 For anyone living near to Crawley, I will be at the library in March talking about life after alcohol. I will also stay afterwards for a while if anyone has anything specific they want to discuss with me. Who knows, it could be forty minutes that changes you entire life!
If your local library has a wellbeing month and you think they would like me to visit please do let me know.  Many of my friends will be very unhappy with this news! After 329 years of afternoons (and some mornings) spent happily inebriated, the boys and girls at Lloyd's of London will have to stay sober (or drink vodka so they can at least get away without smelling of drink.) This news would have horrified me when I was still drinking as this is also my market (I work in Lime Street), so I know many of my pals will be incensed.
Some time ago I did write to Inga Beale the CEO of Lloyd's to offer free seminars for staff knowing what an issue drink is in that corporation, but I was turned down. Perhaps now they might even call me! (Then I woke up). Great to see Laura at Club Soda gets a well deserved mention too.   Why does this strange face on a pebble appear in this month’s 'I Don’t Drink' newsletter?
February’s free newsletter is now available to all subscribers. Also this month, and strangely enough for a supposedly non-drinking based newsletter, I talk about wine from three very different perspectives. Subscribe now at www.idontdrink.net and get your free copy. .  Following my post yesterday that I had saved at least £15,000 since I quit alcohol, someone asked me how much booze this actually represented. Well, I was drinking at least a bottle and half of wine every day, so at a minimum this represents 2,250 bottles!
To give you an idea of what this looks like my wife took a photograph of me this afternoon in my local Waitrose store. I did a quick estimate of how many bottles were on sale, and bearing in mind the bottles on each shelf are three deep on average, the picture shows about 2,000 bottles. As well as counting them I had a look at some of the labels and many of these wines were my favourites, especially the South African Sauvignons and some of the Champagnes. Do I wish I had spent the last four years drinking my way through these shelves instead of having water, tea and lime and soda? No Way! The bottles might be nice to look at and admire, but I will keep my health, my sanity and my life thank you! I duly made my way to the Waitrose café for a latte courtesy of my MyWaitose card.  It is hardly believable if I think back to where I started, but I have now managed 1500 days without alcohol!
In my book ‘I Don’t Drink!’ I talk about logging achievements at various stages and how this can be really self-motivating. I mention in the book what I had achieved and how I felt at one week, two weeks, one month, 50 days, 100 days and 250 days, and so I thought I would do the same for 1500 days:
As you may gather from the above and from the posts I place on my website, I have found an inner contentment, almost comparable to a permanent meditative state or state of wellbeing. Having the time for others, the patience to listen and the energy of good health has given me a sense of peace and harmony in life I never imagined I would find. You can achieve the same as me and it starts by counting day one! If you take the approach I took and that I outline in my books it really is easy and painless. I can honestly state that I have never once regretted my decision to quit alcohol, or been tempted to have a drink since that first day, and that the benefits mounted up literally from day one. What I will say however, is that the decision has to be forever – nothing else works!  This week I visited the wonderful Hindu temple in London, firstly because it is there and secondly to find out more about the oldest of living religions. As well as a host of other good works, this particular group of Hindus (Swaminarayan) do a lot to help people with addictions and I have offered my own services in this regard.
One of the greatest joys I get in life, is hearing how the lives of readers of my books have been changed for the better as a result of what I have been able to pen. Long may that continue. God Bless. |
AuthorJulian Kirkman-Page Archives
February 2019
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