Went to the doctor, guess what he told me?

I did indeed go to the doctor yesterday, at the Community Addictions Unit (CAU). He didn't tell me to go out and have fun no matter what - and he's not a fool.

He's very nice, kind and patient; willing to listen and non-judgmental, which I guess goes with the territory. I assume doctors chose their specialisms and I do wonder why anyone would chose to work with addicts - I'm very grateful that they do and always end up wondering if they've experienced the problems themselves, maybe through relatives.

Anyway.

I stopped into the library on the way to the CAU and got out a book on meditation. I started to read it while I waited and felt calmer straight away - I know I've got to try and do something to find a way to get back in control of my mind and maaaaaaybeeeeee this might be something I'll actually follow through on.

So, in I go and report my progress. My self-administered detox, my new job, my seven days off and two days on the booze.

"Why did you drink again? " He asked, and I must admit I was momentarily stumped.

Really, I should just have said, "Because that's what I do, that's what I've always done, and I can't imagine doing anything else."

I can't quite remember what I did say now, although I know I mentioned habit and that I was in a social situation. We talked around my history of social drinking - I have, occasionally in the past, drunk like an ordinary person, although it hasn't been for very long.

I also told him that I was really scared of sobriety, I'm really not coming to terms with that idea very well at all. I said I didn't want to go onto antabuse (a drug which deters you from drinking by making you as sick as several dogs if you do drink) because I was frightened of it, really, I think I should have said, "Because you can't drink on it, d'uh!"

I think he read that to be honest. And, gently suggested that abstinence may well end up as the best option for me. He also agreed to write to my doctor to ask him to think about further increasing my Trazodone dose and also to prescribe me Acamprosate - a drug said to reduce cravings for alcohol and repair brain damage. I've taken it before and I did find that while I was on it, but still relapsed, the relapse was less serious than when I came off it completely. I'm also to ask for a referral to a skin specialist to check out what I've been believing to be a side effect of the Trazodone but which he says should be investigated further.

A referral to group therapy sessions which would normally follow a detox should be on the way too and I also get to go back to the CAU to report on my progress.

I was told I could go get a fast track for detox if I felt I needed it too - I'd said that at the moment I don't think I do and I didn't want to take a place on a list that someone else could be using.

I was relieved actually that I didn't simply get turfed out of treatment as I thought I might have been.

If you read or have read the last post you'll know I subsequently had a slip up, but, all in all the appointment itself went well, perhaps the relief was part of the reason for drinking. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Hey ho,

I hope you're well.

The Cardiff Drunk.

One step forward and four pints back.

Slapped wrists all round. I didn't write anything yesterday and this morning I have a hangover.

That, dear reader, we shall call a bad thing.

However, I don't feel as bad about it now as I did when I came in from the pub last night. There were three definite triggers to this - one was my appointment at the Community Addictions Unit, (which gets a post all of its own) the other was going out for a meal with Mrs Cardiff drunk and the last one was being given an evening off work.

I'd like to say there was no element of physical necessity in it, but I'm not so sure I can. I certainly craved yesterday. Having a drink yesterday means I'm that much more likely to have one today, but I am resolved not to, and, should it come to that I've still got four Diazepam tablets left and can always take my Trazodone early and knock myself into the Land of Nod.

The appointment seems a stupid trigger doesn't it? Going to an appointment about getting over an alcohol problem makes you drink does it? Well, yes, kind of. It's just habit you know. When I was in my eight pints a day cycle I would lie in bed till all hours, but managed to reduce my intake little by staying out of the pub till at least 4.30pm. Counselling appointments meant I got up earlier, which meant I would find myself coming out of quite a stressful experience (and emerging from hangover too) at around 10am and walking past the C - I didn't always go in, but sometimes I did.

The same happened with my first appointment at the Community Addictions Unit.

I'd had a not bad day. A little lazy as ever - not writing this, not writing my article to pitch - but managing to clean the house up and do some washing. Mrs Cardiff Drunk came home and I realised there was bugger all food in the house.

"Can we go out?" She asked, offering to pay and suggesting the local Thai restaurant.

I ummed and aahed a bit and said I was worried about going out because I might be tempted to drink and I didn't really want to, in fact, I didn't think I should.

