right, this is what I was taught in one one hour session by a psychologist. It's not going to be comprehensive, but if you are struggling with anxiety too then it struck me as the most sensible and practical advice I've been given on the subject in all my years looking for treatment and you might like to find out more.

The first part of the session focused on explaining what anxiety was, why we need it and why suffering it in the way that I, and maybe you, do is inappropriate.

So, anxiety is necessary to a stone age creature like man to us deal with physical threats. If you experience anxiety, the symptoms are the body preparing for violent attack - ye olde fight or flight reaction. So, sweating to make you slippery (apparently, according to my psychology guy!), increased heart rate to get oxygen to the muscles, breathing more oxygen in, stomach upset as chemicals pour into your system. As the anxiety increases so do these symptoms, into a panic attack in fact, until it escalates and you go into a sort of pre-shock and your body starts to shut down, which might even involve hallucinations and you will almost certainly believe you're about to die.

Now, this is great for dealing with physical attack. However, in our society, although there are threats and dangers, most of our anxiety is centred on things for which this physical preparation is completely inappropriate, but it is the only response our body has.

Anxiety sufferers (who tend to be intelligent, deep thinkers and very concerned with the world around them flattery fans) are wasting their time worrying about fantasies. Almost everything that causes the response above in anxiety sufferers is an irrational fear. If you are afraid of crowds for example you are afraid of a fantasy - if a friend rang you and said they were in town and it was crowded, you would not advise them to flea, would you?

But humans are learning creatures and by being anxious about certain situations your mind will learn to behave this way. Your response is that of something under attack, which tells your brain that the situation - crowds for example - that makes you anxious, is something that is worth being afraid of, because it produces the response that comes with being under attack.

Now, the two ways I was taught to try and deal with anxiety.

The first starts with the preceding information and using your brain rationally and logically.

When you experience anxiety remember what is going on phsyically and why you are starting to feel so bad, it's a fear of fear, a fear of nothing and you CAN overcome it.

The second is not to behave in certain ways and take some actions to deal with the symptoms of what is primarily a physical problem.

So, try and control your breathing. I've had breathing into a paper bag recommended for dealing with panic attacks, or try to breathe slowly through your nostrils for short time - your body is trying to flood your system with oxygen.

Your system is also heating up as lots of chemical reactions go off and making you sweat too. Try and drink some cold water, take off clothes if you can.

Try to walk steadily. It's calming, familiar and stabilising - it is NOT running. But, it's not a good idea to isolate yourself, sitting still and alone: this is like hiding and will only increase the anxiety.

Try and do some muscle relaxation if you can.

DON'T give yourself more energy - definitely avoid caffeine (and, if you suffer from anxiety than you should probably look at what your caffeine intake is as too much can, on its own, trigger a panic attack. The psychologist I spoke too described it as speed, it works in exactly the same way, he said.)

The same with foods or drinks that are full of sugar - you're feeding more energy into your system, which is not what you want to do - try water if you can.

Cigarettes are not a good idea. The relaxation of smoking is just the satisfying of cravings, and nicotine is a stimulant - at another relaxation related thing, the leader said one of the reasons smoking can relax people is because you tend to breathe more slowly; this chap was skeptical but did say that you're certainly breathing in less oxygen when you're smoking because you're filling your lungs with carbon monoxide.

Try and keep your metabolism steady - avoid getting hungry and eat three good meals a day and as healthily as you can. There you go. Now that's only what I remember from one session but it might be something you'd like to try or try to find out more about.

The psychologist I spoke to added that the worse thing you can do is expect to do this instantly and then consider yourself a failure if it doesn't work. You'll need to learn and it may well happen bit by bit, but even if you're only trying to do something or using the logical thinking stuff at the moment you are on the right track.

If you spent it, thank you for your time. CD.

Last night a psychologist saved my life. (A day off).

2009-07-07T20:40:00.004+01:00

I was doing pretty well yesterday, until I realised that at the rate I do things I don't have enough time to fit everything I want or need to do in a day. Whoops. Hence no blog. Mr Spliff came-a-calling too, but nothing to major and it hasn't engendered any kind of mental breakdown (yet), so we'll let that one pass.

I had to go into town for another appointment at Pathways, the job service for the mentally challenged. This was an occupational therapy kind of deal and it was the best advice on anxiety I've EVER had in all my years haunting GP surgeries and A&R wards and the like and BEGGING to get them to take me seriously and do something to help me with what I, but apparently no-one else, consider serious mental health problems that need treating. Treatment by the way is not the same as approximately one second's thought and then playing a game of "I've taken that, they took me off it, it made me sick" as you roll through the list of antidepressants.

Well, enough of the whining already.

I went into the little office and the guy, who was much younger than me I think and almost aggressively dapper, asked me where I felt I was and what my problems were. Anxiety is a big one when it comes to getting back to work, I told him and bang, he was off.

I'm going to put in another post on what he taught me, which he called PSYCHO EDUCATION (so I will too, him being the psychologist and all), in that one hour session, so impressed was I with this, to me new set of techniques. And that was key - actual practical things you can do to not feel like this.

The first thing he told me was that he had suffered almost constantly and terribly with anxiety in his late teens so knew what it was like and that these techniques work. I was bowled over.

Sadly, just before I left, he said he was going to have to leave the job fairly soon as he was finding it a little difficult to have to spend such a large part of every day talking about the problem that nearly took his life apart - like me hanging round in the pub all day, I offered. It's a shame because he's very good at it.

He also offered advice on getting over my alcohol problems. He was wary of AA, thinking it rather too guilt-based and also putting yourself at the mercy of other people's moral standards. Don't consider drinking again a failure, he said too, that will only make any slips worse and you've already done something incredible already. (I'm really digging all this praise at the moment - D is always telling me how well I look and how proud I should be of what I've achieved, one of the old guys from the pub said pretty much the same the other day. I'd better take it while I can, it's not going to last forever.)

The rest of the day was slightly disappointing really. I didn't do much more than buy some computer games (only a tenner), have a couple of squashes in the pub, cook some dinner, have a smoke and mooch about till bedtime.

No alarums and no surprises.

If you spent it thank you for your time.

Cardiff Drunk.

PS, I think my spell checker on blogger is still highlighting correctly spelled words, anyone else out there having this problem.

Nicotine, a dream and a dangerous coiled sausage...

2009-07-05T22:33:00.006+01:00

For some reason I woke up at 3am this morning and stayed awake to 5am then slept in till 10.30am. Not the best start to the day but I think I must have taken my Trazadone too early, I'm also remembering the part of my recent courses on sleep that warns of nicotine withdrawal causing waking. I do have a fag last thing at night and it's almost always one of first things I do on waking.

I've also noticed that I'm dreaming. I thought for a long time that I didn't, so rarely did I remember dreams. But, I gather - only from the university of popular science on telly - that we do all dream. There's even an idea that people with depression suffer from the wrong sort of dreaming - I think it's the non-rapid eye movement type of dreaming that we are not aware of and tends to be darker. Well, in the last two nights I've remembered two dreams, probably because I woke at the end of each. The first was about a giant slug - an obsession of Mrs CD, who fights a long and attritional war against their many evil doings in the vegetable patch - I don't recall feeling particularly distressed by it. The second involved Charles I and me and some friends being chased by him across the recreation ground that was my chief playground as a child, the whole affair was narrated as if it was a television history documentary and as I woke I'd just given up making my escape while climbing under one of the fences into one of the gardens that adjoins the rec'. I've often had dreams in which I'm chased, besieged, hounded and persecuted - but as with the slug I had no sense of being very much distressed by the royal pursuit.

I was pleased with myself this morning though; after that fag I went and did 10 minutes of cycling on the exercise bike followed by a test to see how many press-ups and sit-ups I can do. If I'm going to take up a martial art I need to do some preparation I think and - fanfare - I can do 10 press-ups and 20 sit-ups. Mike Tyson I am not, but it's a start and exercise is good for alleviating depression.

D and C came round. D to look through some books I'm sending off to the charity shop and C just for a cup of coffee on their way to the pub and their well-established Sunday routine of a pub roast, a few pints then a session of smoking and listening to music from C's enormous and magnificent record collection. It was all very pleasant and easy and laughter was had all round.

