Juggling Dust

Day 2,840.

Plaiting fog, knitting gravy, juggling dust – just some titles of tricky little human irritants (caused by other actual human irritants) that make the roadmap of life far from easy.

They drop their spectral fingers on the anti-gravity button, causing everything we hold dear to rise up, fade and disappear. One minute everything is there within huggable distance: money, joy, employment, love, friendship, ripped abs (insert your cherished-whatever, here). The next: 3,2,1 up, up, and away they all go! Everything has gone. Everything but us, the emptiness, frustration and anger. Invisible ankle weights bear down keeping us fixed to the earth as we gaze up through glazed eyes, watching everything we had, shrink to a dot. Just when we least expect, it strikes like a prehistoric predator acting as prophet – Veloci-Rapture. All gone. Poof!

Of course, it doesn’t all happen at once. We don’t get it all over with in one agonising lump, then start afresh. No; like our breath in Winter, it evaporates in increments. Days, weeks, months, and years meld and blur behind us. A thief in the night\day\dawn – take your pick.

I don’t actually know where I’m going with this post. Really, I don’t! I may have written myself an over-wordy sinkhole. Well, you’re this far in with me. You may as well get the popcorn.

From screaming our tiny lungs dry on our first day of birth, to screaming back at the empathy-hoover of an automated voice on the end of a phone. We get though life by juggling dust. Unfortunately, it’s obligatory and non-negotiable whether we like it (we don’t) or not. We are not told about such things at our very beginning as we wet our pants, dribble and throw our food at parents. But it soon creeps up as we grow, as life kicks us in our financial, mental, and spiritual backsides. Them’s the unwritten rules. We are the jugglers of dust. Poof!

All life on earth could paved with such an endless abundance of love, joy and sustenance for all – if only it weren’t for one clutch of nasty little elements – humans. Or more accurately, the excremental (not a typo), labyrinthine undercurrents of human nature.

Add a heap of wealth to a nice human. Now sprinkle in some success. Stir in some hype, and add dollops of ego. Let it all cook slowly in government buildings, tv and film studios, organised religious churches and the like. Decorate with the lies and deception of the high-earning, low living accumulation of digitised, online Influencer detritus who throw their pixilated barbs into us for, follows, likes and cash.

Let it all simmer until you end up with charming a looking dish – totally inedible due to the rotten ingredients that steam and writhe within. I’d advise being in running distance of a toilet after gorging on all that.

Sounds bad? That’s us!

You still here? My apologies, and thanks.

It breaks my heart to see once-perfectly naturally beautiful girls and women, whose faces and bodies have been influenced, co-opted, branded and self-altered, become clones of one another. Lips are swollen into permanent pouts. Botox infused foreheads refuse natural expression, and (perfect?) eyebrows: waxed, tweezed, threaded, pencilled, tattooed and micro bladed within an inch of their once wild little lives.

Then we have the hollowed-out cheeks and the skull-like gauntness that haunt tabloids thanks to Ozempic or other dodgy alternatives. It was good at the start, they thought. Then . . .

The influencers make sure that natural beauty is never enough. A little fix here and there to begin with is never enough. Nothing is ever enough. We can all look never enough together until we all look exactly the same. Then comes thrill of the chase. More, more, more!

Addiction is its own savage and repulsive animal. But if it is fed daily by the greed and antipathy of the scum at the top of the mortality chain – it breeds and runs feral to the vulnerable who have already been emptied of the promises life once gave them. Its victims once the highest of intelligence and the most radiant of beauties, the strongest and most impenetrable of bodies and wills. But each will be stripped and ripped by the teeth of addiction into the most vulnerable and broken of souls. The animal is kept fed by the hand of the obsidian darkness, the bleakest of human nature. Fed by money, greed, desire; domination over every thing and every one. Nobody gets out with their dignity, beauty, finances, or souls intact. Nobody gets out alive.

As a child I used to believe in God. I was a cherubic little catholic; a choirboy and altar boy at my local church. I attended mass every Sunday. Now I don’t believe. Life saw to that. Nothing in particular happened. Life happened. But what sane god would allow the state of this once beautiful planet and its occupants to self-implode and burn like this? All tv and online news media are like scenes from Hellraiser and American Psycho. I’ve seen firsthand what organised religion can do to vulnerable, trusting people who become lost. All in the name of a loving god. They unwittingly lose their soul via their bank accounts and dignity. There are many, many genuinely good people of faith out there. There are. But devils walk among them dressed as angels and acolytes.

But god is not for me. I’ve never met a god that practices what he/she preaches. I’ve never met a god. Have you?

I’m not a vegetarian or a vegan. I’m an out-and-out carnivore. It’s in my (our) nature. I’m more than well aware, as we all are (or should be) of the sickening and horrific practices inflicted on innocent animals to get their meat to our oversized plates and mouths. I do feel that constant, distant rumble of guilt in my conscience as I chew on other-species flesh. But unfortunately, the meat still goes down. We carnivores shouldn’t be able to easily sleep at night. Our minds should be riddled constantly with deafening nightmares of the torture and depravity, perpetrated on our fellow, other-species earth dwellers. But sleep, we do. One day I will cut out meat altogether. I think it’s the right thing to do. They say ‘meat is murder.’ If you care about such things, I suppose technically, it is. I think about these things. I have a conscience. We all have a conscience!

But the slaying doesn’t stop at other-species.

And boy do we murder ourselves on a barbaric and disgustingly grand scale that would make Satan and his sick little minions wince a little as he hammers up the sign on Hell’s basement which says ‘No More Vacancies.’

Femicide, infanticide, genocide, suicide – pick a cide – but whatever cide you pick – it’s always the same cide of a bad cide of a bad lot. The inhuman side of human nature.

