Me and you and the search for my courage

I'm trying to waste less time - time is precious for us earth crawlers it is finite and ever-dwindling. Yet, I tend to spew it out on my shoes or strew it in my footsteps, unloved and unused.

So, how does one waste less time? (I'm open to suggestions here).

A lot of the time I waste is wasted here in the wooden chair in front of the yellow door Mrs CD rescued to make into a desk - she wastes far less time than I.

Some bits of the time are not as badly wasted as others. This, for example, I don't consider to be completely wasted - I think of this as work in a way; at least I'm doing what I'd like to do for a living, writing. This time I blithely classify as practice.

However, bits of the time land unused on the chronological crap heap having served no purpose whatsoever.

These bits of time have been spent thinking, brooding and fearing.

"What are you doing Cardiff Drunk?" You might ask if you was an asking sort of person.

"I'm thinking," I might reply (I'm an answering sort of person).

Really though I'm probably brooding or fearing.

"What do you brood upon Cardiff Drunk?" We've established now that the character 'you' - a faceless internet reader - is indeed an asking sort of person, curious even.

"Fecking everything," I would reply, with a sigh.

Sadly that's true, and I'd love to stop it - again, 'you', the faceless internet reader is invited to supply suggestions at this point, I, Cardiff Drunk believing that a question-asking sort of person might, in their curiosity, have uncovered things we like to call 'answers' and 'solutions'.

Principally I brood over perceived wrongs, slurs, slights and betrayals. Over and over in ever recycling circles of thought in terrible technicolour perfect recall. I make myself do it. We have control over our thoughts to a degree do we not? (An idea that's well put in the self-help book, Stop Thinking Start Living - a book I started to read, got on well with and stopped reading to get on with some more important thinking, brooding and fearing.)

The fearing is less based in the time paste of the past and more in the big blank of the future. It encompasses everything - my parents will die and I will not be able to cope, people will mock me in the streets and I will not be able to cope, I will die of a heart attack and I will not be able to cope, the heating is on so surely the boiler will explode AND! I! WILL! NOT! BE! ABLE! TO! COPE!.

It's great stuff isn't it? (Do you need a question mark after a rhetorical question? That one gets one because it's not rhetorical; the character of you, now playing something of a Greek chorus role is being called upon again.) Some of it's even quite imaginative.

Still, I'd like to do less of both. This, as that book suggests, means more 'doing'.

For me, beyond the household chores and making sure I get through the basics of personal hygiene and care of appearance and not doing bad things that will make me hate myself, doing ought to mean writing properly and contacting publications and writing for free sites in order to build a published portfolio of some kind.

But one of the key fears is, I Am No Good At Anything And If I Try I Will Fail and I Will Not Be Able To Cope. In fact that's the founding father of the fears.

Let's call this fear one that should, as Stop Thinking Start Living suggests, be dismissed. It may be true (and here the character of you - now suspended well above the stage to take a much more metaphorical role as a divine presence or all-seeing-eye of some type - is being cravenly invited too offer up: "No, CD, you're ace, don't dislike yourself so!")

But even if it is true it shouldn't matter really should it, people can only say no to your submissions and, despite your fears, they probably will do so quite pleasantly and without the recourse to mocking, laughter and character assassination you have conjured and with which you believe YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO COPE.

Back to the time and its wasting. Some of it is spent quite harmlessly and pleasantly but not particularly usefully. Reading the blogs you might see on the sidebar and stuff. I try and leave comments too and consider that in some way useful as I gather that's the way to build a following on the internet, but, there are plenty of other things I should be doing.

What are you getting at here? (It's you again! Now dressed in a purple velveteen smoking jacket and affecting a louche and slouching air - you're mocking me aren't you, I warn you I WON'T BE ABLE TO COPE.)

Well, I'm just trying to explore drink and depression as usual.

Because there is one sure-fire cure for thinking, brooding and fearing, and it starts with d, continues with rinking and ends in disaster.

I always find courage in a cup, sometimes things even get done in a galumphing and clumsy sort of way that does me or the things no justice.

Now, I need to start finding it somewhere else. I've looked everywhere, I've looked in bottles and glasses and in little paper wraps full of powder and inside rolled up cigarette papers and I've looked in books about meditation and yoga (but rarely to the point of going beyond looking and actually doing, for reasons that have been explored in tedious detail above) and the like and I've looked in education and reading and work. I've even looked in my memory because I must have had some courage once, surely.

(I have just stopped myself from writing But I've Never Been To Me.)

And now I'm letting myself type it because that's where I know where I should be looking, but, it's a long search and I'm not sure which tools to use, CBT, will power (such as it is, which is as that of a moth in a lighthouse), what?