Then an experimental lunch. Mrs CD and I popped into an African shop on the way home yesterday and picked up something that has been intriguing us. The shop seemed to sell very little apart from a cabinet full of some sort of curled sausage. Although the shop is run by black Africans said sausage - which is mighty in its dimension, such as gods will shudder at its sight - is an Afrikaner thing called a boerewors. They sat there in chili, garlic and plain variety and we started off, timidly with a plain, which I stuck in the onion with some onions, sage, garlic and peppers.

It was a qualified success - in that I really liked it and Mrs CD wasn't 100%, finding it a bit rich. It produced a hell of a lot of fat in cooking but that was easily dispensed with and from the consistency of the final product has a fair proportion of blood and offal in it. Mmm, blood and offal.

Cracking stuff. That's about all really. A short walk in the park, getting caught in a downpour on the way home. Mrs CD lasted all four odd hours of the tennis and I caught bits - very intense and close. Dinner. A bit of telly - Orangutans: I fecking love Orangutans, if you could buy them as pets I would and walk it every day.

Ah, ginger apes!

If you spent it thank you for your time. Apologies for being so dull at the moment - you'll have noticed no paranoia today despite a full sunny afternoon of kids swarming all over our front yard and so on, but, I'm slowly coming to terms with it, thank Hicks for that.

Catching up - National Museum of Wales and a nice Italian

2009-07-05T15:31:00.005+01:00

I'm still a post behind, so here's what happened yesterday. If you looking for something particularly diverting you might want to look elsewhere, because little of note happened: no addiction thoughts, progress or crises yesterday.

A gentle sunny day with light rain squalls in Cardiff, and tout de South Wales out in the streets promenading and the like. Mrs CD and I bobbed to the National Museum of Wales to take a squint at their Diane Arbus exhibition. I think they've had a bit of a revamp lately, opening up some new galleries and putting more of their collections on display. Certainly, on a couple of previous visits I felt the building rather overshadowed the exhibits - it's monumental, classically inspired civic architecture. Nothing wrong with that, it's a very nice building, but there seemed a lot in the way of empty space, especially in the massive entrance hall.

I enjoyed the photography. I see, some critics think of Arbus's work as a little exploitative; a freak show. You're certainly stared at a lot by her black and white subjects, who might be generally classed as outsiders and indeed freaks, from the sideshow world of sword swallowers, tattooed men; but also the non-white, the mentally ill, strangely intense looking little children, transvestites and dominatrices. I liked the sharpness of the images and the everyday boredom of their cheap rooms and the parks and squares of New York.

"You can't help thinking about what future they had," Mrs CD said. And, if you did, you wouldn't be imagining an enormously happy world of joy unbounded and success everlasting. But, you did care, and you can't say more than that for a photographer, can you?

We popped into an Italian restaurant afterwards for their cheap lunch special and very nice it was too. Pizza for me, Spaghetti Marinara for Mrs CD. The waiting staff were like dancers, run off their feet but very professional and smiling all the way through an efficiently marshaled lunchtime rush. The rain got up and drove the foolhardy souls who had taken advantage of the outside seating back indoors, all brilliantly handled by the staff, who grabbed their plates and shuffled tables to squeeze them in.

Then home, too late to catch the battle of the incredible Williams sisters. Liver for tea (it's, like, way cheap), a bit of telly and early to bed. My nerves got their usual rattling with a something that went bump in the night: "Someone's throwing things at the door," I panicked, an idea that Mrs CD had no time for, and, who was the voice of reason come the morning? Not Mr Paranoid, but Mrs Calm Reason, who had a fallen ornament to point to rather than my imagined horde of knife wielding night crawlers.

Lessons to be learned. My nerves are still awful and my usual nerve tonic is out of bounds - I drank for armour and I drank for courage - so, I'm just going to have to get used to a life where children scream and shout happily in the street and I don't extrapolate away to some victimisation or attack.

It will come, we must hope for that.

One good thing that's come out of my jangled hyper-sensitive nerves is that I've barely touched a spliff since leaving hospital. What's the point? Where's the joy when you just end up a bag of jelly praying for sleep. No bad thing at all.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD.

Crikey and crivens, I missed a day! A question for bloggers.

2009-07-04T16:57:00.004+01:00

I remembered what the new thing I meant to write about on Thursday was, just as it was supposed to be happening. Then I forgot to write a blog at all on Friday; things fall apart as they say.

Only in a very minor way however. You can blame Mrs CD for the non-bloggery, she was catching up on her tennis on the lovely i-player, so I wrote some music on the other machine, an altogether healthy and enjoyable thing to be doing I'm sure you'll agree.

The New Thing, was supposed to be attendance at an AA meeting. I went into town again and mooched round the new central library. One of my cousins has done some of the family history and I'm, of course, entirely thrilled to discover that my mother's grandfather's uncle - which I believe makes him my great great great uncle (but, hey, we're not exactly over endowed with over-achievers in the Cardiff Drunk family, so I'll take him) - rejoiced in the rather spiffing title of Archdruid of North America and was the first such no less. Americans wishing to pledge fealty and offer up giftage and tribute should just email me and we'll sort something out. It's a strange Welsh thing, but still it's nice to know there was a notable in the family. In fact, ironically enough, he was a reverend and quite the anti-liquor activist, to such an extent that his church was bombed by some of Pennsylvania's naughtiest purveyors of grog.

It was while I was pleasantly pootling round the library that I remembered the AA meeting, which was a good half-an-hour away and due to start in ten minutes. Oh well. I will try again next week.

That minor piece of absent mindedness aside I had a pretty good day, thanks for asking. Library, sat writing a postcard to my mum and dad to go with their copies with a coffee. Popped in to the Community Addiction Unit to take my Antabuse and saw another old Whitchurch hand there. Bought a notebook in order to sit scribbling in the park like some mysterious all-seeing eye type of fellow. Bought a sandwhich and went to the park and realised I'd look like some all-too-familiar pain in the arse pretentious failure sort of fellow (must work on that positive thinking a bit harder), so read a magazine. Then to the pub for my pints of blackcurrant and soda water - orange if I'm feeling devil may care - and watched Andy Murray exit Wimbledon with C.

Then got a very nice Chinese from the local takeaway - the lady behind the counter of which is the loveliest, smiliest, most patient and helpful lady behind any counter in any city on any planet.

And, really, that's about it. No alarms and no surprises, which might make CD a dull boy, but does him no harm at all.

I was glad to have done some music. It's not particularly accomplished and I'm never going to earn my living at it - although I have earned about $10 from a download site! Woohoo! - but I do find it totally absorbing and very good fun.

A quiet day then and with little thought of addictions or booze or feeling down. And, I know why, and this is the important thing. I keep myself busy, washing up and taking pills and putting washing away and walking and GOOD THINGS. A day of hope for more days the same. The beautiful weather doesn't hurt at all of course; that will pass, hopefully the lessons learned will not.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD.

A question for blogger users. I'm convinced my spellcheck here is highlighting words which are correctly spelled and offering as a replacement the word I've used. Is anyone else having this problem?

A touch of the sads and the strange case of the vanishing euphoria - new things tomorrow though!

2009-07-02T21:35:00.005+01:00

Three times I've been detoxed in the community - over ten years ago and twice in the last three - and three times I've returned to (initially) moderate drinking and straight on down the corridor, through the door, past the cliche and back in alcoholic trouble again.

So, I do have some experience of the problems of being sober. Yep. The problems of being sober. As part of the Therapeutic Day Programme (TDP) in hospital we were asked to recognised dangerous situations that might precipitate a lapse, or full blown relapse: sobriety is on that list.

And, no, it's not some piece of therapeutic smartarsery or semantics (or should that be semiotics pedantry fans?) because of course you can't relapse unless you're sober - nah, nah, nah, nah, naaaah. No. Sobriety is dangerous for us lot, particularly at the end of the early days. Or rather that's what I've found, and from speaking to professionals so have they - three months being a particularly dangerous time.

In the past, I've come out of detox with a real sense of euphoria and hello-clouds-hello-sky-hello-challenges-of-life spirit of the blitz. Not really this time. I had my euphoria in hospital when I found I was coping with a hot-house atmosphere and people who I wouldn't normally necessarily spend time with and doing fine and enjoying meeting different people.