But, in the end, off we went. We had a very nice meal indeed. I drank water and Mrs Cardiff Drunk drank a small glass of red wine.

And, I just started to twitch and crave terribly. I'm incredibly self-conscious, shy and nervous (one of the reasons I drink is to enable me to deal with other people more easily) so being out and sober is new to me - I've never done it. And, staring at that glass of wine didn't help.

On the way home I just announced, I'm going to go to the pub with my book and have a bit of a read. The idea just lodged itself and (I know this sounds weak and stupid and may be simply incomprehensible to those who haven't been there) was not going to leave.

I got home and managed to get my coat and shoes off and start to do something useful. But, the siren song was there and in the end off I toddled while Mrs Cardiff Drunk had a bath.

I went to The O. I really had just intended to go in, sit quietly and read and have a couple of pints, and stick to the weak bitter I've been on lately.

But the pub was packed-ish. It was music night.

He's a local lad I think, who plays the guitar and sings covers and has a really charming presence - and very good he is too. But, the best thing about him is his evident kindness. He hosts it as a sort of open mic, and was joined by a girl who he is evidently teaching to play the bass. She's in the very early stages of learning by the sound of things but his patience with her - leaning over to tell her the chord while he was playing - was quite something to see.

Once they'd run through their little set, he invited guest singers up and played while a lad I know from the C did a karaoke take on three numbers before he let 'Beatle John' join in and take over the guitar.

The first pint went down slow. But, it didn't taste quite right so I went over to a stronger ale. Bad, bad, bad. Two became three and three became four.

The thing is, I just felt at home there. Everyone was getting nicely wasted, people smiled, people talked.

I think I would have done better if some bloke hadn't sat at my table - making me a little jumpy. But these are excuses.

The reason I don't feel so terrible now is that I haven't slipped straight back into misery. This morning, Mrs Cardiff Drunk brought me a cup of coffee in bed - the old me would have stayed there, self-loathing and brooding and preparing to slip further, hating and wishing I hadn't woken and trying to get back to sleep.

But today was better. I jumped up and out, drank the coffee, drank water, had a shower, made breakfast and put the washing on before getting on here.

I've done better here too. I've stayed away from Comment is Free - that site really is addictive and does me no good at all, I read the news today, oh shite - and got straight on with this after doing a bit of a job search.

So, a slip, but I'm going to HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT. And that's what I'm going to try and do - I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers,

The Cardiff Drunk.

Alcohol, the excuse or the problem? Am I a dimwit?

Anybeth left a comment which was substantial enough to be worth a post I think. Also, wise enough.

Anybeth, who writes, Swimming in Clear Waters (which is very good, you should read it), used to consider herself an alcoholic but has managed to get to a place where she can drink when and where she wants (please correct me if I'm getting this wrong Anybeth, and I'll change the post), and wrote:

Oi, you went through all that detox mess just to drink after a week?Honey! give it a month, two months. shit, give it six months and see how you feel.When I quit drinking (for total abstinence) I was in a dark place and needed 100% sobriety to deal with life, feelings, counseling, learning, stress, health, exercise. I needed that time to process my emotions and really get good with my head and heart.I'm not saying you are an alcoholic, only you can decide that. BUT I'm saying if you ever think you can drink again without bad effect on your emotion and life....you need a DOSE of sobriety that lasts a bit longer than a week or two. You need to deal with you, and that stuff in your head that you are self-medicating.

And, I very much see her point. So, am I being a bit of a dimwit - alcoholics after all spend a lot of time in Egypt's famous river (sorry) - and kidding myself?

I've been sober before - properly detoxed and in counselling sober - but the longest I've lasted was six months. To stop for a week might seem, well, a little weak. To be honest it was and it is but it was the best I could manage.

Being cast from counselling sort of opened up my eyes. I'm going to have to do a lot of this myself. I spoke to my counsellor about one view I have of my drinking (and I've got lots, believe you me, by the day, by the hour, by the minute - I'm a living Google newsfeed on my own drinking) which is that I use it as an excuse.

A reason to be able to say: I can't cope, I can't work, I can't do anything. Why's that Cardiff Drunk? Well, you see, I'm an alcoholic and I have to drink eight pints a day. And, I'm going to have to stop using excuses and I'm going to have to do a lot of the work myself and part of that is just developing a backbone and to mine own self being truer.

