Slightly hyper today - first in a good way, then in a paralysingly bad way. More than one thing to do you see - and that's a bit new for me. One's fine. Two's a crowd of worries.
Hey ho.
The second thing is a meeting about voluntary work with a charity helping people with depression in Wales. This morning I felt as chipper as a chipmunk about it all, but as the time approaches the panic starts to set in.
Oh well, must try and keep an open mind and just relax. Breath, breath, breath.
We shall see. I'll try and do a full post later on today.
Hope you're well if you're reading this. I hope you are if you aren't too, but, oviously you're not to know that - perhaps if you are reading this you could pass that on to friends, family and the like.
Drinker out for now.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Stasis.
I SIT AND I TYPE AND I OPEN NEW WINDOWS WITH NEW MUSIC IN THEM AND I LISTEN TO THEM WHILE I SIT AND I TYPE AND I DELETE HALF I TYPE BECAUSE IT'S NONSENSE AND I THINK OF WHAT I SHOULD BE TYPING AND I DON'T BOTHER TYPING BECAUSE IT'S RUBBISH AND I'M STUCK I'M IN STASIS I CAN'T MOVE BECAUSE I'M STUCK I'M STUCK BECAUSE I'M SCARED I'M STUCK BECAUSE I'M LAZY I'M STUCK I'M STUCK I'M STUCK.
Dangers of success revisited. Unleashing the unquiet mind.
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.
But, you know what, I already miss it so much. I miss the pub and its companionship, I miss the warm fug around my skittering mind which slows it and eases it.
Now, the good thing, the ideal thing, would be if I can say I've dealt with the problems that made alcohol such a good answer to my questions that I seem inevitably to end up physically in its thrall. That I can fill my days and cool my thoughts in other ways so I can enjoy drinking sensibly and safely.
This will almost certainly happen. I will almost certainly drink again. Sorry to disappoint you if that's not what you want to read.
Already, without drink, my mind is all over the shop again. Yes, I am enormously more energetic and healthy feeling than I was before, but I just can't stop my mind.
Nature abhors a vacuum they say. Well, I abhor silence. I can't bear it. The radio is on all day. I simply cannot do one thing at a time - I just can't get my mind to focus on a single thing, I must have something else to distract the other parts of it that aren't taken up by reading or watching a film or whatever.
I can't explain this - I've had ADD suggested as a possible diagnosis - but, I guess I'm going to have to look for ways to control it. I've tried meditation in the past - not in a class just from books and it was a complete dead loss for me, but I think I must try again, try and bring some discipline to the chorus line of particularly frisky thoughts that kick round my mind destroying any peace. I have got as far as emailing a local Tai Chi (I'm sorry, I don't think that's the correct term for the classes this fella runs, but it's what most people would understand and recognise as Tai Chi) teacher to ask about his classes. Will I do anything about it, almost certainly not.
Writing helps. It's one of the few things that can fill my mind. The only job I only ever really excelled at was journalism - on a very small scale, a little local weekly, but a good one. We had such a small staff that everyone had to do everything and I was king of the multi-taskers. It goes with the job of course - you're writing a story and the phone goes and you need to scan a photograph and you've got eight other stories to do as well and the proofs need to be read and you're talking on the phone and taking notes at the same time - it's the only thing I've ever done that filled my mind.
As I've just said in my previous post about memory, I don't offer this as some evidence of genius or specialness or whatever and I HATE IT. I wish I could sit and read and concentrate on what I'm reading. I wish I could talk to people without knowing how their sentences are going to end before they get there and being bored. I wish I wasn't hyper-aware of my surroundings, constantly distracted by other's conversations, constantly paranoid about everyone around me and what they're doing and what they're thinking.
It happened last time I detoxed though. Then, I was working for the paper so that filled my days. But, I also split up from Mrs Cardiff Drunk for a while - I just couldn't bear to be in someone's company so much, to be so aware of them and what they're feeling and them expecting me to listen to them (ie, while not doing so many other things).
So, meditation will be tried again, and I'm going to look out that email from the Tai Chi master to see if it might fit in around my job (still can't believe I'm typing that).
