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

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...?

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.

So this is Sa'rday and what have you done?

For me, it's more a case of what haven't you done, which is drink.

That's six days sober, which is good going for me, and to make it to the end of Sa'day without chugging is good work for a Cardiff Drunk - all those football matches, all those pubs on the way home from work and that's what people do after work isn't it? Going for a pint? I never go for a pint though, maybe a gallon, usually substantially more.

But not today.

I'm in sobriety and I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm glad to be at work and not suffering withdrawals, but I think I'm still in the addicted phase - I feel uncomfortable without my beer; I'm not sure what to do with myself and even Dusty and the White Stripes can't save us now.

My mind's racing all the time. Spin, drizzle, crunch, grind, extrapolate, speculate, down and down, down and around then back to the top and off again. It's exhausting.

I can sleep though. I might take my new high dose of Trazodone tonight and that's going to be a big sleep (not The Big Sleep of course, which means death - I wonder if the owners of the Big Sleep hotels were aware of that when they so cheekily appropriated the great Raymond Chandler's words for their poxy executive hutches.)

I've done work, I've done cooking the dinner and now I'm petrified of boredom - there's a DVD to watch but I don't know if I can concentrate for that long; we shall see I suppose.

I have managed to finish a novel though (no, not writing one, reading.) That's a step in the right direction, a move up the long hill of, erm, happiness.

I've got this and this helps. But I dance around doing it. Think and think and think and think and prevaricate. I log on and check my emails and open up the dashboard, but then I'm off. The emails always include something from Brighteye, telling me the SOS forum has been updated, so off I go there. It's been a great help in fact to have Brighteye - what use it does I don't know, but being able to offer advice does give something of a sense of worth, however unjustified.

Then there's The Guardian to scoot through - usually in search of somewhere to chuck my tuppence in. Partly in promotion of this blog, to which I always leave a link (oh, such delusions I have of this blog.) Still, it's something I DO, and do (nearly) every day... As well as being the corner stone of my attempt on the world parenthesis record.

It's my spastic mind you see. I've been looking up Post Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome and there may be an element of that to my meandering, but, although I don't really have the evidence of long-term sobriety to back it up I believe it's always there.

See it off sherbet, belt it one booze, piss on it the pop....

Every day in every way I'm getting hetter and hetter.

But, at least I'm not drunk.

I may be tomorrow, but I'm not today. Tomorrow, I'm due to go to The C to see someone, dangerously early, around noon - I maaaaaay try and negotiate the whole pub/social interaction thing without drinking, but we shall see, that's tomorrow and today I'm not drunk.

If you were listening, thank you.

CD.

A man walks into a bar... And out again and into a car!

Mrs Cardiff Drunk and I went out yesterday. Off in the car to West Wales to see a friend of hers - beyond Swansea! There be dragons.

We did a lovely walk around Careg Cennen. If you ever find yourself in the farlands, yes, even beyond Swansea, then do go and have a look, it's a real spectacular and in yesterday's sunny mistiness looked straight out of a fairy tale as the sun started to set behind it.

I worry. That's my job. And I am not a very sociable fellow (although I can't say that I like my own company either, although I hope this will improve). So, I worried about travelling, I worried about the country lanes freezing, I worried about being in company, I worried about going to the pub for a meal, I worried about the dragons.

And, guess what?

Nothing went wrong. Nothing happened. No dragons fell from the sky, no-one acted the loon and disturbed my hair-trigger equilibrium. A splendid time was had by all.

And, I didn't drink. I didn't make a big deal of it, just decided I wasn't going to drink and said I'd do the driving. I'm greatly assisted in this traditional aid to sobriety by my worrying - I'm an awful passenger and fuss awfully over Mrs CD when she drives.

I must admit it was tough to stay sober in company, but that means today is the fifth day since I had a drink.

And, was it so hard? No, not so bad. A little physical discomfort but nothing I couldn't handle and with my faithful friend Trazodone guaranteeing sleepy-bye-bye time once I got home.

I like driving. I like anything that can completely fill my brain and stop it wandering and with The White Album to speed us on our way it was all rather jolly.

Toodle pip.

Cardiff Drunk.

Keep taking the tablets... Or stop taking the tablets

Are you drunk yet? Come on, it's New Year's Eve whatsamatterwithyou?


