The Glare of Life and Choosing to Dazzle

Day 313

Here’s a can of worms and I’ve opened the lid.

Addiction – is it a disease or a choice? There you go, worms spilling out everywhere.

As addicts, we feel such a weight and burden on our shoulders. Anything we are offered to lighten our load; we greedily but gratefully grab at with white-knuckled hands. Just as we do with our substances when we are active users.

It’s natural. Of course it is. We’ll even believe: gossip, rumours, hearsay, tittle-tattle, Jeremy Kyle’s guests, Cosmopolitan columns – even The Sun newspaper if it means we’ll sleep easier at night. Anything! We’ll take all that thanks.

Around a month into my recovery, I had my first lightbulb moment.

I attended a five-day addiction course called, Intuitive Thinking Skills. Highly recommended!

It was a frightening but fantastic start to my sober career. I’ve kept many of the tools in my brain to this day. But the thing that will always stick with me, is when the facilitator asked us, the newly clean and sober, “how many of you think addiction is a disease?”

Of course, all our hands shot up as if we’d been asked how many of us want to win the lottery. Then the next, but devastating question came. “How many of you could stand in front of a room full of cancer sufferers and tell them that you have to literally pour alcohol down your neck twenty-four hours a day because you have a disease?” Not one hand raised. Just a lot of guilty-looking and defeated faces.

In that one sentence, he’d taken away our warm and trusted comfort blanket. We had a something that made every terrible thing we had ever done in addiction, not our fault. We had a disease. But then suddenly, we didn’t!

One simple sentence took that away from us. It was our fault. Bollocks!

Can you imagine a woman’s relief when her doctor gives her the news that the lump in her breast isn’t the cancer that has been giving her sleepless nights with worry. Benign. Doctors can give this sort of news because all the tests have been done and sent back to them. It’s all there in black and white. This woman does not have breast cancer! It’s official! And relax. The same for other worrisome, anxiety-inducing illnesses that turn out to be OK.

Unfortunately, having things down in black and white can also reveal the bad news too.

A doctor cannot do that for the addict. They can give out pills for the depression, anxiety, cravings, restless legs, and all the other many underlying side-effects of addiction. But no real good or bad news. Nothing is down in black and white. We’re simply just – addicts! That’s it!

Take my last lapse over ten months ago. Yes, please take it! But seriously.

When people asked me how it happened, I would tell them that I was: low, depressed, anxious, haunted with guilt, etc. I was simply walking to the coffee shop one morning and the next thing I knew, I was in a pub with a glass of wine in front of me. It just happened. It happens!

But magical wizardry doesn’t just happen, ‘Harry Potter and the Infinitely Filling Glass of Wine.’

What happened was: I was walking to the coffee shop one morning, stopped, turned right, walked into a pub, ordered a glass of wine, drank it in minutes, then ordered many, many more. All day every day because I chose to. I could have chosen to go to the coffee shop, drink my coffee and chill for an hour before I started my day. Just as I did every other day with the same emotions: low, depressed, anxious, haunted with guilt, etc. But that day, I chose not to. I chose.

If I could have taken a pill, puffed on an inhaler or jabbed my leg with something that stopped me walking into pubs and getting royally slaughtered every time I have one of my dark, drinky thoughts, I certainly would have done that!

Would I?

There’s still that massive elephant in the room – choice. Would I opt to take away that powerful option when I feel weak, low, and pissed off? The option to fight? Take my diseased thoughts away with a legally prescribed wonder-drug? I’m not sure.

Not sure because I’ve trained my own mind to cope with everything and the kitchen sink when it’s thrown at me. That’s all me: me, me, me! My work, nobody else’s! Many, many days, weeks and months of excruciating, emotional and mental gymnastics on my part. All me!

Would I let a doctor steal my thunder with another, extortionately-priced and no doubt highly-addictive – drug? If the option was given to me today? Right now? Actually . . .

No.

I enjoy making choices in my mental gymnasium. I enjoy my biblical, internal fights. I’m tougher now, as opposed to the weak old days, Balls like Titanium. I wouldn’t, not now. I enjoy the fight. But for others? If it saved and improved the quality of their lives?

Yes of course! Anything that is good, is good! But not for me thanks. That’s my choice.

If addiction is a disease, a drug would have been discovered/invented by now to eradicate it off the face of the earth. Rather than countless blogs like this, trying to work addiction out and how to cope with it, you would simply see online statuses such as, ‘I drank too much, then my doctor prescribed (insert wonder-drug) and now I’m fine!’