It's passed remarkably quickly though. The slight annoyances of the area in which we live - which I have blasted into the stratosphere of planet paranoia are the main reason. I also had a very good and demanding job after one of my recent detoxes and with that as an all-consuming spur managed an encouraging six months sober. The other two ended after three - the first time it was naivety, dishonesty with myself and boredom (my greatest foe I think, greater even that tiny Jermaine De Foe). I had a job but, again, was unhappy with my situation - largely living in a city. I really am not very good at large numbers of people, I'm a country boy by birth, upbringing and inclination and find cities tend to grind me down.

But, I - and again, the pro's agree and make a positive mantra of this one - should treat these 'failures' as lessons in recovery.

So. Previous detox failures have folded soggily around the problems of boredom and stress and shifting of addiction to something else - in the case of the six month one marijuana and porn. So (and yes, I am this thick) these must be addressed and or avoided.

I'm doing my best at keeping busy and making lots of appointments. But, I'm also trying to be realistic and not expect myself to immediately write novels, screenplays and the like and aiming to get into some sort of part time work within three months and I started writing a short story today. I've also looked at taking up a martial art and have found several local clubs - now comes the scary step of emailing them to see if I can join in. Stress, I'm doing less well with and the exercise is an attempt to address this. But, I mustn't be too hard on myself, I've just stripped away my entire coping mechanism for life and it's going to take a bit of time to build a new one. I've avoided panic attacks so far, I'm booked in for counselling, I can go back to my volunteering soon, I'm preparing for work - NOW, ALL THIS NEEDS TO BE FOLLOWED UP. This is where I have fallen down in the past.

The next danger comes next week when that most terrible of things will come to pass - Cardiff Drunk will be home alone! Zoinks. Beyond alerting Interpol what are we to do. I do know that the travelling away of Mrs CD has precipitated even worse levels of self-destructive drinking than in the past. Look, it's a danger, it's a trigger, so we see how it goes - Mr Antabuse remains in my insides and at my side. I have at least five appointments of varying heaviosity in the next week so... plans of a sort are in place.

I put New Things Tomorrow as part of my title and can't for the life of me work out what they are... I'll no doubt report them if they crop up. An empty dirty laundry basket and a much cleaner house have already arrived, so they don't count.

Onward and upward!

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Appointments... We're everywhere... Egg in ointment...

2009-07-01T22:51:00.004+01:00

Another beautiful day in Cardiff and a busy one for this recovering drunk. First, off to the Community addiction Unit (CAU), thence to see an employment coach at Pathways, the private scheme designed to help people get off Employment Support Allowance (the benefit formerly known as incapacity benefit) and back into work.

At the CAU I bumped into a fellow patient from the Therapeutic Day Programme and had a brief but pleasant chat. Yesterday, I saw a former inpatient in a nearby street, who I don't think really remembered exactly who I was but placed me from the ward and shared a quick few words on his will to stay dry - he's got a place in a dry house and seemed pretty happy with life.

Then, I got myself a counselling appointment at Cardiff Alcohol and Drugs Team. I had to ask to see a different person from my previous visits - I felt quite badly let down by her; she jumped from idea to idea, starting me on a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy path, then forgetting and setting off on something new. Finally, she decided Schema Therapy would be a top idea (because of the psychology degree she'd taken and seemed to mention every session). I was labelled as fitting the worthlessness schema, with which I had no problems - the handout, describing the personality type and the dreadful fear of being found out fitted me well. So, I was given two weeks until the next session to work on remembering my worthlessness: when did I first feel that way and why. So, I dutifully did. When I returned, I was told that I no longer needed counselling until I had completed my detox because there were other people with more serious problems. Fair enough, but not handled the best.

Anyway, I have an appointment for an assessment in a few weeks time.

I also have two more appointments as a result of my visit to pathways (where I saw two other detoxees!). I'll get my CV reviewed and I've been booked to see an occupational therapist to address my anxiety and put on a two day course on preparing for work. I don't hold out huge hope - I told the lady who took my welcome interview that I wad a journalist and she looked through the list and clicked customer services - computer say change career.

Still, I'm glad I did it, glad I made it out the house and kept an appointment.

I know one of my readers will be a little concerned to hear I then went to the pub for a couple of hours. But, it was fine - I saw C, drank squash (I'm a cheap date now ladies!) and watched Andy Murray cruise through to the Wimbledon semi's, which will no doubt be a cause for national over-excitement, he'll be knighted if he wins, they seem to do these things so much more quickly nowadays (sorry for showing my age).

We had people round for dinner. Outside, in the back garden. A source of great anxiety for me after the recent showers of coins over the wall. And, in due course over came a coin, which hit one of our guests on the head, then a ball - she stood up, shouted, "hello, would you like your ball back? Yes, but you'll stop throwing coins now, OK?" perfectly dealt with; why can't I do that. Of course if I knew the answer to that I probably wouldn't be recovering from a 25-year drinking binge and taking antidepressants every night.

My mood was not improved by discovering, on going to drive them home, that the car has been egged. Not aimed at us, just kids etc, but adding to my feeling of not belonging here and being under siege and frightened. Stupid? Maybe, but how I feel. What to do? Keep taking the tablets, ask for guidance from counsellors and try and keep some perspective - this is a generally nice area there's just a couple of naughty kids and a few gits none of whom have the least interest in me, my life, or making it a misery.

As the mighty Robert Zimmerman said: "Keep a clean head and always carry a lightbulb."

Cheers Sideshow Bob.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

So, am I ill or just an idiot?

2009-06-30T22:08:00.003+01:00

That's a big ol' question up there in the title isn't it. If you have an opinion, please drop it in a comment.

I'm thinking thus, because there's not much to report from today. Another pretty routine (and thus successful and also unsuccessful one of sobriety).

Again, I went to the pub and saw my mates and that's where the question came up. But it's one that plays on the mind of anyone who's had a drink problem I should imagine, and it's also a BIG and IMPORTANT question because knowing the answer is vital to how drink problems (I'm avoiding the word alcoholism for the moment) is treated.

One of my pals has experience as a drugs counsellor and started off on a fairly strong and long-gestated attack on AA. Lots of people don't like AA because they see it as cult like and religious. I haven't yet been to a meeting, but I do plan to go and will reserve judgement till then - I also understand that each meeting is very individual. We were visited on the ward by members of AA who hold a meeting in the hospital and their main thrust was to play down anything to do with religion and Jesus. I know the organisation uses the term Higher Power rather than God and asks people to define that in their own way.

Anyhow, my purpose is not ill-informed pontificating on an organisation about which I yet know very little. But, it is the law that any alcohol blogger must ask the, is alcoholism an illness question at some point, and now is my turn, just from what I know of myself.

It matters enormously of course. It matters because it affects spending large amounts of public money and it matters to me enormously because if I accept the disease model that means I'm probably going to have to accept that I can never drink again; something I find hard to contemplate despite all I've been through because of drink. Put the question into Google and you'll see a huge amount written on the subject - much of what I've read is axe-grinding rubbish designed to sell books, or treatments or traduce other books and treatments.

There doesn't yet appear to be any concrete evidence either way, although from what I've read the idea of a genetic predisposition to alcohol abuse seems to have some support.

So, this is what I reckon. And, I really don't know where I'm going with this, it's just a ramble on what I think. By the way if you're a medical researcher and want to look at my brain I'd be only too pleased to help, I've always wanted electrodes on my brain.

One reason I think they're might be some merit in the predisposition concept is my own first experience of getting drunk. Charles Bukowski may have put it better: "With this, life was great, a man was perfect, nothing could touch him," but I absolutely recognise that thought. It was like a light going on and seeing the world in proper focus for the fist time, it fit, it was the real me this drunk person and straight away I knew I wanted to be like this as much as possible. I was 13. Now, it may be that everyone feels like that the first time they are intoxicated, but they simply learn to ration their pleasure. I also know there is some history of alcohol abuse in my family.

I find that very hard so powerful is that pull. I also recognise that I have a tendency to over-indulge with almost anything pleasurable and along the way I've had abusive relationships with almost every pleasure I've ever encountered from sweeties to porn to speed, acid, weed and coffee to sucking my thumb as a child.