I'm not and that's a worthy cause for celebration, so have one on me. I Made it through work again and into the danger period of not being in somewhere where drink is absolutely forbidden, but, I'm not imbibing today.


My rule, after going a week without, and thinking I was a big and clever Cardiff Drunk, was not to allow drink to affect my work. It was deliberately lax cos I have a history of breaking such rules, but I've been breaking this one too. Arse!


If I'd stuck to my strict rule I'd be 'allowed' to drink on Thursday night and Saturday night, but I've done more than that. Anyway. I'm not drinking today and may even be heading towards a period of more sustained sobriety - although I am following that one-day-at-a-time route at the moment.

So, tomorrow is another day... Another year even...

Mrs Cardiff Drunk has been helping me get back on top of Mr Eczema; mercifully she quite enjoys smearing me in unguents. But, she is annoyed that it has to be done and that it is almost certainly the result of the TABLETS I TAKE TO MAKE ME FEEL HAPPY.

I see the point, of course. The skin revolt is starting to get me down and for me getting down is not a good thing at all, oh no, it often calls for medication of the liquid time.

And, my dose is about to increase to 200mg-a-day. I love the sleep though, and, if I'm honest there's an attraction in the feeling of doped-out sleepiness Trazodone brings on. However, I think, if once I've upped the dose things start to get worse on the epidermis front I'm going to have to ditch them.

Hey ho. I, like all good sad people, have looked up Trazodone on the web in search of exciting side affects. My all time favourite side effect came with some sleeping tablets I was prescribed: "You may begin to believe things which are not true."

Super.

Trazadone however is relatively benign I think and unusually for an antidepressant can be ceased without withdrawal symptoms.

I dear reader am now a Campral user. Six of the little beauties are due down my gaping beer funnel each day and I've just taken the first two.

So it's on with the Campral and maybe off with the Trazodone. Brilliantly, I see from a quick weblook that Campral includes anxiety and insomnia among its possible side effects.

Super.

I don't know. I'd really like to be off all of this stuff but it's almost a habit now - I've been taking antidepressants and other head meds for over 10 years now.

In my heart of hearts I know that exercise, good food, some diverting interests and a lotery win would be a lot more effective than all the medication in the Medditerranean.

Happy new year to you none the less, here's to a good 2009 for us all, more peace, less war, more kindness less hate, more love... all the usual sort of stuff.

Cheers,

CD.

Just said no, just said no...

I don't say no. Not usually. This is not only a function of my drunkenness : "Want another?" etc, etc, etc... But also of a desperation to be wanted and loved - yes, yes, yes I say. Often to my own detriment and just for acceptance.

However, that's a diversion for another day. Today I said no to Diazepam, which really surprised me.

I went to see the doctor today, and was delighted to see the same GP as my last appointment. That's the first time that's happened at this practice and it felt nice to have a bit of continuity - I might even go as far as asking to see him again next time.

He was very good about everything. Asking how I was going, how work was suiting me, what my drinking was like and so on. He advised I try AA and used the dread word alcoholic about me.

I'm still denying this, but the denial is weakening - knowing that even while I am successfully making it through a few days without the booze as soon as I do surrender to the bender (thanks for that Pop Will Eat Itself) it really is a surrender and it really is a bender.

So, the prescriptions have come thick and fast again. The dose of Trazodone has gone up and I'm on Acamprosate, or Campral again, or at least I will be once I get to the chemists. I've had all my skin treatments renewed, in the nick of time as it happens, the tubes and tubs were bare and sad to relate but a visible skin condition is not the best medicine for happiness, oh no. Thiamine and multivitamins too have been replenished - I'd stopped taking them over Christmas but I must start rattling again.

Campral is supposed to reduce cravings for alcohol and also to repair brain damage caused by long-term alcohol abuse, which is a good trick if you can manage it I guess. I've taken it before and... Well, I can't honestly say what effect it had; I relapsed in the end after all, but I shall imagine it is doing some good and in the imagining there shall be some good. Or so it is hoped.

I feel very much better today. I charged onto Brighteye yesterday, posting in the SOS forum and got the usual good advice. (Who wants to hear good advice though).