Sorry if this all sounds like I'm a huge egomaniac - I can assure you I absolutely hate myself (although perhaps that's just a measure of constantly looking at myself - I need to escape myself, get out of my mind, and we know where that leads.)
Anyhow, I reckon that's probably it for today. I've got a list of things to get done. Things that mean leaving the house. I'm still hugely nervous, but nothing like as paranoid as I was at the end of my drinking, germs of confidence are growing, so it's off to the shops with me. Hi Ho.
If you spent it, thank you for your time.
Leave a comment - egotists need their egos feeding you know.
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.
But, you know what, I already miss it so much. I miss the pub and its companionship, I miss the warm fug around my skittering mind which slows it and eases it.
Now, the good thing, the ideal thing, would be if I can say I've dealt with the problems that made alcohol such a good answer to my questions that I seem inevitably to end up physically in its thrall. That I can fill my days and cool my thoughts in other ways so I can enjoy drinking sensibly and safely.
This will almost certainly happen. I will almost certainly drink again. Sorry to disappoint you if that's not what you want to read.
Already, without drink, my mind is all over the shop again. Yes, I am enormously more energetic and healthy feeling than I was before, but I just can't stop my mind.
Nature abhors a vacuum they say. Well, I abhor silence. I can't bear it. The radio is on all day. I simply cannot do one thing at a time - I just can't get my mind to focus on a single thing, I must have something else to distract the other parts of it that aren't taken up by reading or watching a film or whatever.
I can't explain this - I've had ADD suggested as a possible diagnosis - but, I guess I'm going to have to look for ways to control it. I've tried meditation in the past - not in a class just from books and it was a complete dead loss for me, but I think I must try again, try and bring some discipline to the chorus line of particularly frisky thoughts that kick round my mind destroying any peace. I have got as far as emailing a local Tai Chi (I'm sorry, I don't think that's the correct term for the classes this fella runs, but it's what most people would understand and recognise as Tai Chi) teacher to ask about his classes. Will I do anything about it, almost certainly not.
Writing helps. It's one of the few things that can fill my mind. The only job I only ever really excelled at was journalism - on a very small scale, a little local weekly, but a good one. We had such a small staff that everyone had to do everything and I was king of the multi-taskers. It goes with the job of course - you're writing a story and the phone goes and you need to scan a photograph and you've got eight other stories to do as well and the proofs need to be read and you're talking on the phone and taking notes at the same time - it's the only thing I've ever done that filled my mind.
As I've just said in my previous post about memory, I don't offer this as some evidence of genius or specialness or whatever and I HATE IT. I wish I could sit and read and concentrate on what I'm reading. I wish I could talk to people without knowing how their sentences are going to end before they get there and being bored. I wish I wasn't hyper-aware of my surroundings, constantly distracted by other's conversations, constantly paranoid about everyone around me and what they're doing and what they're thinking.
It happened last time I detoxed though. Then, I was working for the paper so that filled my days. But, I also split up from Mrs Cardiff Drunk for a while - I just couldn't bear to be in someone's company so much, to be so aware of them and what they're feeling and them expecting me to listen to them (ie, while not doing so many other things).
So, meditation will be tried again, and I'm going to look out that email from the Tai Chi master to see if it might fit in around my job (still can't believe I'm typing that).
Sorry if this all sounds like I'm a huge egomaniac - I can assure you I absolutely hate myself (although perhaps that's just a measure of constantly looking at myself - I need to escape myself, get out of my mind, and we know where that leads.)
Anyhow, I reckon that's probably it for today. I've got a list of things to get done. Things that mean leaving the house. I'm still hugely nervous, but nothing like as paranoid as I was at the end of my drinking, germs of confidence are growing, so it's off to the shops with me. Hi Ho.
If you spent it, thank you for your time.
Leave a comment - egotists need their egos feeding you know.
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.
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.
Entering the workforce. The disappointed perfectionist.
Well, I made it. I'm now a member of the workforce again after two years unemployment leavened by a couple of freelance writing jobs, some 'content writing' for a web agency and the odd airport pickup for Mrs Cardiff Drunk's company - I'm cheaper than a taxi.