On the other side in going through a therapeutic day programme that has really amounted to very simple, common sense guide to coping with life. And I can see in my love a drink a running away from that - from life, or anything unpleasant there within, from conflict of any kind to responsibility, getting up in morning and living to a budget. I've seen the so-called 'addictive personality' dismissed, it is in fact a narcissistic personality and when I'm not indulging in extreme self-hate there's a lot of that in me, a lot of self-regard, (just look at this blog, it's all me, me me) and the fact that the rest of the world does not bow down at my feet in supplication might indeed be a trigger for drinking. It's tough to take that is but I'm very glad that I've had my learning-to-live-classes and I'm really trying very hard to put what I learned into practice. Don't get me wrong; if you met me you would find me shy and self-effacing, much of my personality is hidden inside and only came out when the shutters were drunk into their open position, that's the only time I would have anything even approaching confidence - I need to try and find a healthy balance here somehow.

Self-medication. Another theory that I think has some merit. Narcissism taken, I was always very nervous and drink dealt with my anxiety and indeed my sadness, (narcissistic?) constant self-examination and self-admonishment. Of course, we all know that it's not a very good medication in the long run, but boy does it work at the moment of administration - instant confidence.

This, you see, could be dangerous temptation talking too. If I can learn to deal with life better, through counselling or what have you and if I get my depression and anxiety under control, through medication or what have you, then I can join those lovely lucky people like Mrs CD who have a glass of wine with their meal or a drink with friends on the way home from work without starting off on a three day bender. Wouldn't that be nice? But can I do that? I never have done, but then I've never grown up and accepted what life is all about in this society either.

This isn't getting to anywhere very conclusive at all. (I warned you). I can see merits in both sides of the argument, but not in the vituperative and self-serving nature of many of the arguees. Perhaps describing alcoholism as a disease does take responsibility away from the drinker but I also think it helps them - yes, it's easier on yourself to believe you ended up in a hideous mess as a result of some predetermined nasty gene over which you have no control, but it also might help you stop once you come to believe that you have an illness which means if you drink you will die. People with serious peanut allergies don't tend to try the odd Snickers bar for the thrill of it.

So, I don't know. I really don't and I'm tired now and in need of 300mg of Trazadone and some sleep - I'm sure I'll come back to it, we all do. But, if you've got a thought then I'd love to hear it, but, I think we'll both have to accept that whatever you say it will be a theory nothing more than that on the current state of evidence, so don't go getting all definitive on us.

Phew what a scorcher... Hiding in the pub... A trigger spotted...

2009-06-29T21:16:00.004+01:00

Zoinks it's been hot today. Hot and heavy. It's still shining down now at 9.17pm and it's fair whacked me out has all this sun.

I spent a couple of hours in the pub today. I've been popping in occasionally but without intoxication on the menu I don't have the temptation to waste hours there.

I went down to the Community Addictions Unit to take my Antabuse at around 10am and from there walked into town to look at the new central library. It's a nice building - very open and airy despite, or in fact because, of the concrete functional look. But, and excuse me for being old fashioned, it's not exactly rammed with books. This is the way with libraries now, they're more and more becoming computer sheds. Fair enough I suppose and free internet access is now a massive resource for learning, being an active citizen, having a social life and just straight up living, but for a central library in an important city I was sorry to see the shelves so sparse and so sparely populated.

I went to the pub to hide to be honest. We get on OK with our neighbours. Brilliantly on one side. But the other side make me nervous. They've got three little kids and a growing tribe of visitors, they're boisterous and noisy, which is fine, but they've also taken to chucking stuff over the wall. I went to have my last cigarette last night - all ready for bed - and saw a ball in the garden which I knew came from next door so I popped it back and went back to my fag. Then a shower of small coins comes over, which I ignore. Then a second one, which causes me to shout, "Oi, what are you doing!" Feet scurry away and Mrs CD arrives to see what's happening. While she's there another shower comes over. We're about 30p richer by now. I get enormously paranoid about this, distressed even, and have to be calmed down: "They're only doing it to get a reaction," she says. "They're only little and they're playing, they're not targetting us they're trying to piss off whoever's money it is." OK, and I do remain relatively calm. Nonetheless, the neighbours put me on edge a bit; the police were round while I was in hospital and I'm 99% sure the men of the house are involved in something criminal, I've seen enough to know that. To be honest I don't really care as long as I can have a quiet life at the moment and not get involved (which is pretty pathetic really), I still say hello to them and they're friendly enough, in fact when the kids do come to the door to ask for the ball they're really lovely and polite.

But it puts me on edge when they're home all day - screaming and fighting away and being shouted into submission. That's partly why I got so down being in the house and the pub felt such a good place to be. Today, it's fine. I take a book and sit in the garden and C soon turns up and we chat away while I chug through my blackcurrant and sodas and buy him an SA. But my inability to deal with even the slightest conflict - the fear that any disagreement will escalate out of control and into violence and humiliation (I think it's the humiliation that bothers me in some silly way) is paranoia that I need to deal with. Stuffed to the gills with Antabuse, seven anaesthetising pints of cider and the courage they bring is not an option and I didn't get as upset as I would have done in the past. But it's put me off going into the garden, which is a shame. Mrs CD was going to bring a friend home for dinner and I was glad she didn't because I know she would have wanted to eat outside, which I know would have been an agony of worry for me.

So, that's a trigger. Avoid is probably the best plan but I know I'm going to have to find courage at some point - I'm not really comfortable with children to be honest and my conflict avoidance is something I've inherited from my dad. I can't keep running forever.

One thing that I know will make me more comfortable in my skin (apart from my skin completely clearing up of course) is feeling physically stronger. I've toyed with the idea of learning some sort of martial art in a desultory sort of way - the discipline would be good. But, the first step is some sort of exercise. One for the morrow that because I'm pretty shattered now and once I've taken my pills will be off to sleep.

They're are kids outside now, just early teens, mates play fighting: why do my legs turn to jelly at the sound without a gut full of alcohol? I was never really bullied properly at school or anything; but I always felt under threat from it. Mrs CD is wise in such matters, but I'm learning sober that I have a huge amount to unlearn - a lifetime worth of it and sometimes it feels too much.

This seems a very negative post when in fact it's been a pretty good day.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

If I make it to the support group tomorrow I'll try and bring it up, which'll take courage of a sort again.

21 pills a day - rattle 'em.

2009-06-28T20:39:00.005+01:00

Ah yes, 21 pills each day. So many in fact that I've had to invest in one of those trays I had previously thought the product of choice of the mentally enfeebled - which, of course, to some extent is me to a t! Oh, yes.

So, on Thursday I took my lovely big bag from the pharmacy and dumped it all in to the four slots for each day. It would make a cracking percussion instrument, great for samba if anyone's setting up a Latin troupe in Cardiff shout me man.

Sadly, it doesn't go beep at the appointed hour. Writing this reminded me to go and check where I stood today and I missed two so I've just had a big swallow.

This is what I take every day and why. Four Thiamine, remember that from the cereal packaging of your youth? Well, I do. Apparently it's destroyed by alcohol so if you want to soak your kiddies' Cocopops in gin you'll at least be doing a not half bad thing. Strong vitamin B, two four times a day, for similar reasons. Six Acamprosate or Campral tablets; these are supposed to reduce cravings but the medical technicalities of it (and everything else to be honest) are beyond me, stick it in Google and you'll be deluged with discussion on its use and even the ethics of using it. One Antabuse or Disulfiram tablet: this is the big one, the deterrent, the chemical cosh and one which the professionals drink to. The idea in short is; you drink, you're seriously ill.

I was a bit chary about Antabuse at first. I've used it in a previous suicide attempt plan and knowing how low my mood can go I was wary of having access to a guaranteed self harmer like that. Also, in hospital, it turned out that every damn cream, lotion and unguent I used to treat my eczema contained alcohol. I was offered another drug called Naltrexone which works by making alcohol impotent, you can't get drunk it, therefore drinking it is pointless.

However, in the end, and I think to my relief too (a subconscious part of me didn't want something 100% effective I think), alternatives were found for my eczema treatments (although since leaving hospital - where my skin became as a lovely nectarine in its smoothosity and loveliness; it was like listening to Al Green singing masses by William Byrd to look at my skin - it's flared badly again) and I am now an antabuser.

It's not part of my 21 tablets a day in reality because I've decided to have my intake supervised. This shouldn't really be necessary but I relished the chance for another appointment, another reason to leave the house and get into some sort of routine of obligation and timetabling. So, each Monday, Wednesday and Friday I trot off down to the Community Addiction Unit. There I am breathalysed to ensure I'm not about to poison myself and take two pills or three on Fridays.

