This isn’t for anyone else’s benefit, but is for my own undastardly (for once) purposes. It’s highly personal and not especially interesting, so, unless you have 10 minutes of your life you feel like sparing for no good reason, or you know me personally and want to sympathise/taunt me, then there’s not much here to interest ya.

I hope you’re not waiting for a punchline or anything ;) really, this is just something I have to say for my own benefit, sort of thing.

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Is it Monday today? Yes, good. Okay so I had a few beers 2 says ago. On Saturday night, no less!!
Hardly shocking you might think, let alone worth two whole exclamation marks of its very own, but I am looking at this sort of thing a little differently than I used to, and from how most people probably view the ritual of the Saturday Night Beer or indeed any booze, at any time.

I am an alcoholic. Okay that seems a bit of an exaggeration considering the very serious kinds of alcoholics that spring to mind after hearing that phrase, and I haven’t developed the shakes from not getting a drink every day yet (I had the shakes anyway :lol: ) but I have felt like a bloody alcoholic in almost every way for the last couple of years.
There are of course the `classic` signs to watch out for which I’ve displayed in `admirable` quantities:

Drinking every day for months and months on end – that would be 30-40 months consecutively now for me, practically;

Drinking on my own far more than with people,

Not even enjoying the sensation of being drunk, and certainly not getting the happy thrill - just a sense of ease with the world after too long a time sober.

Drinking to stop having to think about anything much (apart from how to get the next drink).

Hideous quantities consumed and weekly unit counts (when you can remember to note them down all the time) that reach triple figures with ease.

This doesn’t make me quite as bad as the guy from Leaving Las Vegas, but makes me a lot worse than most people because I could happily plough through a lot of the sauce each and every day, and I did.
And then it got a lot better, I arrived in Kochi and went out the first night, had a drunken yet rotten time (see here: http://versive.blog.co.uk/2008/03/17/needs-new-ttlte-3893218 ) and after the debacle that was that first night, I stopped, pretty much dead in my tracks. Maybe `rut` is a better word here though ;)

And that was it; I didn’t even feel like drinking. I went about a week without wanting a drink and being very happy writing all day instead.

I have tried this before of course – quitting - and on the first day I would usually be gently challenged by it, and be a noticeable but tolerable distance out of my comfort zone though pleased with myself. Maybe I’d feel the same even on the second day, too.
But three days in and simply thinking about a cold beer would completely change me – and I would go vast distances out of my way, would spend all the money I had available, and be utterly miserable, until, I had had something to drink.

Really, just thinking about it would make me happy and excited (I could literally feel the surge of warmth and happiness rise in my chest and up to my head and engulf me) and then that was it: I wanted to drop everything and go get some, and, usually, that’s what I did.
I flaked out from meeting people, avoided phone calls, even totally shut myself off for a day or two every now and then because all I wanted to do was get steaming, and not have to speak to anyone or have any responsibilities or any thoughts other than those that floated up through a haze of muzzy numbness: just having films to watch and cigarettes to smoke took care of everything, I didn’t need anything – or anyone - else.

In fact the only thing to be said for it is for when you are watching movies: you don’t have to think about picking anything out or being discriminating or choosy in any way, because no matter how shite a picture is when you are too pissed to focus on very much of the screen, `magically` it all becomes brilliant!! ;)

So having had 3 occasions now when I have drunk in the last 17 days means my ambition to cut it out like a snap of the fingers isn’t working out, you could say – but this is not, in truth, a suitable phrase.

It really is working out very well. Out of seventeen days I have only drunk three times – I am getting the urges to do so more often now but that’s to be expected, not least because I’m thinking and writing about it this very minute, but considering that I went from a full-on state of drinking stupidity to this, having a few beers on just 3/17ths of the days I’ve been here, I know that this is a huge improvement.

And I did have good reason to drink this Saturday as well as sheer desire, would you believe.
I’m not rationalising it, I am being totally truthful here.
Number one was of course that I wanted a drink, obviously. If that wasn’t the case none of this would matter.
Also worth bearing in mind though iare the body’s need for some sense of stability and the mind’s need for some sense of reward. A little drink every week or so to ease what remains of my organs and functioning systems from a state of near total insobriety to a safe – and low, for that - level of drinking is a good idea.
Few people can cut it straight out, and toning it all down rather than cutting it straight out is usually the best way to make it stick as a habit – this is endorsed by healthcare professionals, by the way ;) I’m not trying to sneak around the rules.

The other is that after being so good for a while and doing things that justify some kind of reward, it is only healthy and reinforcing to chuck a carrot to the donkey.
On this occasion (Saturday) I had just written up the post `Daily Haze and Film Geek` which was rather long, and took a little effort, and I was very pleased with it (even though it really needs editing for typos and one lost clause ;) ) so I genuinely had in mind not that I deserved a reward so much, but that giving myself one would make me feel better, if you follow me. I wanted the drink because I want a drin, default state, but giving myself that reward would, I suspected, make me more inclined to treat drink AS a reward rather than just another form of breathable air as I did before. Plus with treats in mind I am even more likely to work harder, so the theory goes.

I was playing amateur psychologist with myself, and also even more so in that I wanted to see just how I felt about drinking after giving it this sort of mediated break.

Come Saturday eveing time, I didn’t enjoy it much – but then I was both being overly greedy, and drinking the wrong stuff. That 8% beer they call Haywards 5000 is a killer, and I had three of those after sauntering into one of the proper licensed places on Marine Drive, then on to the nicest Chinese this side of the bridges for an overly expensive meal (delicious, mind you) and a regular 5% beer that I couldn’t bring myself to say no to because the staff and food are great, and my automatic binge-O-meter swung the needle firmly yet exasperatingly to the “Oooh yes please!” side of things when the manager asked. I think it was one of those under-the-counter places because my beer arrived, and stayed, wrapped in a hefty amount of tissue paper ;)

I never finished it. The last of the three strong beers made me feel a little bit sick, then the rickshaw ride over bumpy, potholed streets didn’t make it much better so finally, even after wolfing some Chinese food down, I couldn’t face the last 3rd of the weaker dram.

Overall it wasn’t very enjoyable at all because I had too much too quickly and I hardly felt even positive (just that predictable relief of self-made pressures and stresses that are oh-so indicative of the addict), so the next time I have a drink – hopefully not even in this country but wait until well over a week for me to get to Laos first – I will have only 2 slowly-absorbed beers, just like I did on the other two occasions since getting to Kochi.

I went to sleep more easily Saturday night, but any goodness in this respect was negated by the severe feelings of evil towards god, man and beast when waking as I had a stinking hangover yesterday that only abated after hideous quantities of paracetamol. I haven’t even had more than 4 paracetamol in the last 17 days, and those were only against illness not hangover symptoms! Drinking brings out the worst excesses of everything.

So that’s my confession, as it were, and as I said at the start this is for my benefit and not for entertainment purposes. I am just telling the truth about what happened and what I was thinking because I need to do that, semi-piblically even, in order to get along with my current plan.
I never made it to AA meetings (I was about to last year) but I can see just how they help, so this is nothing more than my version of that process.

If you have read this, then think of yourselves all as assistants in my therapy or something if you like :) It actually does help a lot, so, thank you.