‘I injected Heroin last night but the chemist gave me (insert wonder-drug) and I’m doing great!’ (insert smiley emoji). But obviously that is not the case. Thousands of books and blogs like mine exist. People are dying in their thousands every day. Lives and families are being destroyed. The drug dealers and the alcohol industry (the biggest drug dealer) are doing just fine and they always will. It is what it is.

But how do we stop doing what we shouldn’t do?

I’ve stopped. Many of my friends and mentors have stopped. Millions of people around the world have stopped. You, and the people you know may have stopped. It’s happening daily and will do forever. But how? None of us have had anti-addict medication.

Choice.

I chose to stop. Right now, I could choose to drink. I’m alone as I type this and nobody would know. But I don’t. My friends and mentors chose to stop. The millions around the world have chosen to stop. It’s what we do. We choose.

One of the strongest people and mentors I’ve ever met once said to me, “stick with the winners in life!” He meant stay with people who shine, who want to live and give back to the world. People who choose good over bad. Don’t waste time with avoidable negativity and people who try to bring us down every day because they can’t be bothered to put the work in themselves. I listened to him. It works. Learn from the best! And the wise.

So, addiction. Is it a disease or a choice?

It’s whatever you think it is.

All the above is only my opinion based on my own experience. Am I trying to convince you to think like me? No. Everybody is different. If you disagree with me, that’s fine. I’m not here to change your mind. I’m simply here, working things out for myself. But also, you won’t convince me to change my mind because . . . It’s my choice. That’s how it works.

Stay safe everyone xx

Self-programmed & Self-destructive

Day 306

Is addiction a disease or a choice?

That is a massive can of worms that squirm around the recovery world and stubbornly refuse to go back inside. It’s a minefield that addicts and professionals have been debating, often heated, since the first ever addict thought to themself, “I like doing this! I like it a lot! It’s all everyone else’s fault anyway, not mine! Fuck ’em!” That’s the subject of my next post. But until then . . .

Do we pre-programme our self-destruction as we grow up? When we embark on our addictive careers, do we simply pick and choose our own triggers and happily flick them as we darken our lives around us. Switching off our self, bit by bit. Lots of questions there and I realise that I’m digging quite a hole for myself because the answers, if they exist, aren’t readily springing to mind.

One of my earliest memories is wobbling on tiny feet up the hallway in my parents’ house as a very young child. I stopped dead in my tracks, craning my neck back to look up at the light switch. Way out of reach of chubby little fingers. But I remember wishing and hoping that one day soon, I’d be big enough to be able to turn the light on and off all by myself. Was that my first sense of optimism, wonder and awe? Was it already there or was I pre-programming it for the future?

Skip forward a couple of years.

I was pushing an electric plug, half in and half out of the wall socket; metal prongs still exposed. I was intent on touching them, aware it was very dangerous! I was happily conscious that I’d get a shock. I probably may have even known I could die. I couldn’t quite get my fingers inside to touch this live suicide device so off I trotted to find something thin and metal to get in there. Thankfully I must have been distracted because I didn’t return to it. But I remember not caring about the huge bolt of electricity that could have charred my skin and bones black. I gave no mind to being flung across the room, shocked into unconsciousness, or death. I really wanted to do it. Give it a try. I was around three or four years old. I didn’t seem to care. The strange thing is, I was a very happy kid with lots of friends and a good family. But I wanted to give pain or death a real go. Right out of nowhere. Was it already there or was I pre-programming my insanely self-destructive nature for the future?

In my early twenties, I caught the train from the north where I lived to go to see my drum teacher for my lessons. Local? Just around the corner? No. A little bit further; all the way down south to a bustling, professional rehearsal studio in Kings Cross, London. A good two hours on the train.

Terence Trent D’Arby. Remember him?

He was unknown(ish) at the time and rehearsing his hit album there as I had my lessons. Little did I know that hit songs were being worked out and rehearsed there by other bands – as I had my lessons. I met these people and watched them play. They watched me play. It didn’t seem like a big thing. I simply wanted my lessons with one of the UK’s top drummers. I didn’t care about all the exciting stuff going on around me. Nobody really knew who Terence Trent D’Arby was at the time (he was eventually huge in the 80’s) and the hits hadn’t been released yet. I just wanted to learn drums. I knew what I wanted and who with. I wanted to be as good as the best. So that’s what I did! Many trips and many lessons. Because that’s exactly what I wanted and I did it! I got good at drumming, damn good. Whatever it took to get better, I did it. Motivation, blinkered focus, dedication, and determination at such a young age. Right out of nowhere. Already there or was I pre-programming for the future?