Well, the search continues, any suggestions on the location of courage and ways of finding it are very gratefully accepted and I've got no-one to ask but you.

What happened on Wednesday - part one: cast from counselling and the addiction assesement

I went to counselling on Wednesday morning. A 9.15 start, which is a sharply double edged sword. It's good that I'm not able to wallow in the misery pit that my bed becomes every morning. But, anyone who drinks heavily is never going to be much of a 'morning person' and walking round feeling like you've been smashed in the face by a lorry is not going to make the counselling process easier.


I'd worked myself into a terrible state in preparation of this session. My homework after the last session was to prepare myself for a whopping great dollop of self-revelation. The theory was illuminated in the copy of the worthlessness schema - the counsellor, by listening to the supposedly unbearable secrets of the worthless schema patient, and by still caring for them can show them that what they had done is bearable and they are not beyond the pale.

Sadly, the counsellor seemed to have forgotten that this was the plan and we began as usual with a "How are you?" and my predictable account of stable but heavy drinking and continued stumbling through a numb half-life.

Then she dropped the bombshell, wanting to "Put it on the table," that we should take a break from counselling. This has happened before - I've been prescribed a cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) book and asked to work through a chapter for discussion at the following session, only for the sessions to drift back to the same old same old.

The title says cast from counselling and that's unfair and far too melodramatic. I could quite easily have said that I wanted to carry on, as I could previously have guided the sessions more strongly. But, expressing my self and leading the way in conversation are very much part of my problems.

I certainly don't feel any resentment towards my counsellor. We haven't really clicked and I've never felt truly comfortable. She almost certainly has too many cases and why should I expect to receive months and months of publicly-funded counselling when little progress is being made and someone else, with much worse problems, could be benefiting. She told me that new users were facing a month long waiting list to even get an initial assessment appointment.

"You're stable and we need to wait for the medical intervention of detox," she said, promising to fit me in ASAP, should I need help urgently; should my drinking increase, or my assessment of my mood pick up on a real down.

Should neither of those scenarios come to pass the plan is for me to come back in for counselling around six weeks before the detox to start work on preparing for abstinence.

I've also been prescribed a book. This is a neat little scheme whereby you are genuinely given a prescription to hand in at your local library. My book is Mind Over Mood, which seems to be the CBT book.

I sensed she was starting to get a little nervous at the end of the session. I was asked to fill in one of those self-assessment forms anyone who's been treated for depression will almost certainly be familiar with; a list of questions about mood (have you felt despairing) with multiple choice options - never, sometimes, often, everyday.

The fact that I remain ticking the often or worse option for all the negative questions made her a little nervous I think - including the, have you thought of hurting yourself.

Sad to recount, I do think about suicide every day. My suicide. It's always there as an option and I'm so used to thinking of it it's a constant background noise. However, it's nothing more than a fantasy - I look at pills but I never have any real intention of taking an overdose and the fact that it's overdose I always think of (rather than the more certainly successful options - and I'm sorry to say that I have visited some of the notorious suicide websites to research this in the past, although not recently) means a 'cry for help' is as far as I am ever likely to go in that direction. I'm simply far too much of a physical coward to take such things likely, I'm also scared of death, I'm very far from a happy camper, but I do still have things to live for. I also have no faith - I've often wished that I had, and, although I'd probably call myself an agnostic at best I do 'pray' - and don't believe I will be swept to heaven when I pass on.

I think I felt slightly lighter, released in a way, and determined to do more for myself. I've ordered the library book and will contact the depression charity offering self-help and volunteer work.

Cheers.

The Drinker.

I'm worthless. Which is good news

"That was a good session, very open and honest," my counsellor said as we walked towards reception to make the next appointment.

That was on Wednesday. It was a good session, I had been open and honest and cried (or rather welled-up; if I let go enough to actually cry properly I completely fall apart) three times as I made my confessions or inadequacy, self-loathing and the deep-seated belief I have that I am an evil person.

This, apparently, is my schema. Counsellor promised to post me a chapter from a book that described this belief system that rules my thinking.

I'd asked if we could take a route towards Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), because I believed it would be more positive and active than what I had experienced before - simply talking about my past and events that may have contributed towards my drinking and depression.

The schema description arrived on Friday: Defectiveness/Shame is my name.

"Patients with this schema believe that they are defective, flawed, inferior, bad, worthless or unlovable. Consequently, they often experience chronic feelings of shame about who they are."

That fits the bill nicely.

The next session is designed to be a confession, a revealing of what I feel is bad, worthless and unlovable about myself. It's going to be tough I think but I have to hope that in revealing I will find some escape.