i don't drink - 'I don't drink!' How to quit alcohol - a drinker's tale

'I don't drink!' How to quit alcohol - a drinker's tale

Wellbeing talk - Well received.

23/3/2016

With three minutes until kick-off there were only five attendees at last nights wellbeing talk. Then, as the lights went down and I stood to the front, there was a mad rush at the door and we suddenly had a full house! It just shows how much stigma is attached to anything involving alcoholism. Hats off to the brave individuals who did turn up early and were prepared to share their thoughts and ideas with me.

There were some really good questions especially around finding the one area of focus to base your quitting upon, and some very good observations based upon my experiences.

My friend and colleague Dan Jones very kindly videoed me (not the audience I hasten to add) and I will be adding to my website a selection of relevant scenes from the event and a copy of the slides with a transcript later this week.

The annual Swimathon - it's all over!

20/3/2016

Excuse the frightening photos but after two hours in the water with a pair of tight goggles the face does get somewhat puffed!

The annual swimathon is over and thank you to all of you who sent well wishes. My target was to beat two hours for the 5 kilometre swim and I completed it in 1 hr 55 mins 46 seconds. Needless to say I was delighted if not shattered. My eldest daughter Alexandra also swam and she did half the distance this year but then she is swimming for two, expecting her first child later this year, so amazing she entered the event at all. Despite my concerns it was superbly well run by the manager and lifeguards at Aspire Felpham, so many thanks to them as well.

Later in the evening we searched through the previous medals we had won and I realised my first swimathon was 24 years ago, and I wasn't much faster then!

If you want to get fit, lose some weight and have great fun I recommend this event. Book now for next year and give yourself one huge incentive to achieve something memorable.

Habits!!

17/3/2016

In developing more material for the workshop which builds on my book ‘I Don’t Drink!’, David Bond and I have been discussing habits and have concluded that excessive drinking is actually a habit. As far as habits go something you love doing is called an addiction and something you hate doing is called a phobia. In our view alcoholism is not a disease, and the alcohol monster isn’t something that lurks mysteriously behind you waiting to swoop once you have quit, and consequently you have to spend the rest of your life avoiding going anywhere near the stuff as AA would have you believe. Instead, the habit that is drinking can be replaced by the habit of not drinking, which is what I have very effectively managed to do.

I thought about this (and the reason for the awful picture is there to support the fact), and when I was about sixteen years old, I would go to the local pub every night (I never did homework), drink three pints of Worthington E (a beer I loved the taste of), stagger home about ten o’ clock and go to bed. As I lay down in bed the room would start to spin, I would come out in a muck sweat, and lay there in misery for at least two hours. I would then summon the willpower to go and throw up in the toilet, after which I felt well enough to fall asleep and the spinning would slow down.

Why did I do this every single night? I have no idea. Was I escaping from being at home and having to do homework? Was I doing it because I could get away with it as my parents were always away on business and so I effectively lived alone? I certainly loved the taste of the beer although I couldn’t afford to buy it so had to steal the money from Mum’s hoard of cash. Was it because I had nothing else constructive to do and so it became a habit? I had no friends where I lived as my school was two hours away by train, I didn’t belong to any clubs or anything, so maybe I was seeking solace with the old guys who would play darts with me. Maybe I was just lonely. Whatever the reason, why did I always drink too much knowing that I would be sick later – I hated being sick.

I know I have been a heavy drinker ever since those days (until I quit in 2012) although I gave up on the Worthington E, and looking back on it I suppose drinking just became something I did because I had always done it. Just like I always smoked back then as well, but then everyone seemed to in the 1970’s.

I can certainly relate to the fact that if something else had been there to replace the drinking back then, that could have become a habit instead. That could have been sport, a more local school that offered evening activities and local friends, or even a girlfriend but that was only in my wildest dreams.

I can also see now that in quitting drinking and without really thinking about it I have adopted a host of new habits. These include always having a large glass of water with my meal, always writing at least 1000 words per day of whatever book I have on the go, swimming every day unless it is karate night, and going for a walk late in the evening regardless of the weather. I am not obsessive about any of these to the extent they have become addictions but they are certainly habits that get due consideration every day. I can also easily relate to my not drinking being a habit, and certainly not one I want to break.

I think I am going to learn a lot about myself in these workshops! Watch this space.

Sky at Night

13/3/2016

As many of you will already know, now I don't drink I have the time and patience to take my telescope into the garden and marvel at the night sky. Having subscribed to the Sky at Night magazine since it was first issued, not only was I pictured in last month's issue, I had a letter about that fact published in the April issue which came out today. Not quite fame but fun nevertheless.