Part of that own self is one who likes drinking. Alcoholics are often said only to be able to start recovering when they hit the fabled 'rock bottom' - stealing your grandmother's pension to buy booze, pimping your dog out to the local whippet fanciers, that sort of stuff. At that point, they hate drink but you can bet your sweet I hate Eric Cantona T-shirt (you don't have one?!) that they flipping well started out loving it. (Sorry, is this all terribly obvious?)

I too have been in very dark places because of drink, and my other pharmaceutical pals, but now I'm saying no to them and, I'm currently also saying no to treatment, to counselling and anything other than that which I do myself.

However, I do very much see Anybeth's point. A week is a long time in politics (I'm Mr Cliche today, all day) but not in 'recovery' or addiction. There are dangers ahead, but I'm now finally sick of giving in to every fear. I'm also sick of counselling, of looking at myself - I'm far too far that way inclined as it is and need to start looking outward (although, you may have noted, I'm writing a blog entirely about myself: I'm also Mr Hypocrite today, all day) and using the inward stuff to my own advantage - in writing, in making music, in ignoring that dricking inner voice, telling it to shut up and sod off thank you very much.

I may well go longer periods of abstinence as I go along the road. I'm not going to set myself rules - because I know what I'm like - if I break them I will go 100% the other way (see the previous post on yoga) consider myself a failure and slink straight back into my, "I'm an alcoholic I can't do anything, you see I have to drink eight pints a day," persona.

It's a big change for me. I've been weak and I'm trying to learn how to be strong.

On Wednesday I'm due back at the Community Addictions Unit. My last appointment there was the first assessment, and this one is supposed to be about the discussion of treatment options (there appear to be two - inpatient or outpatient detox) and I'm not in a place where I currently need either of those.

However, I am absolutely determined to be completely honest with the doctor. I will tell him what I've done and I will show him a drink diary for the time I've been stopped. And, then, I'm tempted to be a teeny tiny bit dishonest with the doctor. I might tell him that my weekend's drinking was a slip up and that I'm abstinent now and can I go on Campral please.

I've taken Campral before after detox and I found it a help, I found that when I did relapse once I didn't go straight back into the eight pint ditch - that was a decision I made for myself when as a result of my relapse (it's a long story) my whole life imploded and into my drinker's persona I went - for safety. Now, I don't think he'll prescribe it if I'm drinking, but we shall see. We shall see.

I may well be fooling myself - but I still feel better today than I have for Bill Hicks knows how long - and I may well need to go back for help again in the future but at the moment helping myself seems the best way forward. And, as Anybeth says on her own blog - You can watch me succeed or watch me crash and burn.

Two paths diverge. Dangers of success. (Digression)

This feels a dangerous time. Thanks to my lovely GP and his Diazepam I'm well on the way to detoxing - day two is reckoned to be the worse for withdrawal and I'm on day four now, the cravings are lessening each day.


Why dangerous then? Well, next week I'm due back at the Community Addictions Unit for my next appointment. What do I tell them?

Well, I will tell them my GP prescribed me Diazepam and with the help of that I've managed however many days I've managed without a drink and that, all things considered, I'm really very grateful and thank you very much, but I don't need a detox, sorry to waste your time and all that.

And, with that, I reckon I'll be out of treatment.

The danger is of course the danger of confidence - the 'I can do this' that could so easily to lead to the 'I can have a drink' and so on and so on and so on.

I believe it's an Alcoholics Anonymous maxim, an urging towards abstinence, that to continue to do the same thing and to expect a different outcome is a sort of insanity.

Now, if I look back through my life - which I do far too often, far too intensely and in a brooding, self-loathing way that leaves me frozen by fear and convinced, "I will always fail, I will always frick up, I should never bother doing anything, nothing good will come of it." - if I look back through my life, the real miseries, toss ups, mess ups, screw ups, breakdowns and crashes have all involved alcohol.