Yesterday wasn't brilliant, but I got through it. I'm just a boy whose intentions are good - they're better than good in fact, they're flipping Nobel prize-winning, rocket to the moon, cancer curing intentions. I'm a disappointed perfectionist and a pessimistic optimist.
Let me try and make something approaching sense of that.
I wake now not wishing I was dead. Better than that. I wake thinking, today I will blog properly (I have managed to post every day, which is better than I've ever managed before) and look for writing jobs and complete an article for submission to someone who's published me before, and I will do housework and go out and buy an ironing board and a laundry basket and some food and I will start to write that script/novel/play I'm always thinking about and I will get ready for going to my new job hours before I have to and I will eat three meals and wash up after each one and I'll set out for work early enough that I can go round the shops and do some Christmas shopping on the way. Then I will slay the dragon that lives down the end of our street, free the princess and end all conflict on the planet with a one-liner that just makes all combatants see the error of their hateful ways and lay down their arms and embrace their brothers and start to build a new and just society founded on love.
What I really do is have breakfast (that's good, unequivocally good and a new one for me), then I come to the computer and I might well do a blog post. Then I'll almost certainly visit Brighteye to see who's there and if I can cast some of my dubious wisdom about. Then I'll check the Guardian's Comment is Free site. Then I'll stay there and at Brighteye and I'll stay and stay and stay and maybe post some comment or other and keep checking back just in case someone's responded and I can get into a row with them. And, then it's 4pm and I need to rush to get ready and I haven't ironed anything and I haven't sorted out the documents I need to take with me so I charge round in a panic trying to find everything and I panic and I panic and I'm in a state and start to hate myself and I start to say 'I can't do this'.
I did it though - not the dragon slaying and article writing naturally. But, I made it on time to the call centre place. And, I made it through the three hours without shaking or sweating or throwing up or all the other things I imagine I'm going to do.
To be honest a well-behaved Labrador could have made it through yesterday's session. You see, I say I've started work, but there's 10 weeks of training. It starts with corporate induction, sitting and watching slide shows and videos about 'who we are', 'what our vision is' and the like.
Still, it's an improvement, it kept my mind busy during what would normally be a dangerous time for giving up and going to the pub. And, at the end of it all, I didn't think, didn't I do well, that deserves a drink. I went home and made beans on toast, apologised to Mrs Cardiff Drunk for not doing any of the washing up or bringing in of washing or cleaning I'd said I would do in the morning, took a happy snoozy pill and went to bed.
Same again today, although I must try and do better with the other things that are supposed to turn my life around, to add things that mean every day is a day of NOT DRINKING but little else other than thinking about drinking.
If you spent it, thank you for your time, and I hope you're happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.
The Drinker.
Yesterday wasn't brilliant, but I got through it. I'm just a boy whose intentions are good - they're better than good in fact, they're flipping Nobel prize-winning, rocket to the moon, cancer curing intentions. I'm a disappointed perfectionist and a pessimistic optimist.
Let me try and make something approaching sense of that.
I wake now not wishing I was dead. Better than that. I wake thinking, today I will blog properly (I have managed to post every day, which is better than I've ever managed before) and look for writing jobs and complete an article for submission to someone who's published me before, and I will do housework and go out and buy an ironing board and a laundry basket and some food and I will start to write that script/novel/play I'm always thinking about and I will get ready for going to my new job hours before I have to and I will eat three meals and wash up after each one and I'll set out for work early enough that I can go round the shops and do some Christmas shopping on the way. Then I will slay the dragon that lives down the end of our street, free the princess and end all conflict on the planet with a one-liner that just makes all combatants see the error of their hateful ways and lay down their arms and embrace their brothers and start to build a new and just society founded on love.
What I really do is have breakfast (that's good, unequivocally good and a new one for me), then I come to the computer and I might well do a blog post. Then I'll almost certainly visit Brighteye to see who's there and if I can cast some of my dubious wisdom about. Then I'll check the Guardian's Comment is Free site. Then I'll stay there and at Brighteye and I'll stay and stay and stay and maybe post some comment or other and keep checking back just in case someone's responded and I can get into a row with them. And, then it's 4pm and I need to rush to get ready and I haven't ironed anything and I haven't sorted out the documents I need to take with me so I charge round in a panic trying to find everything and I panic and I panic and I'm in a state and start to hate myself and I start to say 'I can't do this'.