The comedy of drunkenness

13/3/2016

The comedy of drunkenness
In my book ‘I Don’t Drink’ I talk about developing a ‘been there - done that’ philosophy as part of my methodology.
Rereading Charles Dickens masterpiece David Copperfield this afternoon I was reminded of how much I love that man’s writing and how he must have known drunkenness very well to write so well about it. I quote from the scene where Copperfield has been entertaining his young friends and opening copious bottles of wine before they are even needed. There are about to go off to a show at the local theatre:-

Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went down-stairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation in it.

Somehow Copperfield and pals end up at the theatre where Copperfield manages to upset the entire audience and his intended Agnes when he joins her in her box. He is told to go home.

I stepped at once out of the box-door into my bedroom where as he helped me undress, I urged Steerforth to bring the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine.

The next morning.

But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt, when I became conscious the next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate.

I love reminding myself of how much fun I had getting just as drunk as Copperfield, one such occasion is going to a very posh nightclub with my brother and his business colleagues many year ago, and when the cabaret started, finding myself sitting on a chair in the middle of the stage with no idea how I came to be there. Needless to say the cast were not as amused as I was to find me there and we were all thrown out forthwith.
In the early days of being forever sober, if I ever wished I was still drinking I would remind myself of times like that, also remember the similar to Copperfield regrets I had the following day and satisfy myself that having ‘been there and done that’, I really didn’t need a drink after all.

How time flies...

11/3/2016

Suddenly I realise it is only one week until the annual swimathon. As usual I will be doing 200 lengths and trying to break the two hour barrier which is a push doing breaststroke. This year I will doing it at the pool in Felpham together with my eldest daughter and her husband. Swimming is a fantastic sport for all round fitness and a great new activity to take up when you stop drinking. The pool won't be as smart as the one in the picture above but hopefully the lifeguards won't be as dippy as we have experienced at other pools in the past. One year they even allowed people into the lanes who weren't even doing the challenge. You can imagine how this led to violence!

Globetrotting

8/3/2016

Last week Vietnam, now Wilmslow! What a month this is turning out to be.
Interesting chat with the somewhat obese taxi driver to the station about how he spends most weekends in Poland getting drunk and leering at the women.
'I drink vodka morning, noon and night' he said, 'sometimes it takes me at least two days to dry out!'
At that stage, and it being a Tuesday lunchtime I realised he was probably still way over the limit to drive and I was mightily glad we had arrived safely at my destination.
I felt safer crossing the road and dodging the 6 million mopeds in Saigon!

The March Competition

5/3/2016

More Cheer from Vietnam

4/3/2016

Here I am with some wonderful smiling girls in the north of Vietnam last week. The bag I am holding is full of merchandise I was obliged to purchase and will never use, but then that is part of the fun of travelling.

I thought you might like to read some interesting things I noted regarding booze and Vietnam:-

Our guides told me: In Vietnam the girls don’t drink alcohol at all. The men drink beer and rice wine as often as possible. The government weren’t bothered until the amount of serious accidents on the roads and at work started to become a financial burden. In Vietnam men die aged between 50 – 60 mainly due to alcohol related issues. The women live on average another twenty years on top of this. They hardly ever remarry because by the time their husbands die they have had enough of men!

It is assumed as a man that I will drink alcohol. On arriving at every hotel (we stayed at ten) we were offered a drink. Naturally I always asked if the drink was non-alcoholic and mostly they were. But some had alcohol in them. ‘There is only a little alcohol in it’ they would say, and then look amazed when I refused the offer.

It is assumed that beer is different to alcohol. I told our guides I didn’t drink and they would keep assuming I would still drink beer. ‘But you must drink beer!’ they would say.

On a river cruise on the Mekong all the guests were offered a glass of special local rice wine to sample. There was no non-alcoholic alternative on offer as it was assumed everyone would drink it. Apparently it tasted like the horrible brown medicine I remember being made to take when I was a kid.

Thankfully they serve the most delicious fresh juices in Vietnam, especially the freshly squeezed lemon. They also make some stupendous cocktails, my favourite was a mixture of green apple, pineapple and lemongrass - delicious.

Finally, the Buddhist monks don’t drink, but they do have Bluetooth mobile phones and tear around on mopeds. If you see a monk in the morning and he is wearing shoes he is a fake monk – apparently fake monks are on the increase!

Trepidation at the meditation!

1/3/2016

I am just back from Vietnam where we visited a Buddhist Nunnery for a meditation session. Naturally I took the opportunity to wear the t-shirt! Instead of just sitting and meditating the nuns played an American based chanting track put together by some strange folk indeed. Apart from the very happy clappy chanting there were sirens going off in the background, what sounded like a fight going on and other weird sounds you thought they would have edited out. Needless to say I was too busy trying not to laugh to do any meditating but they were lovely ladies and they did let me help make a great vegetarian lunch we shared. I also found out I can't sit in the lotus position without experiencing severe pain. What chance is there for me!