Of course, me being me, I mislaid my tablets on Friday so didn't go and wasn't able to take them until today when they turned up, not in the traditional last place I looked but rather the first place I'd looked but just not seen them. D'oh!

If you spent it thank you for your time.

The Daily Happy - look at the swerve on that...

2009-06-28T17:10:00.002+01:00

Well, it makes me happy. I can actually remember watching it on telly and my jaw dropping to the floor - you have to wait for the footage shot from behind the thunder-thighed Brazilian left back to see the incredible swerve.

Some of what happened in the hospital - welcome to the NHS detox...

2009-06-27T19:24:00.001+01:00

I had intended to keep notes or a diary while I was in hospital for 16 days - hoping to make it the basis of a saleable article. I managed a day. There was plenty going on inside unruly Mr Brain and it soon became apparent that I was going to feel disloyal to my fellow patients in so doing - I'll still try and write something but it's obviously going to have to be heavily disguised; there's enough material for a damn good TV drama but I feel guilty about the very concept of using others and their troubles as 'material'. Hey ho.

Here's the short of it though and I hope it will be reassuring to those who are preparing for an inpatient detox, because I found the experience rewarding and strengthening. Partly, the enhancement to my confidence came from dealing with my fear of people: an NHS detox ward is a mixed bag and there are moods and tantrums and people who've been in prison and unpredictable behaviour and conflict, all things which set my fear antenna twitching like Herbert Lom in the Pink Panther series.

This was my fourth detox but my first one inside and my first one in Wales. My previous community detoxes have been fairly free and easy affairs - a substance misuse worker pops round and doles out your diminishing daily dose of sedatives, Lithium where I've been.

Inside every thing is more clinical and more serious. A full physical examination to start with, which to my delight led to an immediate referral to the dermatology department and a regular and adequate supply of treatments for my eczema. I've been asking my GP for such a referral for months only to be told, "It's not bad enough." In my semi-full time intoxicated state and with my confidence at rock bottom until pint four I was loath to disrobe to show the full extent of my problem and speaking up for my views was beyond me - I suffered in sullen silence.

Then there's a contract to sign. Extensive and admonishing. Don't form relationships with other patients; you are advised not to exchange phone numbers; inappropriate behaviour will lead to expulsion; you must not enter other patients' rooms; you must stay on the ward for three full days before you are allowed out; if you go out you must tell staff where you are going and when you will be back and you must be back then (one patient failed this clause and the police were informed; more in concern for his safety than anything else I like to think).

My bags were logged and searched and toiletries and medication removed to the staff office to be doled out when applied for. It didn't help my nerves that I was earnestly told to keep my mobile phone and cash on me at all times for fear of thievery.

The withdrawal medication here was Valium (diazepam to its mother) and it was available only on completion of a questionnaire of symptoms; score enough you get a swig of strawberry swoozy juice. Antabuse tablets are dissolved too to stop patients stashing tablets under their tongues. The upshot is instead of a five day swoon I'm off the stuff in two. Another patient advised licking of hands to simulate the sweats that get one point and other symptoms are are easy enough to lay claim to - headache, sensitivity to light and noise, anxiousness.

There are also six super vitamin jabs, administered with varying degrees of sensitivity to the buttocks during the first three days.

The days are routine and easy. Breakfast at 8am; medication at 9am; lunch at noon followed by more meds (we all soon fall into the jargon); dinner at 5pm followed by, guess what, more tablets; sandwiches come at around 8pm and the final doses at 10pm. Telly off and in your rooms by midnight during the week and 1am on Friday and Saturday.

There's a TV ban during the day to encourage patients to go to the Therapeutic Day Programme (TDP) which is the main purpose of the stay in the eyes of our hosts. But there's a pool table, a small library of books, visitors from 2-5pm and 6-8pm and a permanently filled smoking room. This little privilege has it's own rules, designed to render it as unattractive as possible - windows open at all times, air con on at all times, no chairs (a patient told me these had to be removed after two patients recently used one to bar the door while they fought inside, but the rule was in place when I attended the TDP as an outpatients), no cups. The kitchen is open to us and there's always something to eat - bread, salads and leftovers in the fridge and endless, endless cups of tea and coffee made all the easier with the super hot water tank that means you don't even have to boil a kettle.

The rooms are small but comfortable: a sink, a wardrobe, a three drawer desk unit, a reclining medical bed.

It's a closed and consequently gossipy world. Some patients (close to a majority I think) were returnees and know each other from previous stays or from the small South Waleian world and villagey Cardiff. There's bitching and moaning about the staff and the treatment - principally about the non-administration of more diazepam or codeine painkillers. We all get on pretty well though, people with only one thing in common really, addiction, but there's only the odd contretemps.

Once you're well enough, the TDP beckons. I've attended before as an outpatient but didn't take much from it, this time it's a far more beneficial programme - I know the others so don't fear them or want to make a particular impression and although I was still among the quietest in the group I chipped in when I could.

During my stay, we lose three patients before their official discharges. The first is the most upsetting. A patient who has a history with the ward and is often unhappy with his treatment - complaining of being messed around in unspecified ways - walks off one morning. There's gossip about them while they're away with rumours of violence when drunk. Hours later they return unnoticed by the staff and drunk as hell. I meet them in the smoking room, unprepared, and am given an overly enthusiastic handshake and bearhug. I'm not sure why, but a no-grassing rule seems to have a hold and he's not simply reported to the staff. I retreat to my room, shaken by the invasion of a loud drunk man and hear him laughing and shouting up and down the corridors. I'm later told their behaviour got worse, bordering on the threatening and cracking cans of Stella in front of the rest of the patients in the TV room. Finally the staff spot the incursion and I'm told they leave quietly enough.

The second leaves just a day early. They fall asleep in the TV room after dinner, snoring loudly and simply cannot be woken by staff, who grown concerned and the suggestion is made that they may be 'over medicated', knowing what I know this is far from unlikely. The staff search the patient's room and find nothing; though I'm told later by another patient that this is because they aren't looking in the right place. Outraged, the patient orders a taxi home, a doctor arrives to formalise the discharge and they're away, happy enough I think.

The final patient to leave is another involuntary discharge and it happens while I am an outpatient on the TDP after leaving the ward. They were on the programme with me and I'd known them inside. Not an alcoholic (most of us are, I only encounter three drug users; two methadone and one amphetamine) but a meth addict. I'd got on very well with them but God they loved to speak, and I know they'd got a few people's backs up in a minor sort of way. One day I come in for the programme and am told something kicked off the night before - a row over noise or talking or something that comes close enough to a fight for the methadone addict - who I'd seen going through terrible physical withdrawals and maintaining a really positive attitude to their new drug-free life - to be asked to leave in the morning.

I've written about the TDP before. I can't remember the full programme but I learned a hell of a lot more this time. They call it a relapse prevention programme and it's really a short sharp self help course - anger management, conflict resolution, spotting psychological traps and dangerous situations, relaxation techniques' a support group including former patients. Art therapy too, which accounts for my lovely collection of tiles with marks on them and a not-too-bad Easter Island head sort of thing.

I also get a referral to the gym and get a real boost out of my short iron pump. I'm told I can meet a physiotherapist on the outside but am yet to hear anything. If nothing comes through soon I'll use the GP referral scheme - that's the plan at least.

I could go on for hours but that's a potted version.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

Anything to say...?

2009-06-26T19:51:00.001+01:00

I don't seem to have a huge amount to say, which is why I haven't been saying it. I ought, of course, to have plenty to say - I've just been through an inpatient detox and changed my life in an enormous way. Therein lies the problem. I do feel bereft and resentful of the world; a foolish and, hopefully, passing feeling.

I've been here before, after detox an enormous sense of achievement and euphoria - I'm gonna write symphonies, climb every mountain ford every stream and reroute the water to permaculture guerrilla plantings of organic vegetables free for all to pick and pluck. Palestinians, Israelis, Christian Evangelists, gay street theatre groups, give me a call, I've got this so-simple idea you're going to love... then, the oh, is this it?