I sailed through my O' Levels - this was a bad thing in many ways. I'm cursed or blessed with a photographic memory, probably technically an eidetic memory. I have total recall - talk to me and I can repeat back to you word for word. I always knew I had a good memory but it was crystalised on a training course I once had to do while working as a library assistant in London. There was an exercise designed to illustrate how poorly people listen, how information gets distorted in the telling, Chinese whispers (I'm pretty sure that's not a very PC term, but it works). (No, I don't recall quite why we had to go on the course or how it helped us be better library assistants, but it was a morning out of work.) We were all sent out of the room and had to come in one by one to listen to a hugely complicated account of a car crash and then pass it on to the next person. I went first. At the end of the exercise the trainer told me they'd been doing that exercise for ten years and I was the first person who'd ever completely, word for word, recounted the story correctly.

So much, and so whoopee do for me, but that memory meant I was a whizz at exams (I'm still a killer at pub quizzes if you ever need someone for a team) - I never had to revise, as long as I went to the lessons and heard what I had to hear that was it, it was a doddle. By the way, I'm not implying any higher intelligence here, I couldn't reason my way out of a paper bag and have shown time and time again that I can't think my way out of a bottle.

But, it set a pattern in my mind. I gave up on trying academically because I didn't have to (see, I told you I was essentially stupid) and so I got through my A Levels easily too and off to university. By that time of course I was drinking - like a particularly thirsty fish, bottles of spirits every day - so my memory wasn't even getting filled with what it needed to spew out the exam passing rubbish. I was also taking a lot of drugs - speed, opium, acid, weed, anything we could get our hands on and I say our because alcoholics and addicts seek each other out, it's natural.

Now, you see, I've gone completely off track, but I'll leave this up because it's all true and might be interesting, and return to my danger path in the next post.

I hate my memory. It's a right royal pain in the fundament to remember everything that's been said to you, and being rather inclined towards depressive thinking, if it's something hurtful, if it's a moment of fear or pain, then I seem to reserve the full technicolour wide screen recall for that.

I've gone on about self-medicating before and escaping my memory has certainly made alcohol a very seductive drug, 'he drinks to forget', goes the cliche, and that's certainly true. I've been a heavy drinker and/or drug user for 20 years now and in that sense it's certainly had limited success - my memory is starting to fail me.

This whole post has been one long digression, for which I apologise.

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

What happened on Wednesday - part two, Community Addictions Unit assessment

Have no doubt, the services that deal with addicts of various stripe are stretched and could probably hoover up a whole pot of further funding.

What this means for the patient, service user or (shudder) customer of these services is simply that there's a fair amount of waiting around to be done.

After my counselling on Wednesday I went home waisted (as I do far too readily and far too often) a couple of hours on the Guardian's Comment is Free website and then headed back out for my first appointment with a doctor at the Community Addictions Unit.

And there I sat. The appointment was at high noon and the letter confirming it had told me to expect it to take around an hour. I left in the end at 2.45.

Not that I minded. I avoid going out of the house, partly through anxiety and fear and partly because I know if I do I will sooner rather than later end up in the pub. Sitting in a dingy NHS corridor is at least harmless. It also humbles and shames me: I see others struggling with far harder problems than I have and who are in a plainly evident far worse state in terms of physical or mental health. I sometimes feel a fraud: you should be able to pull yourself together I tell myself as I watch people collect their methadone scrips and read the posters about open wounds and the safest way to inject and clean works using water from a toilet.

The doctor was Asian and quietly spoken and patient. He ran through a long list of questions - asking about my history of drinking (I started pretty early in my teens, developed into a heavy binger and from there to pretty constant and addicted drinking from my late 20s onwards, it's been a problem for 20 years now), use of other drugs, family relationships, mental and physical health, my suicide attempts, where I am now and what I hope to get from the process.

It was all rather cathartic, it's nice to be able to speak openly and honestly to a sympathetic ear. He told me the options: basically in patient or outpatient detox using diazepam. I told him I'd prefer an outpatient detox because that's what I've experienced before and I'm nervous about being admitted to hospital.

In reality, I know this is unlikely to get the thumbs up. There is a risk of fitting during detox and with my girlfriend at work I'll be on my own during the day. I must admit I dread hospitalisation - there surely aren't many people who look forward to spending time in hospital - and the attendant group therapy: I find it very hard to open up to a therapist in one-on-one situations, competing for air in a group is something I'll find incredibly hard. But, perhaps that's something that has to be got through and will induce the sort of cathartic breakdown into real tears that will help cleanse me.