Really, the gist is, come on you've got a problem and you continue to kid yourself about it. You really need a good long period of sobriety before you even think about drinking again.

Mrs Cardiff Drunk is home which is great news for me. I really am a child. If there is no-one telling what to do and what not to do then I do, well, very little apart from, wake...drink...sleep...wake...drink...sleep.

That's something that needs addressing. There's a gap to be filled which hopefully will become easier with time. All those good ideas, that correspondence course, those books I want to read, that music I'd love to write. Well... well, I've said it all before haven't I, but, got to keep trying.

Gosh, that's a long old post and there's things not to be done. Prevarication doesn't just prevaricate itself you know!

If you spent it, thank you for your time.

CD.

You do it to yourself you do - and that's what makes it worse

I managed Christmas. I went home and stayed sober and then it all went wrong.

The crashes as I describe them though are entirely self-inflicted.

Going home is tough. I have a strange relationship with my parents which alternates between completely dependent love, horrible guilt at what I've put them through and what they've done for me only to see me piss it all away, and anger at the way they made me.

When I first went into counselling for depression and alcohol problems my mother thought I was getting 'tips about how not to drink', in fact I was moaning about my her - the over-protectiveness, the failure to launch (to borrow the title of a terrible rom-com), the failure to equip me for any independent life.

Going home then is always uncomfortable for me.

But, I enjoyed myself and their company and that of my brother and his girlfriend and remained quite happily sober. I can stay sober for other people but never for myself.

I lied too in order to manufacture an opportunity to drink. I told them I was due to work on Saturday; in fact I wasn't, although that was only confirmed on Christmas Eve. So off I ran on Boxing Day and I ended up where I always end up - in the pub, all day. My mother and father don't know I've been drinking again, they still think I'm a successfully treated teetotaller - more lies, more deception.

The same on Saturday. Back straight into the old routine. Waking late, dressing and heading straight for the first drink of the day. I stopped eating properly too - burgers and left overs not properly cooked. Just waking up wishing I hadn't and wanting to kill the day and get back to sleep as quickly as possible.

I thought suicidal thoughts for the first time for a while. What an idiot I am. I also felt terrible inadequacy about my ability to do my new job and just wanted to throw it all in.

I am coming closer and closer to the realisation that I am an alcoholic, I just can't do sensible drinking, can't do moderation, as soon as I have any freedom I go mad.

I think I know this, but I dread sobriety so much. It's slightly positive that I got no joy from my drinking binge; I didn't enjoy it it just relieved the awful boredom for a few hours and gave me some semblance of confidence, but there was little laughter, no high spirits, just awful necessity.

I've stopped today and as I have to work this evening should remain stopped, but I'll feel awful, I'll suffer withdrawal symptoms and I'll feel the same tomorrow and Wednesday, which is New Year's Eve, God help me.

Mrs Cardiff Drunk returns this evening which will be a great help.

I think I have to try and go for this. I think I have to stop and stay stopped for a good long time.

I'm due at the doctor's tomorrow and if he's received the letter from the Community Addiction Unit then I should be given Campral and have the Trazodone dose increased. I might ask if I can try to go on Diazepam again, to detox myself again - but I can't imagine that will go down well. I think the most important thing is to try and be honest.

I hope you all had fine festivities.

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, 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.

What happened on Friday.

Oh, lovely Friday, my little beauty. Friday went really well.

Friday, my seventh day without alcohol - by my experience of professionally administered detoxes this is well in the 'alcohol is all out of your system' territory. I can laugh at breathalyzers and breeze through blood tests.

Again, I was up. A shower, a cup of tea for Mrs Cardiff Drunk. A proper breakfast (does a bowl of muesli and an apple count as that?) and took all my supplements; whether they're actually doing me any good who knows, but taking them makes me feel better. Fine band Placebo - up to a point.

Then, out the door and into the horrid, horrid world of the main shopping drag. (After Thursday being my first Diazepam-free day, I'm sorry to say I popped two to set me on my way.)

And, I did fine. I started early enough that the crowds weren't too horrendous and managed to get of seasonal shopping done. I even phoned my mum and dad to tell them what I'd be up to in this season of seasonal.