Around the same time, I was happily (happily?) slicing my arm with a scalpel. Nothing deep or savage but something that would have shocked friends who would have seen it. Nobody did. It was always hidden. I was getting a bit low, possibly slightly depressed, mentally isolating myself and lost. Nothing major. I was merely at a low ebb. But rather than ask for help from friends and family, (I still had a lot of friends and doing well playing in bands) or go to the doctor to discuss medication or therapy, I simply decided to transfer all this unwanted mental pain onto my skin. I was placing something unseen onto a brand-new canvas. I could look at it, touch it and add to it as the waves of darkness washed over me. The cutting didn’t hurt as much my mind did. In fact, it didn’t hurt at all. I’d learned a sort of mind-over-matter from somewhere. I managed to put a pain buffer on the physical act, something I couldn’t achieve with my mental self-bullying. It worked. I found a newly discovered tool that (rightly or wrongly) worked. Unconventional coping tools, mind-over-matter, a dogged stubbornness against asking for help. Already there or pre-programming for the future?

In my early thirties and I wanted to become a fiction writer. From childhood I had always been a bookworm but hadn’t given a thought to writing. But right out of the blue I start writing. I wasn’t very good. But as with my drumming, I knew I would improve with practice. I practiced a lot. I wrote letters to a professional horror author who I had read and enjoyed. He replied with very kind and supportive advice. I sent him my first ever short story and he sent it back to me, splattered with constructive, editorial notes. This confirmed to me – the story was crap. I had a lot to learn. But I was good with, and actively encouraged constructive criticism. The author had given me the starting blocks to build with. Gradually I improved. After a year or so of rejections, my short stories began being accepted in magazines and published. Eventually I met and befriended the cream of the crop of British crime, sci-fi, horror and fantasy writers. The best of the best in their chosen fields. It was a wonderful family of motivation, friendship, and peer support. I felt accepted. Home. I had found my people. My writing continued to improve. I was making a name for myself as I became very active in the writing community. I was being regularly published. I even began and co-edited a brand-new magazine. My friendship and writing network grew. A promising writing career was slowly being born. My first novel was all planned. Everything was going fantastic! Then . . . I simply stopped. I allowed life to get in the way and the whole thing ground to a big nothing. In the Seventeen years that followed, I wrote one short story in a creative writing group. It was good but apart from the group, nobody saw it. Hard working, learning new skills, good with criticism, building a support network, encouraging peer support, positivity, highly motivated, promising career – all gone. Already there or pre-programming for the future?

Thirty-nine years old and my drinking career is well on its way to thirteen years of chaos and oblivion. The alcohol is increasing to toxic levels and my tolerance level is rising like a thermometer in the Sahara. Everything is a trigger. It’s already everything and everyone else’s fault. The pity-parties have migrated online thanks to the invention of Facebook. Most mornings before work are spent deleting spurious, worrying, and forgotten-about posts. But never worry, furious and frantic workmates have already taken screenshots to show me what an arse I had been the night before. Just so I’m reminded of what I’ve already forgotten. But I still do it all again. Every night. That’s the least of my worries.

The razor blades are out in force and the gentle slicing of old have turned to savage sweeps covering the full length of my inner-arm. Wrist to elbow. The early days of pain displacement are a romantic memory that my mind drunkenly retains because the pain is both physical, mental, and constant. The cutting is merely because I hate myself. But I pre-programmed myself for pain so I simply and drunkenly slice away. It’s just what I do. And it’s bad. I’m metaphorically putting the plug half in and out of the socket because my insane self-destruction is off the scale. Fear of death isn’t high on my list – if it’s even on it. As you know if you follow this blog, my constant prayer was that the next drink would kill me. I’d pre-programmed my own hell and damnation and the software was running nicely (nicely?). “But I wanted to give pain or death a real go.” Remember that? My pre-programming did, as it rapidly kicked in! “I was getting a bit low, possibly slightly depressed, isolating myself and lost. Nothing major. I was merely at a low ebb.” If the young me only knew what legacy it was leaving for the older me down the line. Old habits really do die hard. They never leave. “I couldn’t quite get my fingers inside to touch this live, suicide device . . .” I had become my own suicide device. If an accident with a drunken blade didn’t get me, the alcohol would . . . eventually. Alcoholism, the slowest suicide known to man and woman.