It's quite natural I suppose. I'm in mourning. I haven't read, Drinking, A Love Story, but the title certainly rings true. Something that recently took up around eight to ten hours a day has gone. Us problem drinkers, alcoholics, addicts whatever you want to call us might have come to a bad place with our chosen drug, but, if the rest are anything like me, we sure loved it too. I miss my main interest (and, drinking can be a full-time job my friends), and also my main medication for depression and anxiety - so now I'm sober and I'm depressed and anxious.

My euphoria came in hospital. Despite being scared arseless at the prospect of going in and then sometimes during the process I came to feel very comfortable in there and made some decent friendships I would say - although meeting in such a hothouse environment and sharing such an intense experience people, it's a little hard to say how they will, or even should - official advice on entering the ward is explicitly not to form relationships and even exchanging phone numbers is frowned upon - develop.

While in the hospital, with its Kafkaesque corridors, I was also in a cotton wool bubble. Four meals a day served up; sent to appointments; summoned to take medication; a day course to attend and even told when to go to bed - midnight in the week, 1am at weekends.

So, I'm struggling a bit now. I drank, at least in some measure, to deal with an over-sensitivity to my surroundings that bordered on occasion on paranoid, crippling fear. I've been out of any kind of lifestyle that requires a regime or a routine for at least two years now. My routine was this (and there was a comfort even in this) wake around 9am, watch Mrs CD leave for work, throw up, sit listening to the radio waiting for a 'decent' time to go to the pub but must be before the shakes set in, then from noon, or 1pm, or 2pm, drink in the pub and read the paper and chat to friends till 6pm-ish - go home via corner shop for cans and cook then drink till sleep - repeat. It wasn't sustainable or rewarding or healthy but it sure made life very easy to deal with.

Now, this all comes across as appallingly self-indulgent and ungrateful even. So I would like to make it clear I am hugely grateful for this chance; the stories of others I met in the ward made it very clear to me that I have been extraordinarily lucky - there were tragedies, lifestyles, health, legal, housing, etc. etc. problems and surroundings I quite simply could not countenance surviving.

So, I'm pleased to be clean and hoping for better things but, as ever, I'm just trying to be honest and I know that in many ways the hard work starts now.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

The Drinker.

The first sober Daily Happy!

2009-06-16T22:36:00.000+01:00

I'm sure a lot of people will think that this is a bit syrupy, but it makes me smile like Cristiano Ronaldo's accountant...

Cardiff Drunk went to rehab...

2009-06-16T19:27:00.000+01:00

He said, yes! Yes! Yes!

This is my 16th day sober and my first out of hospial... News from the detox ward and beyond will soon follow.

You'se all me best mates you is...

CD.

On a typically tedious type-setting note - Drunk in Cardiff (the blog currently known as Sober in Cardiff) uses Trebuchet because I think it's a medieval siege weapon; why is a font named after a medieval siege weapon? Answers on a comment please. . .

Alive and unwell and drunk in Cardiff

2009-03-06T13:06:00.000Z

When was the crash? Not so long ago now and I'm still in it - the binge, the out of control slide into misery and liquid lunches (they're for lightweights, liquid breakfasts, now we're talking) mid-morning crises and unconsciousness rather than sleep.

I'm unemployed again. I quit my job. Or rather I just stopped going. All because I was left on my own and couldn't cope - Mrs CD went away for a couple of stretches and I went to the pub, fell apart, ripped my little wings off and slouched in a quiet corner slurping and staring at a nasty world.

I went to the doctor on Monday. I'd written down what I needed to say because I knew I wouldn't get through it without breaking down and I wanted desperately not to forget what I wanted to say - it wasn't much and it was all too predictable; back in the pattern. Doctor, I'm depressed, I think about taking my own life every day, I get as far as writing notes and include what music I'd like played at my funeral (a favourite pub conversation this, as it happens it's Tomorrow Never Knows by JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo, Unbearable by the Wonder Stuff and Hurt by Johnny Cash - toe tapping, head nodding church clearers all).

The upshot was a sick note for eight weeks and a prescription for more Trazadone - post-dated in order that I shouldn't hold enough supplies for a serious overdose attempt. I looked it up and there's no record of a successful suicide with Trazadone, just long, long sleep. I don't want to die, at the end of the day that's what it comes down to, why I don't take the pills - and if I really did there are methods far more proven to succeed, so I have to conclude that I don't want to die. There is a part of me that just wants to vanish, maybe end up in hospital and getting some proper help - in all my travails that's the only time I've seen a psychiatrist, after a suicide attempt that left me hospitalised for a week - I got about 15 minutes of his time and he told me to pull myself together while waving a pen with the name of the antidepressant I'd necked emblazoned across it.

It's all a struggle at the moment though. All I want to do is drink and sleep, get up and do it all again. I accept now that I can't drink safely, at least not for a good long time and I'm going to ask for a detox again, even if it's an inpatient one, which I've desperately tried to avoid up to now. I'm also committed to asking for antabuse, I need to stay sober.

Sadly, I've been happier of late - happier because in going daily to The O I've made a few friends - good people who I really enjoy talking to and I have to prepare to leave them all behind (I don't think I can do the sitting in the pub with a soft drink, it's too difficult, so I have to try and fill that hole with something else.) There are things on the horizon - the support group at the therapeutic day programme, maybe AA, there are other places too. I need to contact the Fitzhamon Centre too - they do detoxes I think and maybe I can get some more successful counselling there.

That was in my letter to the doctor too (he was marvellous - very understanding and kind) that I know when I'm sober I desperately miss what alcohol does for me which is that it is the ONLY thing I have ever found that makes me content or gives me any semblance of confidence or comfort in myself.

Mrs CD is here now and has a day off today. The worst thing I face is telling my parents what I've done and how I am - they care so much (too much really, but all with the right motives). I'll probably do it shamefacedly by email because I can't face speaking to them.

The fact that I'm writing this is a positive thing in itself though. Maybe I'm coming up from the blackness. I hope so because I can't stay down there for very much longer.

Lots of love.

CD.

Alive and well and drunk in Cardiff

2009-02-11T12:27:00.000Z

Hello clouds, hello sky, to quote my old mentor Fotherington-Thomas (look it up, you might like it!).

Cardiff Drunk has not died, lost his computer, forgotten how to type or been indulging in testing the old hypothesis (a bollocks one in Cardiff Drunk's view) that that which does not kill me makes me stronger by hacking off body parts from the big toe up. Oh no.

But Cardiff Drunk has not been happy - and is not happy now that he appears to be typing about himself in the third person, that is the road to Michael Vaughan (sorry American readers, that's a cricket thing, look it up you won't understand it.)

Well, here I am then. What's up with you? I hope you're well and I'm about to shoot round all your blogs and say hello and leave comments and all that spaz. I must admit, I went into a bit of a down for a while there - the skin, the drink, the work, the dreaded depression. But, I seem to be coming out of it.

Again the catalysts are there and easy to see - Mrs CD going away for a week signalled a bit of a booze bonanza and my mood went right down, I turned in on myself and locked the doors and hid under the duvet waiting for the sky to fall down and listening to the background buzz of suicidal thoughts rise in intensity and volume. I still managed to make it into work though and to a doctor's appointment, I missed my voluntary work though, preferring a wasted afternoon in the pub, getting wasted.

Being alone on my birthday certainly played a part too, as did the visit of my parents the previous day. I feel such a let down to them, such a thrower-away of the opportunities they provided for me and such a liar - all the old conflict comes back and guilt starts to build a small but decently-sized bungalow in my psyche with planning permission for an extension at a future date.

Mrs CD's return has helped a great deal as has the unscheduled arrival of chilly early spring. I don't believe I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) but the weather of late did get me down. Cold and wet. I know anyone in the oft snowy wastes of North America will be sniggering at Britain's reaction to a few inches of the stuff, but for me it was the constantly grey skies over the dog shit streets. I'm told by locals that it almost never snows in Cardiff - a coastal city in a crater - but, boy can it rain. There were lights among the gloom though - the start of the Six Nations (again, apologies Americans, but we're onto rugby union now - the closest (particularly in the dissident but related League code) we in Britain have to your odd gridiron game) with Wales cruising to victory against a disgracefully poor Scottish side - drink was taken, but socially so, in a joyfully rocking O.

I even got asked my name by one of the bar-maids: "You tend to only know people by their drink love," she said, "What's your name?" So, I am no longer Stella SA Strongbow (do all those S's hide some hidden meaning?) I am now known by my given name.