Mind you, the whole thing did exhaust me. Physically more than mentally to be honest. In my latest - what is it - 10 months of abusive boozing, my daily exercise has consisted of little more than walking to the supermarket or the pub. By the time I'd schlepped round Cardiff's shops my legs were killing me.

I had a bit of a minor panic when I got back. I don't know why, that's just part of the problem I guess. But managed to keep going, managed to sort all my laundry out before sitting at the computer, which always signals a certain amount of purposeless time wasting.

Stupidly, I took my Trazodone even earlier than usual because I was due in work Saturday at 9am and was terrified that I'd be suffering from a pill hangover. Mrs Cardiff Drunk and I had intended to watch the Dylan Thomas film - the Edge of Love - but I never made it to the end.

Dylan Thomas probably has a fair claim to being the world's most famous Welshman. Who else is there? Maybe Richard Burton and probably in these days of ubiquitous globalised super premier league bobbins Ryan Giggs is certainly up there. The rugby stars will be known round the world too, but the number of countries that play football dwarfs the number or rugby union nations, so Ryan it is, Craig Bellamy too I suppose, and Aaron Ramsey at Arsenal and so on.

I couldn't keep up with the film too well. It was all well and good and enjoyable up to a point, but, felt slow moving. I can watch a film when I'm drunk and get right into it, when I'm sober (and I know I'm going to have to learn this discipline - thank you for the meditation tips anonymous commenter, I will certainly start to look at that, and maybe that will help my concentration) my mind races too much and I need to read, or write, or play the guitar as well.

Dylan Thomas had a funny relationship with Wales I think. He wanted to leave, but, he wanted to come back too, but you never lose your heraith. I even get it and I wasn't even born in Wales - so it may be psychosomatic heraith; is that allowed? I'll ask the next Bard I see - possibly on Bardsey.

I've got an uncle Dylan, and have always pronounced it as my Welsh-speaking mother and family have, which is Dullan. So, I've always said Dullan Thomas and told people who say Dillan that they're wrong. Well, apparently not, according to the film (and my mother's told me he may well have anglicised his name of his own accord). Strangely the only person in the film who pronounced it in what I've been blithely considering the 'correct' way was Sienna Miller's Irish Caitlin rather than his Welsh-speaking Swansea sweetheart Vera Phillips. And even Caitlin used Dullan only rarely, so may have been using it as a put down.

Mmmm. And, so what. If anyone knows the reason for the pronunciation I'd love to know. Incidentally, it's a fine way to annoy fans of Robert Zimmerman fans by insisting on calling him Bob Dullan - 'because that's the correct pronunciation'. I'm sure Sideshow Bob himself would find it most amusing.

Lordy me, what a long post.

Yeah. Friday was ok thank you. I hope your's was too.

Today though, it's Saturday. And Saturday may be the day of drink. It hasn't be yet, but it may well be. We shall see and report back tomorrow. Do not go gentle into that food shite - as I advise customers outside MacDonald's.

Thirstday.

Thursday was a real mixed bag - if Woolies weren't packed with bargain vultures you might have picked up my Thursday in the pick and mix.

Actually, there were probably more negatives than positives. I'm getting into a routine, which is a positive. I wake up and I get up and make Mrs Cardiff Drunk a cup of tea.

I was due to start my volunteering with Journeys: Recovery from Depression at 11am, but had forgotten that we had the plumbers come around to look at our turbulent priest of a toilet. He arrived, a bit late, but nothing major, took a good long look and had to phone a colleague, who came round, and took another good long look - conference, conflab and the suchlike. Big decision - we can't fix it, it's been put in by cowboys and you need a new one - but here's a little routine with a screwdriver to stop water pouring through all the time. Can we have £90 please.

Hey ho.

By then, it was too late to get to Journeys, so I phoned in plumbed. Disappointing, but there you go. I'm going to email them a couple of ideas for their newsletter today.

That's what I say anyway. I've identified a continuing problem I have; you might want to call it a symptom of depression, you might want to call it stupidity, you might want to call it laziness. I know which I prefer and it's closer to doors two and three, but I'm learning, starting again, picture me as a toddler or a teenager, man, I've got a lot of growing up to do.

Mrs Cardiff Drunk is a great one for to-do-lists. She says they help her keep organised and give her a sense of achievement when she crosses off jobs. I love 'em too. That is I love making 'em. And, I seem to have the idea that once I've thought of something, and then, even more concretely written it down, then it's in the bag and done. Can you spot the vital missing part of the process? Do email if you can.

