Alive and well and drunk in Cardiff

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

I blame Stoke City.

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.

One step forward, one-and-a-half steps back.

So, Sunday then. The second day drinking since my week on the wagon.

It went OK I guess. I went out a 4pm to watch the Chelsea v West Ham game at The C. Brain's pubs do Match day Ticket deals which give you a discount on four pints of one of their beers. Seeing this as a useful limiter that's what I went for, and, from being a confirmed Stella and Cider quaffer, I down-sized to Brain's Bitter. I even checked the strength - 3.7% I think.

I did fine in the pub. In fact, I probably shouldn't have bought the ticket, because that made me have four pints when the slow pace at which I was drinking I would have been fine on three I think.

The problem came on the way home. I popped into the shop and bought my tobacco, but added two cans of Guinness too. Mmm. Not so smart. I'm still going to be a one's too many ten's not enough sort of drinker whatever measure of control I reach I think.

Once I got home though I only drank one-and-a-half cans of the black stuff, actually chucking away half a can. My girlfriend drank the remaining bottle of Dragon Stout, for which I was grateful - the fact I'd left something was good too.

Now, I'm back on the wagon again. And, I feel fine to a degree. I certainly don't want a drink, I'm not craving, but the day is yet young. I've got work at 5pm to look forward to.

So, Brian, a weekend of two halves (11 halves actually I suppose). Still, no disasters and it's early doors yet.

Looking for lost loves and losing the one true love.

I wasn't always like this with alcohol my one true love, and, in all honestly my only interest, my only pleasure, the only reason I've had to even get out of bed in the morning, or early afternoon.

I used to be quite a happy little boy. There were problems in my childhood - which I'm no doubt going to come back to in forensic, tedious and self-indulgent detail.

I've relapsed before - three detoxes, three relapses. And, I'm convinced one of the reasons that happened is I never put anything in place to replace that which needed replacing.

I had interests and enthusiasms that predate my drinking, or at least predate my drinking becoming the all-encompassing be-all-and-end-all. Sadly, drink took over many of these interests.

I love music. I learned violin, piano, cornet and recorder as a kiddy. But, classical music just wasn't very cool at school and for complicated reasons I needed to be cool. My love of music switched to a love of pop and rock; initially The Beatles (the only such music my parents would contemplate allowing in the house) then indie, then heavier and more alternative sounds and finally electronica.

But, drink took that interest and made it its own. An excuse to get out of the house and tell my parents I was going to a club or a gig, in reality it was a way to indulge in almighty drinking and drugging sessions, an escape from my unhappy overactive brain and my over controlled home life.

Sport I used to love too. But, it all too quickly became another excuse. "I'm going to football practice, and we'll probably go for a drink after." It was never a drink. I can honestly say that the phrase 'Going for a Drink' is one I have NEVER used truthfully. Maybe there was a time when I said "Fancy a pint?" and had a pint and left. I can't recall it and I don't believe it.

I remember a Billy Connolly joke on the subject. Well, vaguely remember. I think, in his tale, he had a foreign girlfriend not familiar with imperial measurements who on hearing his constant refrain: "I'm going out for a pint," came to believe a pint was a seven foot high container. (Apologies to those who know the joke properly, but you get the gist I'm sure.)

Watching football was another excuse. I can drink quickly and a game on Mr Murdoch's magic Sky box in the pub is quite enough time for me to get through at least six pints - and, there's a game on nearly every day in the season, and if there's not football, there's rugby and in the summer there's cricket.

Other interests - making music, reading, writing - simply fell by the way side because nothing was as consuming as my passion for getting drunk.

Now, I have to try and fill that void.

I'm on day two without alcohol today. With a little help from my friend Diazepam. Mrs Cardiff Drunk and I went for a short walk this afternoon. Passing the local I could feel its pull almost physically. It's warm in there, it's safe in there, people will smile and nod, I can sit and read quietly (without my brain rushing off on its tangents and turning every memory and overheard word into a spiralling never-ending riff).

So, I have to try.

I'm finding writing this a great help. And, the amount of time I spend at the Brighteye forums is an enormous filler of time.