But I haven’t self-harmed or drunk alcohol for almost two years. I don’t hate myself quite so much as I did. I hate addiction and how weak and vulnerable it made me for so long. I have no plans to be that person again. How do I know it won’t happen again?

I don’t. It’s not a promise any of us can make. We are only human. But we can fight it day by day, minute by minute. Don’t forget all the good and positive pre-programming: unconventional coping tools, mind-over-matter, optimism, wonder and awe, motivation, blinkered focus, dedication, determination, hardworking, learning new skills, good with criticism, building a support network, encouraging peer-support, positivity, highly motivated, promising career.

All that is inside me too and that software is running nice and smoothly, so far.

I can never promise addiction won’t get me again. But I will fight it to the death – its death not mine. I’ve pre-programmed that now, for my future.

When I want something, I give it everything I’ve got. That has always been there. I just need to remember not to let life get in the way of my life again. Ever!

Stay safe all.
xxx

Fish in a Kettle

Day 300.

That’s a nice round number.

Another sixty-five days, and for the first time ever I will have reached a year sober.

Am I proud? Of course!

I’ve had a return ticket to Hell way too many times to get to this point. I’ve no intention of going back to ‘day one’ again. It’s hard! So hard. There are many people who I started out with in recovery that have achieved two sober years or more (I had two minor lapses). There are also people who are still struggling and cannot stop, just yet. There are people who have now sadly, passed away.

It’s simply the nature of the beast.

Am I happy in my sobriety? Well, that’s a different kettle of fish entirely.

I have many regrets about my past. It’s hard to pull away from them, but I must for my life to move on. But I’m much happier and healthier than I was and good things are now happening: I’ve met amazing people, I have a future, my career in substance misuse recovery work is becoming a reality, my son texted me to let me know he’s coming to see me in April for four days. Things are good right now.

My son wanting to see me again is the biggest indicator I’m doing ok. In the past, I’ve given my him no good reason to contact me or remain a part of his life. And thanks to my drinking, we are now 255 miles apart. But now, I have given him some very good reasons. He also knows I’m not lying any more, as I did in the bad old days. He’s seen it with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, not only from me, but from people who see me every day! This makes me very happy indeed.

Good things aside for a second. Something is making me a little sad.

I’m about to watch a person I care about take a long, painful swan-dive down the dark and soul-crushing, chaotic rabbit hole of addiction.

Watch? Surely there is something I can do?

Nope, not a thing. This person is going to go to hell and back, many, many times. They will come close to death on more than one occasion and it’s going to be an utter train wreck! There’s literally nothing I can do but watch.

Why? Who is this person?

It’s me.

Don’t panic (not that you were). Let me explain.

On August 5th 2005, I started a writing journal. Nothing major. I’d been a budding writer since the mid-nineties. But around 1999 my writing output was ranging from dire to nothing. I started the journal to kick-start my writing brain. It worked! It worked very well. A place to go where my mind could become a literary playground again. It unlocked and accessed the wordy parts that were struggling to squeeze down the synapses. It was fantastic.

I wrote in there daily and have kept it up ever since. Here is the very first, frightened, tentative, and un-edited entry:

05 August 2005

‘Today, now, this minute, I’m beginning to write again and I’m scared to death of it.

Well that was a start I suppose.

Now what do I do? Carry on I suppose. Talk about this and
that and hope this comes right finally. Because when it really comes down to it . . . my head is utterly fucked! There, I’ve admitted it. So what’s the problem and what the fuck can I do about it? For years now I’ve been so utterly obsessed with my future, that my future is becoming a void. I seem to be simply waiting to die. So, I say again; what is the problem?’

Let me stress that at this time I didn’t have an obvious addiction problem – yet! The usual pulls and pushes of life that everybody must deal with. Just stuff. I merely added to that list by wanting to pursue a writing career (which is a whole other can of worms. Ask any writer!). So, I carried on merrily downloading my thoughts, swilling them around and seeing where they would take me. It was going great. The entries became longer and I began writing fiction again.

Then – BAM! October 2005.

Something big happened to me. Huge.

For the sake of the confidentiality of others, we’ll call it – a catastrophic, life-changing event that I had to deal with. We’ll leave it at that.