It's kind of like a problem that the Left seems to have. Once something has been noted and satirised they seem to believe it's gone. The best example in my view is Oliver Stone's Wall Street. You'd often hear commentators referring to the old 'Greed is good' culture of Wall Street and the City of London, as if, in making a movie about the attitude it had been sought out, nailed and filed away in the THINGS WE DON'T DO ANY MORE file.

Recent events would suggest that a satire really isn't quite enough.

Still, I managed to do a little shopping and I managed to do a bit of writing. My Trazadone is really knocking me out at the moment, so I really want to try and change my routine a bit. Once I've taken it the evening's pretty much gone - I can't even read. And, I want to read. It says in all these how to write books (and it's pretty much received wisdom) that it's good for would be writers to read a lot.

Perhaps I'll put that on a list. Along with not wasting so much time on Comment is Free.

And that, my li'l childer, was Thursday. I called it Thirstday because I was still getting the cravings, and that's how we used to refer to the week at one of my old jobs: Mournday, Twosday, Woesday, Thirstday, Freeday. Weren't we just adorable?

Cheers, hope yer well and happy and healthy and wealthy and wise and all that jazz.

Goods and bads.

I really meant to write something yesterday evening but by the time I'd got home from work, had some dinner and taken my pill I was off to the land of nod.

I got myself hyper yesterday by drinking too much coffee. Stupid Cardiff Drunk, bad Cardiff Drunk. It doesn't inspire any positive activity though, just adds to the racing of my thoughts and leaves me clicking round t'web looking for places where I can find some sort of interactivity.

That's good to an extent. I go the Brighteye forum and leave long-winded bits of advice for other drinkers. Sadly, I also end up at the Guardian's website, leaving comments. That should be fine, but, you leave a comment in order to get a reaction, so you hang around and click across the site leaving your worthless four pen'orth but you end up constantly checking back to see who's called you a worthless dink and wondering how you can find a way to call them a worthless dink too - but, like in a cleverer way.

Some days I think the internet is just a bad thing. The more we are able to talk to each other, the more we insult, belittle and argue - all anonymous of course.

I did make it to my volunteering meeting though, with Journeys, a charity for sufferers of depression in Wales - whose offices happen to be a matter of a few hundred yards from my house. They only have a staff of four and they all seem lovely people. There is a part of me that still believes depression is a quite natural reaction to this mad old world of ours (it's a view I think I first came across through a Marxist soul band called The Make Up, but don't quote me on that), and for people who are gentle and kind and thoughtful this world, which is so often cruel, grasping and stupid, depression is a given.

Today, I am due to go into their offices again to start my volunteering. We agreed that a very gentle start is the best way - I'm going to do two hours a week. But I hope it will be good for me and even for my employment prospects. They have a newsletter they need help with and were quite chuffed that I had journalistic experience.

Then, on to work. Training still - it's training for ten weeks.

I have to be careful what I say about this. One of the first items on the agenda was that we must not bring the company into disrepute and our trainer told us about a girl who moaned about working for them on Facebook - she and several others who had contributed to her page were booted out.

I haven't named the company I'm working for (and there are many call centres in South Wales; it's the new mining), and, because I'm keen not to further damage any chances of future work by having employers google my name to find - oh, he's a verbose, depressed alcoholic - I'm doing the best I can to remain anonymous. I'm also hugely grateful that they've given me a job after two years on the scrapheap, so, to be honest I'm not inclined to be critical of them.

Yesterday scared the living McCartneys out of me. We were sent up to the call centre itself and allowed to listen in to calls. The business they're in is quite complex and watching the girl I was assigned to listen to flicking through screen after screen to find the information she needed at enormous speed was both awe and fear inspiring.

I did have a touch of the I can't ever do this. But, I must remember that I have had a demanding job before and picked that up as I went along. It's also convinced me I'm really going to have to work at the training - I mentioned that my memory made school exams a doddle for me and kind of set in stone a thought that I really don't have to try. I am going to have to try and try very hard.