But, I hope to start reading sober. I want to try and write something imaginative. I want to try my hand at freelance writing again. I want to find an exercise I can manage - I'm not in very good physical shape at the moment.

But, my one true love is gone, and good lord I miss it, every minute of every day. I am in mourning, I am alone.

Trigger cut. For now.

I don't want to generalise. Generalising is bad - in general - but it can't be avoided - generally.

To stop the waffle, as the waffle finder general, might say. To generalise, alcoholics are, in the main creatures of habit. Bad habits. And, I'm no different.

There are triggers for particularly bad episodes. The worse one for me is when I left on my own, when Mrs Cardiff Drunk goes away on a work trip - that's when it all falls apart. But, even when she's here, the weekends are another trigger.

That's stupid I know - my excuse for drinking during the day, during the week, is that I am on my own. At the weekend I am not. But, I even find that hard. I find loneliness hard. I find company hard. I am a very hard man.

And the weekend means sport. And sport is on telly. And it is best watched in the pub. For me it's the most social time of the week as well - the least isolating. When I go into pubs during the week people are generally thin on the ground, and most of them are, like me, just looking for somewhere to be. Sure, in the C, I have a little gang I cling onto and talk to, but to be honest it's not conversation I greatly relish or enjoy - we're all in the same sort of boat: unemployed, alcoholics, unhappy, so that's what we talk about.

When the football's on, I can talk to people about that. And people strike up conversations quite unbidden; "That was never off-side," "Yes, John Terry is a vile cheat," and so on.

The rugby's even better.

I live in Cardiff now. But I was born in England. My father is English and my mother Welsh, but I always grew up believing that I was Welsh too - to the point where, perhaps as a measure of my insecurity in that role, I've become quite the pro-Welsh bigot at times.

Fortunately where I was brought up, in Gloucestershire, north of the Severn, rugby is the main sport. So it's possible to speak to ordinary people who are knowledgeable about the game because they've played it - if you want to see a sporting crowd of know-nothing glory hunters listen to the crowd at Twickenham on international days; they're a flicking disgrace. The upshot is, a Wales international game in the local guarantees a lovely warm and friendly atmosphere and some decent conversation.

Again, I'm generalising, but it often runs true - and, show me someone in a pub talking loud, ignorant bullshit about football and I'll show you a man in a Manchester United shirt.

Digression, digression, digression.

The short point of all this. Is that while I managed to keep my drinking stable at the far from healthy seven to eight pints a day I was on for a great deal of the time, if I was ever going to stray from even that limit, football or rugby games in the pub were going to be the reason.

So, today, as for the last couple of days, the cravings for booze have begun at around lunchtime, today they have been stronger.

We made it into town Mr Cardiff Drunk and I, made it through the crowds and managed to get a little bit of Christmas shopping done. But, walking past pubs today has been harder. The C, my nearest Sky pub, sang a little siren song to me as I passed.

Nothing has given. I'm still doing fine and I'm still committed to making this a booze-free day. But, it's taken a bit more of the old Diazepam than I've been advised to take - I took one pretty much first thing after getting up and I've just had the second. I'll probably take two this evening.

Then, tomorrow, I will wake up and I will feel as good as I have felt for seven or eight months, and I'm looking forward to it, that's why I'm doing this.

I need to have a shave as well. I haven't shaved for months. I look a fright with a sprouting ginger mess on my chin - although I've quite enjoyed having it in a way, but today, I'll take it off I think. It'll be another change, another move towards feeling better about myself.

Onwards and upwards.

If you spent it thank you for your time.

Leave a comment if you want, I always try to respond in some way.

What happened at the weekend.

It all got a little out of hand at the weekend.

Blame sport. Well, actually, just blame me, but the rugby international and Sky Sports' Super Sensational Soaraway Sunday were my drinking triggers.

I don't know exactly how much I drank on Saturday but it was more than the daily usual and far too much. Sunday I was back down to eight.

It was nice to watch the Wales game in the O. I'm very isolated at the moment and, even if it was just a bit of sporting banter, I managed to speak to people.

I managed to hold off going out on Sunday till 4pm for the Arsenal v Chelsea game. I saw a couple of acquaintances and drank five pints watching the game. Then four cans at home. Bugger!