Was this event the cause of my alcoholism?

No. If my answer would have been yes, it would be merely another excuse. I was the cause of my alcoholism. I cannot stress that enough. Nobody poured it down my neck – I did. I own all my downfall and cannot bring other people and events in as excuses. I am my own excuse.

After this news I suddenly had two paths to follow. Deal with it in a normal way like millions of others do. Or deal with it in the wrong way. I chose the latter, the quick fix that lasted thirteen years. Alcohol – lots of it!

So, I ran to my journal and the entries became dark and very detailed. It became my friend, confidante, and life-saver. It now details years of alcoholism: the excuses, self-pity, the ‘I’ll stop tomorrow’s,’ failures, anger, and the daily broken promises. Basically, if you’re a recovering addict about to write a book about addiction – you’ve just hit the holy grail. Big time!

It wasn’t long until the first reference to alcohol appeared and the promises of giving up, kicked in. It was still only 2005!

‘Over the last few months I’ve acquired a wonderful drinking habit that has spiralled out of control. Vodka and Redbull in hefty quantities and every single night; just to numb that shitty feeling in my head. Tonight is my first night off it (I’m trying to quit alcohol fully) and I feel . . . pretty good really. Ok the same crashing mess of feelings I was attempting to kill every night with alcohol, but really it’s virtually the same off it than plastered. I won’t have a head-full of rusting nails in the morning. So, here’s to my first night off the pop. About the only positive thing that has happened since all this.’

Sorry mate. It’s going to be the first of many failures and it’s only going to get much worse. You are right at the very beginning of this and it’s going to last until the big crash of 2017. There is absolutely nothing I can do. I can only read, observe, and take notes. Lots of notes. But you’ll be OK. Eventually.

I never stopped writing in my journal. It’s now 312 (single-spaced) pages long (167,176 words) and rising. More than the length of a book.

But do I dare write it? It’s painful and harrowing. Utterly heart-breaking. But a once-in-a-lifetime chance to observe exactly how addiction works in real time.

Yes, I dare. If it helps one person to come out the other side of addiction, it’ll be worth it. It’s too late anyway. I’m already writing it! I am now, my own research and my source is extremely reliable.

Because it’s me! I was there. Honest guvnor, I was.

Wish me luck and stay safe everyone x

Mind-vomit

Day 297

I have an odd brain. When I write, I love to get lost inside my head and have a wander. I get so far down the rabbit hole that I forget what I’ve written. I recently found this in a notebook; random mind-vomit from . . . well, god only knows. It’s unedited and presented here as is. Good luck.

An actual new (and less random) recovery post coming Saturday.

Take care all xx

* * *

The filthy darkness of addiction, is standing on the Event Horizon of a black hole, swallowing every portal of light from your soul as you watch your past, present and future sucked away. You push the nails into your own personal Jesus whilst instructing strangers to build your cross of torment.

You flood your blood with a poison of choice as it gushes through screaming flesh-tubes and feel it squeeze through every infected inch.

Recovery is opening massive, rusting doors, so flaked and swollen with decay and age that nobody ever dared to try – with keys you never knew existed. Each door a portal to a brand new world or universe. You become the god of all things inside, your overwhelming power – un-shackled thought. There are no rules in there because they are as yet, unwritten. Chaos is allowed, even encouraged. Lives, worlds and words are newly born and run free.

You can delete ancient memories as new ones are written. Inner cities, worlds and alternate universes can be torn down and re-built with flushed synapses that sizzle and pop. We flesh out the skeleton and animate it in living space. Planets, we spin with the flick of a finger within a universe waiting to be filled with wonder and hope.

Sophie’s World

Day 295

A brief interlude whilst I write my next recovery blog. Here’s a little book review. I’m no reviewer so don’t get over-excited (not that you were).

‘The history of philosophy that thinks it’s a novel.’

I read this book when it was first published in the UK in 1995. Before this ‘novel’ I neither knew nor cared about philosophy. I’ve read, and self-studied philosophy ever since, purely for the joy and wonder of it.

Sophie Amundsen is coming close to her fifteenth birthday when she receives an anonymous note in her mailbox, with two questions on it, ‘who are you?’ and ‘where are you from?’ From there on in, she begins to learn the history of philosophy; from Socrates, right up to present day thinkers, via her mysterious tutor.