I raised the idea with the doctor that I was a self-medicator; that I find my thoughts very hard to control, and that drink really is the best way I've found to do this. He nodded, but it's early days in the process and the first aim is to get me off the booze, that's the only aim really, the rest may well be down to me. He certainly accepted the fact that I'm currently depressed and said he would write to my GPs to ask them to raise the dose of my antidepressants. "It could be prolonging your problems with alcohol," he said.

I wasn't able to provide a urine sample but had two sets of blood tests down - all I heard was renal and liver function. Despite everything, I think I'm probably in relatively good physical health and I hope there's nothing serious hidden under my irritable skin.

My blood pressure was taken and is apparently good, my pulse was 74 I think, which is a bit high but there's a certain amount of stress in having needles stuck in your arms and I should imagine that would account for that.

I left feeling lighter still. Something's moving at least. It'll be slow I know, the doctor told me to expect another appointment in three weeks and asked me to think more about the treatment options and also to think about reasons why I've relapsed three times before after detox.

(If you are reading this thinking, "You feckless waster of NHS resources that could go to people that are really ill and who chooses the path of addiction," I have every sympathy with your view. All I can say is the hatred and opprobrium of others merely confirms my own opinion of myself (although I doubt anyone could hate me as much as I hate myself), and that I really don't want to be like this anymore and I will try as hard as I can. I want desperately to be a useful person.)

I left at 2.45, knowing I was going to go straight to the C. As I've said, I've avoided the place of late, it's been getting me down, it's the only pub I use where I have people to speak to but they too have their problems and that tends to be what we talk about. As it happened I bumped into my best mate from the all-day-drinking gang, he'd just left the C and was on his way to one of the social/working men's/sporting clubs in the area.

I didn't want to go. The last time I went there was bad. My girlfriend was working away as she often does. While she's here I do much better, I desperately want not to upset her so my drinking stays relatively stable. With her gone the brakes come off. I'd gone out to watch football that time and ended up spending 12 hours on the pop, I'm sure I got mouthy and obnoxious in the club and couldn't remember much after arriving and certainly couldn't recall getting home. That was Jack Daniels. I rarely drink spirits, almost never in fact, I drink pints far too quickly - I drink everything far too quickly and even when I've been dry I've chugged through pint after pint of soft drinks when I go out, it's all to do with nerves I think - so spirits vanish even faster.

As it happened I did fine. Four pints, relatively slowly, after downing the first two.

Again, it was a sobering experience. Most of the pubs I use are filled with habitual drinkers and the club was no different, I see faces not so much damaged as completely wrecked by alcohol. People on the margins and with troubles, often unemployed and with money troubles who spend all day drinking and desperately staring at the horse racing on the screens waiting for a much-needed winner.

A man came in with a terrible facial wound - his left eye was hugely swollen with an open wound beneath it. He said he'd had a plate put in.

"I haven't had a pint since Monday," he said, "so don't look at me I've got the ******* shakes."

The barman offered him a straw.

The place stank of weed after a while. No-one inside was smoking, but it was drifting in strong and unmistakable from somewhere.

I'm angry with myself for trying to score some weed through my mate - which was easily arranged. I've been without for maybe two weeks and I should have accepted that that's a good thing. But, when I'm in my cups I do crave it. I was weak and stupid.

Onwards and upwards nevertheless.

Appointment confirmed.

A letter has just arrived confirming my appointment with the Community Addictions Unit (CAU) next Wednesday. That's something I suppose - things are moving, I've done the right things in a way, I've admitted my problems and asked for help.

Counsellor has warned me that I am likely to face a waiting list of up to six months and told me that funds are so tight that only alcohol and heroin addicts are getting treatment at the moment, everyone else is being left to their own devices.

The truth is, although I know I am addicted to alcohol and want to stop, I also dread sobriety. There's a reason why I've fallen into drunkenness; I enjoyed it, it was perfect for me. I've told several professionals that I think there is an element of self-medication to my addiction - that it's the only way I can deal with my skittering mind and what I believe is a hugely over-developed inner dialogue which I have difficulty controlling and which tends towards the negative and apocalyptic. That's my schema I guess and what I'm trying to change.

No-one has ever really acknowledged my view or offered any thoughts on it. I'll try again when I go to my assessment.