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

Thank-you BBC Leicester

28/4/2016

I really enjoyed talking to Jonathan this morning and hope the conversation inspired some listeners to quit drinking as well.
My mother was from Leicester so I spent many a happy childhood Christmas playing on the railway lines and in the canal (all the things you are no longer allowed to do). What a great place.
Here is the transcript courtesy of the BBC if you want to hear the whole 18 or so minutes. http://bbc.in/1SSK5Sg

Beeb Beeb...

27/4/2016

For anyone living in the Leicester area, I will be on Jonathan's show tomorrow at about 10.30 as part of a feature he is doing on drinking. My Mum was from Leicester and her house backed onto the London-Midland railway line (now gone) and would have overlooked the football stadium had it existed back then. Instead it was a gasworks and my Grandma remembered standing in the garden putting the washing out, and watching a German bomber circling trying to blow it to bits. Luckily it missed or I wouldn't be here to write this! Another lasting memory of Leicester was visiting the museum and seeing Daniel Lambert's trousers - he was the World's fattest man at the time. I expect these days they would be XXXXL and standard issue in JD Sports and other similar establishments.

NEVER GROW UP!

26/4/2016

It's my birthday this weekend (note I claim the whole weekend). I will be 59 so I thought I would spend the day today on the swings at the local park - great fun! Come to think of it, I used to do this sort of thing when I was drunk but I would end up hurting myself.

A Crossword to try

26/4/2016

A chilly inspiration.

25/4/2016

My friend Rob Smith was diagnosed with cancer two years ago (now cured) and recently lost some close family and friends to that disease. Not to be downhearted he decided to raise money for cancer charities by trekking to both poles! You can find about more at trek2poles and Rob Smith.

I am 'starring' in a charity event in The City of London next week, a comedy musical based on the London Insurance Market. In return for a free ticket (and a donation), Rob agreed to take one of our adverts the North Pole with him. Here he is this morning showing our advert whilst sitting at the North Pole!

Rob is an inspiration and I may well attempt a major challenge for my 60th year - I will wait and see if Rob gets back in one piece first! I hear the Polar Bears are rather nasty this time of year.

There is a free story about the London Insurance Market and booze you can download from my website www.idontdrink.net it's called in the drink!

When there is no escape!

25/4/2016

Not the sort of blog you might be expecting from the title.

I am a Freemason, an organisation I joined many years ago for companionship and because as one of the World’s leading charities, I can be confident that every penny raised actually goes to good causes as opposed to being spent on ridiculously large six figure salaries for senior management.

Every year I attend four dinners which are very pleasant formal affairs, conducted to a great extent according to a formula devised over many hundreds of years. It would therefore be very bad form to exit from one of these dinners before the official close and the final toast.

At the last dinner I attended I was sitting next to two gentlemen who were drinking quit heavily, and both of whom had obviously been partaking of alcoholic refreshment before the dinner itself. As the evening drew on one of them in particular was becoming boisterous and trying to involve me in silly banter and tomfoolery which I could see was annoying the more senior and official brethren around the table. In past years it would have probably been me instigating this drunken behaviour oblivious to the frustration it was causing, and I would similarly have been making a fool of myself.

On this occasion I had to sit and suffer as a sober onlooker, and be conscious of the fact I was being labelled as one of the ‘drunken idiots’ by any of those at the dinner table who weren’t otherwise aware of my sober status. In a pub with your drunken mates and when it all gets a bit over the top you can simply leave, at a formal dinner you have no such luxury.

Now I know how my wife must have felt every time we went anywhere for dinner (I was always drunk), and my staff must have felt when we were entertaining clients, and they had to watch their boss acting like a complete arsehole with nothing they dare do about it. Sometimes I look back on those days with deep sense of embarrassment – at the time I thought I was king pin!

The bus ride from hell...

20/4/2016

Not this dear little bus I hasten to add, but the one I mentioned in my last blog about getting gout again.
A number of people liked my description of the bus journey from hell that brought my gout back, so here is a pdf to download of a bus ride story from my book 'The 7.52 to London Bridge'. This story is set in my early childhood and doesn't involve either alcoholic drink or gout but hopefully you will enjoy it nonetheless.

the_incredible_journey.pdf
File Size:	248 kb
File Type:	pdf

A painful and ugly reminder!!!