This is written as a kind of Alice in Wonderland tale, threaded throughout ancient and modern philosophical thought. Sophie and her tutor also try to solve the mystery of why Sophie is receiving birthday messages to a girl called Hilde, who is also almost 15 years old. Who is The Major? Does God exist? Why is Alice from Wonderland knocking on her door?

There are many twists, rabbit holes, fairy tales, and philosophising; real and maybe real in this novel. Clever, engrossing and educating in equal measures. For me it was life-changing in many ways.

I met Jostein Gaarder a few years later when he was promoting his new novel, Maya. He’s a lovely person. He signed a book for me, and another book for a girl I’d just met. He said “good luck, Paul.” I posted his signed book to her house, 250 miles away. She became my wife. 5 years later, she wasn’t. But I had a son! He’s amazing and fills me with pride every day. Things happen for a reason.

I was about 28 years old when I first read this book. A lot has happened since – good, and not so good. 28 years old seems a lifetime ago. Maybe it was. Maybe it was someone else’s life. Maybe I’m still walking to that bookshop and about to find a new, life-changing joy of a book called Sophie’s World.

I hope I am, because that was/is/will be, a very good day. I really need a day, a lifetime, a joy like that again. Because things aren’t so good right now. But to do it all over again? The pleasure and the pain? I wouldn’t change a thing . . .

. . . maybe.

Enough words. Now go and read the damn book!

Take care all xx

Home alone

Day 294

I hit a milestone. A big one! An important enough milestone that the rest of my days in recovery can stand on. A plinth of granite, sculpted, chipped away, and formed by almost two years of solid hard work. And it ain’t moving.

Below is a post that I wrote on my Facebook page yesterday (grammar failures and typos included). I’ll expand a little, down below.

* * *

Home alone for a few days. Day 3!
My first mega-test since my lapse almost 10 months ago.

Is the old crap going to creep in? I can get away with anything. Nobody would know. This time last year it would have been an absolute shit-show of a disaster! Of that, I promise. As soon as the coast was clear the house would be full of alcohol.

Today?

Coffee, research work, writing, more coffee, texting my son and looking at his new drawings he mailed me. More coffee. Writing a new piece for my blog. Writing a magazine article for a big online magazine. I mean big! They asked me to submit a piece.

Too busy and way too much to do and lose. And this is only the beginning! A handful of people (and family obviously) knew I’d be alone. Not one, said those dreaded words, “please don’t have a drink. Promise me you won’t have a drink. Are you sure you won’t drink?” Why don’t they, anymore?

They can see it in my face, the look in my eyes, the sound of my voice and how hard I work every day. They just know – now. They just know. It’s obvious. Not only can they trust me, but the biggie . . .

I can trust me!!!

It’s taken almost two years to get almost ten months sober. Why?

I finally threw the big switch in my head from ‘Daily Shit-Storm’ to ‘SAFE!’ It’s a great big, hulking, rusted, cobwebbed, bastard of a switch to throw. But it does move. Eventually. If you ‘want’ to move it! And I’ve finally moved it. That’s the way it’s staying!

* * *

There you go. The tools to recovery are fine and dandy but they are useless without a few things. They can’t simply be learned verbatim as they swill, slop, and wash about in your head like dirty laundry. You’re not copying someone else’s homework or doing lines after school. It’s your own work. It must be locked, loaded and ready to go at any time. You must believe in the tools implicitly and understand why they are there. You’re screwed without them. The almighty swan-dive down that rabbit hole again is only one drink/fix away. That soul-crushing Groundhog Day that we all know too well.

Then there’s the big one! The one and only, Platinum reason for recovery to stick.

You have to want recovery. Not because you’ve screwed up. Not for other people or to keep the peace. Not even for family and friends. Not for anything or anyone but . . .

For you.

I gave a worker at my recovery service the green light that I was good to go, to finally get stuck into volunteering. ‘Throw everything and the kitchen sink at me. I’m ready to get my hands dirty.’

They threw a lot.

As you can see from the picture of my calendar below, February filled up very quickly. Every blue line indicates a full, crazy, wonderful day of learning the ropes of recovery work. March is looking crammed already.

Be careful what you wish for. Sheesh!

Apologies if I’m coming over a bit preachy, saccharine, or sanctimonious. I don’t mean to be, I promise. I simply want to share my optimism, hope, and the things I’ve learned so far. I guess I’m just an excited (and terrified) newbie.

Until next time. Stay safe all xx