On my way back from work something extraordinary happened. Well, not quite, but, for the first time in as long as I can remember I felt like a normal human being again - a member of the working, not shut in all day quivering with fear until it's time to drink, walking, talking, living human race.

Exercise is known to be good for depression, so I'm sure that the brisk 20 minutes to and from work are doing me a bit of good as well, as is the necessity to appear relatively smart and clean - something I'd really let go on - as many drinkers no doubt do.

I made it through yesterday with four Diazepam and I'm not sure they were needed to deal with what you would call alcohol withdrawal symptoms, but, simply anxiety and (and this is bad) I love anything that alters my consciousness. I'm going to have to stop that - although there are only about eight tablets left now.

In terms of my drinking I'm still in a dangerous place. I'm a very long way from coming to a decision that I will never drink again - it's all I know, and although I'm doing my best to fill my days and find ways to be useful and productive I know I'll drink again. What I have to hope is that I'll have made enough changes in my life for drink to be the social lubricant it is for so many other people. I'm probably being stupid, I'm probably in denial, but I hit my first goal - to be able to work and I'm on my way to the next, which is to go a week without a drink.

We shall see, and be assured, you'll be the first to know.

Cheers all.

The Cardiff Drunk.

But...

But the last time I had a drink was still Friday.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And last night... A tale of three drugs.

And so the cut down continues.

Last night I didn't start drinking until around 8.15pm. By then, the cravings were strong, but nothing like what I went through on day one, when I really feared I was about to have a seizure and was suffering chest pains.

Last night's score board was another step forward on the road to NO DRINK. Still a little disappointing however. I took two Diazepam at lunchtime, which meant by the time my girlfriend got home I was too woozy to do anything much. I headed to the shop for my cans, after I'd had a couple of cups of tea first - totally tea, you see. She asked me to get some frozen peas but all I could see was the beer - the vegetables went completely out of my head, there was to be no peas in our time.

I helped to finish off the dinner and absolutely necked my first can. I was also irritable and impatient with Mrs Cardiff Drunk; just didn't want to listen to her news from what had been quite an exciting day at work for her. So, I took my Trazodone at 8.30pm and, maybe rather foolishly, chucked another Diazepam in for good measure.

Mrs Cardiff Drunk went to play some online puzzle games and I stayed watching the TV.

By 10, I was floating on the drugs and, to be honest, having difficulty standing. But, I still managed it, and I still opened the third can - the physical craving is still strong. But, I didn't finish it, probably made it half way down. I just about made it upstairs, just about struggled out of my clothes, forced myself to clean my teeth and literally fell into bed.

Then sleep.

This morning was better again. And, I'm going for it today - the aim is my first drink free day since Gary McAllister knows when (as I'm not really sure I believe in god, I've decided to try and leave him or her out of my language as far as possible).

I was up by 9am. Had a proper wash. Had breakfast: and as I'm trying to be healthy as far as possible it was muesli with my super seeds - ground flax, sunflower and pumpkin seeds. A glass of grapefruit juice (I'm supposed to be laying off citrus fruits because they're bad for eczema, so I need to get some apple or pear juice today) to wash down - deep breath - one prescribed multivitamin, one prescribed thiamine, one vitamin b complex, one omega three oil with evening primrose capsule, one magnesium and calcium chelated tablet (no, I haven't got the foggiest what chelated means). Then I chewed on two high strength vitamin C tablets - I read about a study in Patrick Holford's Optimum Nutrition for the Mind, in which alcoholics given very high doses of vitamin C did much better than those who simply detoxed.

I also took a Diazepam.

Was that bad? I'm already going against the doctor's advice of one at lunch time and one later if I need it to stave off the cravings and delay the start of my drinking a little further.

My rationale is that I'm still waking with a slight tremor in my hands and craving drink by lunchtime and I want today to be, if not the first day of the rest of my life - more of that in the next post - then the start of a period alcohol free. Whether that be a few days or weeks or months or even the rest of my life, time will tell.

We're off out, me and Mrs Cardiff Drunk. Shopping to be done, food and Christmas shopping has to start sometime I suppose. I hate crowds, they make me panic, so, the Diazepam should help me through without that reaching the level when I think about turning to my answer-to-all-life's-problems.

Wish me luck, it's a jungle out there.

If you spent it, thank you for your time. I hope to write more later today.