The drinking ran away with itself a little and started to head for John O'Groats with a wild-eyed look in its eye and hotel reservations in Carlisle, and, I would probably have to say that today I am a dependent drinker - that is, I will feel physical withdrawal effects if I don't drink. Somehow, I don't mind though, because I won't drink tonight - I'm coming up again. Hoorah. I seem to have got on top of the eczema for the moment, I've completed the therapeutic day programme through the community addictions unit and the dreaded end of training and actual call taking looms ever closer but my confidence seems to have dusted itself off and looked at the rubber tree plant with disdain.

If you spent it, thank you for your time. I love you all, as I love all mankind - except the England rugby union team whose demise shall be mighty and terrible to behold come Saturday afternoon.

Iechyd da, bob Cymru!

CD

Better by bits

2009-01-28T11:39:00.000Z

Long time no blog and all that. I've not been in the best of mental or physical health and as a consequence have had little to say for myself.

Things get a little better though - the plan to rename this blog Itching in Cardiff is receding as I get to some sort of grips with my eczema.

Nothing much else to say to be honest. I went off on one a little over the last week or so - drinking six days out of seven last week. This week has been better and I haven't had a drink since Sunday now. I won't drink today either as I have to get up early tomorrow to go to the doctors' then to work to make up what I missed in my illness then, hopefully, off to volunteer in the afternoon. It's my birthday and it's likely I will allow myself to celebrate this in the pub - even if I am celebrating on my lonesome, but I've met a couple of nice people in The O of late and will hope they are there to pass the time of day.

Next week I go back to the Therapeutic Day Programme for three days to complete the course.

Hopefully I'll be able to blog more after my blip too.

The main danger is that Mrs CD goes away today, working until Sunday, that's been the worst trigger for me to go off on a bender in the past and a successful few days will be remarkably good for me.

If you spent it thank you for your time.

CD

Love the skin you're in - busy days - fear of despair and the crash

2009-01-21T15:08:00.000Z

I haven't written for a while - and I'm hugely grateful to those readers who took the trouble to ask, "What's up Cardiff Drunk - normally you're a noisy bastard so why now you are so quiet?"

Things are a little tough in the world of Cardiff Drunk at the moment.

It started simply with doing more. I started on the day therapy programme (DTP) through the Community Addictions Unit (CAU) (we live in a world of acronyms and initials in recovery-land (RL)).

The programme was fine - and its contents confidential - but I managed to get there every day, I managed to speak a little in a group environment, which I find tough. But the chief fly in my ointment is the condition for which I've been prescribed many an ointment.

I don't know what this is any more but I know I want it to go away because it's destroying any improvements in my mood achieved through lower levels of drinking and having a routine of work and therapy. I stopped taking the Trazodone to try and see if that might be the trigger for the rashes and dryness and itchiness and pain. My hands improved slightly and I thought it was getting better, but I've gone back to it over the last two days just to get some undisturbed sleep.

Things got really bad. The eczema on my face - if eczema it is - became infected, redness became scab and self-consciousness spiralled into fear and self-loathing. I went to the doctor as an emergency and the infection has now pretty much cleared up. But the underlying malaise remains and remains a threat to my equanimity.

I'm back at the doctors' tomorrow morning when I'm going to make a fairly desperate plea for a solution. The dryness gets worse by the day and it seems to be spreading, today my thighs flared up with what looked like veins coming through the skin, the skin on my hands is thick and the blood seems to vanish from their surfaces. I can see some of this as an allergic reaction to washing powder - though I didn't change it around the time when the problem started - so today I've got a new brand: I'm terrified of the consequences this change might have. And, why is it on my face and on my hands if this is the case?

Perhaps I'm over-treating the problem and I'm taking a bath a day which is probably just drying things out even more - I'll have to try and get back to showering. I'm washing with aqueous cream and I'm worried this is clogging up my pores and making the redness worse, but I'm terrified of using shower gel or soap.

I'm close to despair to be honest. I've missed two days of work and when I've been there I've been so distracted that I'm not taking much in and I'm terrified I won't be able to cope when I go live on the call centre - it all feels too much. (Do you get the point that I'm terrified yet?) I'm going in today but dreading what I've missed and that I'll have to catch up, possibly at the expense of not completing the two week TDP.

The drinking has gone up too. Nearly disastrously this week with no work or TDP to fill my time. I've found myself drinking for five days solid to yesterday, and drinking too much - I'm determined now to have today, tomorrow and hopefully a couple of more days off it but I know now it'll be a physical struggle and suicide has come into my thoughts again.

Sorry to be so down - things probably aren't as bad as I imagine, I'm not in the disaster zone yet and I'm doing better at helping myself than I have done in the past.

I hope you're OK.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD.

The Daily Happy.

2009-01-11T11:13:00.000Z

Today's Daily Happy takes us to Liverpool, home or several popular beat groups, including these silly old sausages, who for a long time seemed so predestined for third division status they were nicknamed the Doo Badleys...

Here though are the lovely Boo Radleys with Lazy Day...

My first ever meme.

2009-01-11T10:41:00.000Z

I've never done a meme, chain letter or whatever, but unrepentant egoist that I am the Interview Me one promised much exiting navel gazing, so I emailed Anybeth of Swimming in Clear Water (link on the side bar, take a look it's a very good blog) to join in.

This is how it works. Anybeth has emailed me five questions, which I will answer, you, dear reader are then invited to email me - cardiffdrunk at gmail dot com and I will send you five questions. (I hope at least one of you does.)

Here goes.

1. What is your first memory as a child?

The first defined and definite memory I have is of being at Playgroup and terrified. I'd somehow lost my mother and was running through the building desperately searching for her in absolute fear - I found her in a walk in cupboard where I seem to remember her doing something with a tea urn.

2. If you were on death-row, what would be your last meal?

I'm sure I wouldn't be able to eat. I hate the death penalty and am very glad it is gone from this country. However, I guess the question amounts to what is your favourite food. I'm struggling actually to come up with a definitive, this is the one, meal combo. I would start with grilled fresh sardines I think; continue to a very good steak with superlative chips and move onto fresh fruit salad and then cheese - all washed down with a syrupy red wine.

3. What is your favorite place you have visited?

The place that really had the greatest effect on me was Paris but most specifically the Palace of Versailles. I like my history and was blown away by the enormity of the building and the use of architecture to say I AM THE ABSOLUTE MONARCH, GAZE UPON MY HUGE FACADE. As I keep mentioning, I'm only partly Welsh, but I do get a genuine feeling of heraith (a feeling of longing, most often used about the Welsh country by exiles) when I'm away from the mountains for too long - seeing Snowdonia in the distance hits me in the chest. Close to my childhood home is a place that is undoubtedly beautiful, but it is its associations and memories which make it particularly special to me - it's called May Hill and if you ever get the chance you should go there.

4. What is your favorite book? and why?

Yoiks. That's really tough. Just one - I could probably do a list of ten more easily, in fact I think there's a list on my profile. I've just had a look and it's a list of authors. The Long Goodbye would be up there for the beauty of the writing, He Died With His Eyes Open is my favourite Derek Raymond but has its fault. Foucault's Pendulum really had an effect on me and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Slaughterhouse Five had a big impact on my formative years. But, pushed into a corner I'm going to have to go for American Tabloid by James Ellroy because it's a magnificent piece of story-telling which rattles along at an extraordinary pace, I also think it's Ellroy's best work in his stream of consciousness ratatatat style.

5. What do you like, and dislike, about where you live?

Well, what do I like. I like our house, which is small and perfectly formed but which we've done a pretty good job of turning into a comfortable and pleasant home. I like Cardiff's compactness - I can walk pretty much anywhere, I like a lot of the people, who seem open and friendly and I like some of the pubs. We're 20 minutes away from the seaside and not much further from beautiful countryside. Dislike? Some days the area in which we live can bring me down, the kids in hoodies hanging round drinking, the refugees from life arguing in pubs, the empty buildings, the brothel, the drug addicts, the kids next door screaming until one o'clock in the morning - they're about four and six years old. Most of all, I like living in Wales.

Thank you.

I blame Stoke City.

2009-01-11T10:30:00.000Z

The last two days saw a bit of a slip in the Cardiff Drunk world, but not as bad as they have been and nothing to send me into the black of my black and white thinking.