19/4/2016

One of the main drivers for me quitting alcohol (my epiphany) was having gout. Since I quit just over three years ago I have never had gout again, until this week! Yes, it was back!!
The cause this time was massive dehydration due to a nightmare journey home from the City where we were thrown off the train due to emergency works, and then driven to our destination station by replacement bus. The drive was through narrow twisting back streets not normally used to seeing a bus, and the driver was a maniac. I can only liken the journey to a ride on a fairground ‘waltzer’ although this one lasted nearly two hours. I have never felt so sick in my life. I sat in my seat sweating heavily – the sweat was running down my face, I was desperate for a drink of water and I was in danger of throwing up any second. It was so bad I didn’t have the strength or even the will to say anything to the driver – I just wanted to roll up and die.
That was last Friday and this weekend my foot started to play up. By Sunday night I was in constant pain with the occasional bout of agony if anything touched my foot, and Monday I spent laying on the sofa feeling sorry for myself and like a depressed and useless old man. It was just like I used to feel so often when I had been drinking too much. This morning I managed to get an appointment to see my GP and he gave me some gout tablets (my old stock had been thrown away as being out of date and assumed no longer needed) and by lunchtime today I was back to my new normal. I even cycled to swimming, completed a kilometre swim and then cycled home the long route along the seashore. I now feel fantastic again.
It was a very scaring reminder of what I used to be like – all the time. So if anyone ever asks me would I ever drink again (and they often do ask that), I know for sure what my answer would be. Never!
You can find out much more about why I quit drinking on my workshop videos at www.idontdrink.net

But my wife drinks!

13/4/2016

It is interesting how many people ask me how I manage to cope not drinking when my wife still drinks and how surprised they are when they learn it doesn’t bother me in the least. I suppose I am lucky in that she only drinks rarely, although less lucky financially that she only drinks champagne. Well the fact she drinks truly doesn’t bother me and I can honestly say I am never tempted - the thought to join her in having a drink never enters my head. Instead, I often smell her drink just to excite my taste-buds which I find gives me just as much of a high as actually drinking the wine would.

If she was a raving alcoholic however, it would be a different matter. I don’t think for a moment I could cope with living with someone like I used to be. Having to put up with their talking rubbish, their falling about, their falling asleep (even at the dinner table) and their general being a complete rubbish and useless person to be with. How on Earth my wife tolerated me I really don’t know.

If you haven’t reached the point already, you WILL get to the stage where being around others who drink doesn’t bother you at all, and you WILL find that being sober, you can have just as much if not more fun at parties and gatherings despite drink sloshing around as if there was no tomorrow. What you will also find however, is that at some stage in the evening the drinkers will become boring, painful to be around, and you will start to crave sensible sober company. You will look at others, make a comparison with how you yourself used to be, and wonder why you wasted so much time ‘believing’ you were having an incredible time.

But on the point of that high I mentioned in the first paragraph, I am working on a new book with a behaviourist friend of mine which will explore reactions like that in more depth. He has already classed me as a mis-behaviourist! I will post more on this fascinating subject at www.idontdrink.net as things progress.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

10/4/2016

Andrew Lloyd Webber was interviewed on BBC radio this afternoon. I like and admire his work so it was very interesting. At the end Michael Ball said how well Andrew looked and Andrew replied that he had been off the booze, ‘not a drop‘ for fifteen months.

In the past, the old me would have dismissed this as rubbish, assuming that someone who mixes in the showbiz world and parties with celebrities every day and night must surely be guzzling champagne by the gallon. How could someone like that possibly have fun and cope without that wonderful alcohol buzz I would have said to myself – after all what is the point of being famous if you can’t get drunk. It just shows what a blinkered attitude I had when in the thrall of alcohol and with that voice in my head dictating my life.
Now I know for a fact that you have far more fun being sober and are a much happier person into the bargain. Well done Andrew, no wonder Michael said you look so much better.