I did it though - not the dragon slaying and article writing naturally. But, I made it on time to the call centre place. And, I made it through the three hours without shaking or sweating or throwing up or all the other things I imagine I'm going to do.
To be honest a well-behaved Labrador could have made it through yesterday's session. You see, I say I've started work, but there's 10 weeks of training. It starts with corporate induction, sitting and watching slide shows and videos about 'who we are', 'what our vision is' and the like.
Still, it's an improvement, it kept my mind busy during what would normally be a dangerous time for giving up and going to the pub. And, at the end of it all, I didn't think, didn't I do well, that deserves a drink. I went home and made beans on toast, apologised to Mrs Cardiff Drunk for not doing any of the washing up or bringing in of washing or cleaning I'd said I would do in the morning, took a happy snoozy pill and went to bed.
Same again today, although I must try and do better with the other things that are supposed to turn my life around, to add things that mean every day is a day of NOT DRINKING but little else other than thinking about drinking.
If you spent it, thank you for your time, and I hope you're happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.
The Drinker.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Better, better, better...
The last time I had a drink was Friday.
You'll notice I haven't said anything along the lines of the last drink I will ever have was on Friday. It's still not a concept I can entertain, I just can't conceive of it - never to drink ever again? Hey?! (More on this in the next post).
So, it is very much one day at a time at the moment, and with the very short-term and specific aim of getting me to my new job and being able to complete those three little hours to 8pm without exhibiting obvious symptoms of withdrawal - and, believe you me, they would have been obvious.
Already though, I feel one hundred times better than I have for a long, long, time. I no longer wake up wishing I hadn't, wishing I had died in the night and wanting nothing more than to return to sleep.
It's still a bit tough - my previous supervised detox have lasted five days on drugs, and that, they told me was enough to get all the alcohol out of my system. So this is day three and I'm still leaning heavily on the Diazepam and the zonk out antidepressants to make it through each day, but I am absolutely confident I can make it through what I have to today to become a member of the workforce again.
My energy levels are through the roof - comparatively: they were under the floorboards until last week. I'm eating better - I just had breakfast! One small step for you, you lucky bastard, one giant leap for a would-be recovering alcoholic.
I'm managing to do so much more. Stupid little things that I previously left to the long-suffering Mrs Cardiff Drunk - who must have wished she'd never got involved with this seeming stroppy, lazy teenager from hell (I'm 37, but, it's very true to say that I've never grown up properly). Washing is getting done, clothes are being put away.
All I did previously was make the evening meal for when she got home and did a bit of food shopping. This, I fit round my drinking. I was so paranoid and nervous I hated leaving the house during daylight hours and my drinking began, like clockwork, at 4.30pm. So I'd delay going to the shops until at least 3.30pm when the winter twilight started to close in. The walk back from the shop would put me past the pub at just about the right time and in I'd be, with my paper and my three or four pints.
Those pints gave me enough energy to do the day's washing up and start cooking. If I'd been given a task to complete - some tidying or vacuuming, I'd rush round then and make a half-arsed job of it at the same time.
I'd always come home from the pub with my four cans from the corner shop to finish the job and get me to sleep. How things have changed in just a few days.
Yesterday I washed a load of work clothes, I also shaved off about three months growth of beard - not an aesthetic decision that horrid ginger growth, just sheer lack of willpower, energy and drive to do anything. The plan today is to go out and buy an ironing board to finish my transformation (Mrs Cardiff Drunk works in a 'creative' position in the arts which allows her a great deal of leeway in her appearance - not that she doesn't always look lovely of course.)
That may be too much.
But the minimum I WILL achieve today is a clean and smart appearance for work. I've managed breakfast already and lunch will follow - probably kippers, natures finest fast food I'm sure. And, to make it there with all the paper work I need, on time and NOT IN A STULTIFYING FROZEN PANIC, CONVINCED OF MY INABILITY TO MANAGE AND OF IMPENDING DISASTER.