I went out on Friday to see D and give him some books; he's a real enthusiast for Welsh history (being a Welsh speaker from the far west) and I had an Owain Glyn Dwr book and a history of Druids for his reading list. Naturally, we met in The C. I stayed longer than I needed and drank more than I should have - five-and-a-half pints I think.

Yesterday was work and then I headed out again to watch Stoke V Liverpool in The C. Again, I overdid rather and drank six pints. Encouragingly though, I came home and stopped.

My skin remains a problem. The doctor prescribed an antihistamine and a new moisturiser but it remains very dry and painful - stinging whenever I apply any cream. The most probable cause is still, to my mind, the Trazodone, but to go without it seems too much at the moment. My lovely guaranteed sleep, through all the itchiness and the worrying.

But, if it is to be dealt with then I'm going to have to try going without the Trazodone to see if that has any effect. Maybe tonight. We shall see.

Tomorrow's a big day. Work in the evening and before that the first day of my Therapeutic Day Programme alcohol counselling. I feel a bit of a fraud already - I'm drinking and most of the others on the course will be abstinent and fresh out of what could be a life-saving detox. Will they want to hear from someone who's in a relatively controlled drinking phase.

There's the temptation of another big game this afternoon - Manchester United V Chelsea but I haven't yet decided what to do about that and to drink three days in a row would be a bad thing I think; I'll feel much better tomorrow if I don't.

What I know does me good and what I do though aren't always the same things.

All the best,

CD.

The Daily Happy, is mellow today.

2009-01-08T22:03:00.000Z

This one makes me really, really happy.

Four Tet, My Angel Rocks Back and Forth.

A much better day.

2009-01-08T21:08:00.000Z

There that's better. Today was a lovely, sharp, fresh out of the box chalk to yesterday's hard, back of the sofa fluff-covered lump of cheddar.

And, it hasn't worn off yet. I still feel damn fine thank you very much, I might even call it an up.

Why's that then. Simple really. Better behaviour, more self regard. Wednesday was a mess. I was down because I feared my skin was running away from me - not literally you understand. Because I didn't eat properly, because I had a bath not a shower - bad for the skin that - and just let myself go a bit.

Today, I kept myself busy, and even stayed off the computer for a decent long time - oh, and despite this being one of the days my 'rules' allow me to drink on, I haven't touched a drop, although there's a bottle of sherry and some cans of Guinness loose aboot this hoose.

I started my volunteer work today as well, which is another little step back towards the life I once had before I ripped it up in a soggy mess of booze and misery.

I only stayed for two hours at Journeys (the depression charity, there's a link on the sidebar if you'd like to look at their work, which is really all about self-help, diet, exercise and the like), but it's great to feel useful.

I wrote some stuff for their newsletter - searching the internet for news about depression and chopping it up into bite-sized chunks. It's the sort of stuff I used to do like falling of a log (is that really that easy? To be perfectly honest I've never tried it) and I'm certainly not as proficient as I used to be, lacking the confidence of continued practice and knowing their house style.

I won't be able to go in next week, which is a shame, but for today that was very valuable for me - I hope it had some use for those on the receiving end.

I kept myself out of the slough of despond for the rest of the day with housework and food shopping and going to the library to make one of my regular donations to Cardiff City Council. Despite being a qualified librarian I am appalling at returning books on time - perhaps it's because of it, perhaps there's some terrible psychological scar.

I'm due at the doctor's tomorrow morning. I'm going to feel a bit foolish I think - the main reason for making the appointment was the skin problem, and, by stopping using Doublebase and going back to aqueous cream it seems to have sorted itself out. Still, I might, if I can pipe up the courage to break out of my 'yes doctor, no doctor, thank you doctor' persona, ask for a referral to a skin specialist as the Community Addictions Unit doctor suggested I should.

Well, it's a reason to get up anyway.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD.

The Daily Happy.

2009-01-07T15:19:00.000Z

I don't know why but almost everything I'm posting seems to be Scottish - and old. This is really old, ie from my childhood, when I loved it dearly and I love it now. I believe one of the KLF might have been the manager of Strawberry Switchblade - and no doubt if you're more inclined than me you can find out.

What I do know is one of the singers went on to a band called Death In June, who were fantastically gloomy.

Unlike this which is bittersweet, or sweetbitter, take yer pick.

And this is Since Yesterday by Strawberry Switchblade:

Down Kafka's korridors with a beetroot face.

2009-01-07T11:07:00.000Z

I'm all of a tizzy now, panicking, fetid and feverish and fearing disaster and the lock-in and the hideaway.

I should be on an up.

I've just got back from assessment for the therapeutic day programme (TDP) I was referred to by the Community Addictions Unit doctor. A drive out to the leafy suburbs to a great rambling pile of a place that acts as Cardiff's psychiatric hospital - corridors straight out of Kafka. But my skin is rebelling and revolting and squats over any positives.

It's on my face and I can't face that. I keep applying the moisturising cream but it makes no difference and a beetroot red is starting to spread across my forehead and like a mask around my eyes; the cream stings horribly when I apply it and the skin on my forehead is starting to get puffy with what I fear will be bursting pustules underneath the surface.

I've been here before you see. When I was a student I was out of control. Completely out of control with both drinking and drug abuse. I drank a bottle of spirits and more a day and took enormous amounts of dope, speed and acid. I didn't give a flying faeces for myself, rarely washed or changed my clothes and eventually horrible things happened to my skin. My face became one big scab - I was Elephant Man repulsive and people stared in the street if I ever got the temptation to go outside, which I didn't. That was impetigo in the end, it started as eczema and just got infected, and it feels like that now.

It feels unfair (life is unfair they say, but I don't care I want it to be gentle to me even if just for a while while I look for some strength). I won't be able to cope with that coming on again and I'm so far from where I was then. I'm coming out of addictive drinking and indeed haven't drunk since Sunday, I smoke dope occasionally and I eat healthily and regularly. I haven't changed anything that might inspire an allergic reaction as far as I can tell and I live more cleanly and healthily than I have done for a long time.

The weather isn't helping I suppose. It's bitterly cold and windy and everywhere you go inside the heating is on full blast and that makes it flare more. God I hope this passes. I've just rung the doctor's to make an appointment for Friday and I'm feeling pretty desperate now. Perhaps I don't drink enough water? I'm drinking water.

I'm self-conscious enough as it is, please don't let this go where I fear it might.

On the slightly sunnier side of the street though, I did, as I say make it my TDP appointment. Just an introductory chat with the nice fella who runs it.

I told him where I was with my drinking and he told me what the programme consisted of. Ten days of talking in groups and I'm due to start on Monday - another reason to get up and out the house for a 10am start. There's also the chance of referrals to outside agencies for help with work and the like and that's something I'm going to have to really try and pick up on.

I told him of my previous negative experiences with group therapy but as I said to him I'm happy to have an open mind and take help wherever I can get it at the moment. The first rule of the programme is confidentiality so I won't be writing too much about what goes on in the group, but I will tell you how it goes, if I'm not cowering in misery under a green skin by then. Another rule is abstinence, monitored by breathalyzer - I just have a zero reading this morning. I had kind of planned to have a drink on Sunday - there's Manchester United (the Red Scum to Leeds fans) v Chelsea (the Chelsea Scum to Leeds fans; we're a lovely bunch) to watch. So I have another spur towards abstinence and control.

God, I want this to go away - if it means coming off the Trazodone that's what I'll do, in fact, I'm not going to take it tonight: I don't need to be up early tomorrow and I've read Trazodone has no withdrawal symptoms and the redness is how it started on my hands before escalating all the way to cracked and bleeding skin and infected patches - I want to crawl into bed and die. I've just looked up Campral and that too has skin rash as a possibly serious side-effect; why can't I just be fucking happy and healthy?

If you spent it thank you for your time.

CD.

The Daily Happy.

2009-01-06T13:22:00.000Z

Today's Daily Happy continues to show my age and the fact that I really don't try very hard to keep up with what's new, exiting and simply too magical in today's music.

Well, sod 'em, they're young they'll survive.

Despite being an extremely melancholy song this makes me happy in the shock of recognition way - the lyrics that is, I'm not a dark and interesting looking Scottish girl with good taste in lipstick; would that I were dear reader, would that I were.

"For the self-assured I have no cure, I only wish I was." Do google Pull The Wires from the Wall, you'll love them.

I hope you enjoy it.