If I do that I'll be immensely pleased.
Danger lurks though - I'll have done something, something I might even think is worthy of reward, and the only reward I've even known is... Yes, you probably have guessed it - it comes in large glasses or metal containers with ring pull sealants.
Still, onward and upward.
If you spent it, thank you for your time. It's time for a fag and another cup of herbal tea (I'm trying to lay off the caffeine - I tend to overdo anything in anyway psychoactive and uppers tend to demand a downer to level things off and, you've guessed it, that comes in large glass or metal containers with ring pull sealants.
Cheers from The Cardiff Drunk.
You'll notice I haven't said anything along the lines of the last drink I will ever have was on Friday. It's still not a concept I can entertain, I just can't conceive of it - never to drink ever again? Hey?! (More on this in the next post).
So, it is very much one day at a time at the moment, and with the very short-term and specific aim of getting me to my new job and being able to complete those three little hours to 8pm without exhibiting obvious symptoms of withdrawal - and, believe you me, they would have been obvious.
Already though, I feel one hundred times better than I have for a long, long, time. I no longer wake up wishing I hadn't, wishing I had died in the night and wanting nothing more than to return to sleep.
It's still a bit tough - my previous supervised detox have lasted five days on drugs, and that, they told me was enough to get all the alcohol out of my system. So this is day three and I'm still leaning heavily on the Diazepam and the zonk out antidepressants to make it through each day, but I am absolutely confident I can make it through what I have to today to become a member of the workforce again.
My energy levels are through the roof - comparatively: they were under the floorboards until last week. I'm eating better - I just had breakfast! One small step for you, you lucky bastard, one giant leap for a would-be recovering alcoholic.
I'm managing to do so much more. Stupid little things that I previously left to the long-suffering Mrs Cardiff Drunk - who must have wished she'd never got involved with this seeming stroppy, lazy teenager from hell (I'm 37, but, it's very true to say that I've never grown up properly). Washing is getting done, clothes are being put away.
All I did previously was make the evening meal for when she got home and did a bit of food shopping. This, I fit round my drinking. I was so paranoid and nervous I hated leaving the house during daylight hours and my drinking began, like clockwork, at 4.30pm. So I'd delay going to the shops until at least 3.30pm when the winter twilight started to close in. The walk back from the shop would put me past the pub at just about the right time and in I'd be, with my paper and my three or four pints.
Those pints gave me enough energy to do the day's washing up and start cooking. If I'd been given a task to complete - some tidying or vacuuming, I'd rush round then and make a half-arsed job of it at the same time.
I'd always come home from the pub with my four cans from the corner shop to finish the job and get me to sleep. How things have changed in just a few days.
Yesterday I washed a load of work clothes, I also shaved off about three months growth of beard - not an aesthetic decision that horrid ginger growth, just sheer lack of willpower, energy and drive to do anything. The plan today is to go out and buy an ironing board to finish my transformation (Mrs Cardiff Drunk works in a 'creative' position in the arts which allows her a great deal of leeway in her appearance - not that she doesn't always look lovely of course.)
That may be too much.
But the minimum I WILL achieve today is a clean and smart appearance for work. I've managed breakfast already and lunch will follow - probably kippers, natures finest fast food I'm sure. And, to make it there with all the paper work I need, on time and NOT IN A STULTIFYING FROZEN PANIC, CONVINCED OF MY INABILITY TO MANAGE AND OF IMPENDING DISASTER.
If I do that I'll be immensely pleased.
Danger lurks though - I'll have done something, something I might even think is worthy of reward, and the only reward I've even known is... Yes, you probably have guessed it - it comes in large glasses or metal containers with ring pull sealants.
Still, onward and upward.
If you spent it, thank you for your time. It's time for a fag and another cup of herbal tea (I'm trying to lay off the caffeine - I tend to overdo anything in anyway psychoactive and uppers tend to demand a downer to level things off and, you've guessed it, that comes in large glass or metal containers with ring pull sealants.
Cheers from The Cardiff Drunk.
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