As children, we have the get-out clause written as the bliss of ignorance and innocence. As sane adults, we can’t use that same article. We’re willingly and gratefully ill-informed. We should know better, do better, be better. But we don’t.

If the human race were an actual greyhound race, we’d all starve to death in our wide-open traps, as the hare runs in endless circles.

You sill here? Wow! Help!

But all that stuff, the jet-black stuff, that’s all human nature gone wrong, stuff. The dark underbelly of a superb bit of still-evolving biological super-engineering, given as a gift from the universe to a spinning rock called earth. We schlepped out of the sea one day, many years ago and Bingo! You and me.

Humans. The average Joe. Joe Bloggs – just getting though life the best we can.

Always double-checking we are wearing pants before we walk out our front door, bleary-eyed in the morning. We fill our cars with trusting humans on the school run or work, and try not to hit and maim other biological familiars in similar, speedy tin-can transport. We start work and finish the day in the hopes of not trepanning our co-workers with a long, thick shard of coffee mug when they infuriate us. We bank on them giving us the same courtesy.

Most humans are fantastic ambassadors for upright, intelligent, and chatty biology. We do try our best on a daily basis. We really do. Although we only use a tiny fraction of our brain capacity, the miniscule part that we do benefit from is mostly put to good use. Mostly. We invented the wheel, some time ago, all by ourselves! We can pretty much take the credit for miracles of medical science. All the arts? Yep, all that was us. We also invented Love Island and TikTok, but we all make mistakes. We’re only human.

This post was supposed to be quite short. A rant and ramble about how life could be so wonderful if it were not for the hearts of darkness inside the small percentage of humans belching out smoke in front of distorted mirrors. The inflicting of so much pain on the rest of humankind, animal-kind, and ecological-kind. How recovery from addiction is made so much harder by the greed and soul-filth of others trying to drag us off our wagons and under the wheels. Why we are constantly influenced to be absolutely anything and everything, but ourselves. I could have just said that. But I didn’t.

If you made it this far, you’re a trooper and a star. Unfortunately, I can’t give you your time back. But I can give you thanks.

Thanks.

Take care everyone xx

The Vulnerable Dead

Day: 1146

Many people see addicts as frightening, or at the very least, intimidating. I get it. Before alcoholism sucker-punched my life, so did I.

Many moons ago, before the alcohol became bad, and when I was living near London, I regularly delivered stationary to a tourist information centre. It was next-door to a recovery centre. As is always the way, outside was always a raggedy group of recovering addicts, smoking cigarettes with shaky fingers. I had to park my van and walk past them, quickly wheeling my trolley full of stuff. I’d hear them, smell them, see them – fear them. They were never impolite or intimidating, simply jittery, frustrated, and anxious. Just a bunch of anxious people standing around and getting their last smoke in before a group or appointment.

But they were addicts!

The hollowed-out cheeks of heroin addicts terrified me. Were they heroin addicts? How the hell did I even know? I was clueless. Others were red-faced and bloated. Probably alcoholics. Again, I was naive and judgemental. But what if the heroin people mugged me for their fix money? What if they injected me with dirty needles just for kicks? Because that’s what heroin addicts do all day, right? What if the alcoholics got together in an alcohol-fuelled rage and beat me to a pulp? Just for the hell of it! Because that’s what, blah, blah, blah . . .

Ah, stigma. I knew you so well!

There was more chance of a vagina growing on my elbow than any of this ridiculous internal fear-mongering coming true. But I didn’t know. I was too busy being paralysed by fear, hyped-up on media, gossip and rumour.

I was simply walking past a group of fellow humans who had dealt with their past problems the wrong way. They were trying to put things right for themselves.

Most addicts are passive, shy, and private due to huge amounts of shame and guilt. Many are terrified. Aside from the rare few who feed the stigma machine, addicts wouldn’t say boo to a goose.

* * *

Skip a few years. I went from addict-phobic, to standing outside a recovery centre, anxiously smoking roll-ups with my fellow addicts, in-between groups, and appointments. We would, amongst other things, talk about how harsh it is to be stigmatised by judgey-normals.

But I can absolutely understand why people fear addicts.

During addiction we can appear like the animated dead, unreadable expressions on our faces as we stumble and mumble. We’re anxious, depressed, frustrated, and poisoned. We have been known to vomit and urinate in public (wherever we lay our hats, and all that). Sometimes we sleep in the wrong places (sometimes at the request of the police). We can smell odd, often eye-wateringly so. But we are mostly people who got life wrong for a while – and became stuck.

But what you’re actually seeing is total, raw vulnerability.

We often get preyed upon, blamed, shamed and taken advantage of. Why? Because it’s easy. We are rarely aware when fingers are pointed. Also (mid-drink or drug) we don’t care. Apart from flooding of our blood with various poisons, we rarely care about much. You tell us black is white and you’d maybe get a thumbs up and a nonchalant smile. We mostly just want people to leave us alone.

On two occasions, I really did take people at their word. I paid for it dearly, for years afterwards. Here they are:

1: I received a standard letter from the bank asking me to come in for a review of my account. Nothing bad or even anything to worry about. Just a chat. I went. I think I did! I must have done. Because when I woke up the next day, I had printed documentation in black and white with my signature confirming it. I didn’t remember a thing. But I’ll guarantee you this – I will have staggered into that bank, slurring my words and stinking to high-heaven of booze. I would have been unshaven, scruffy, and wearing the same clothes I’d been in for days. It wouldn’t have been a pretty sight, or smell. So why did I wake up the next day with a crumpled contract for a £4000 loan and a credit card? I only went in for an account review, right?

2: One morning I woke up hungover after a blackout. Next to me was a brand-new mobile phone and a wine or blood-stained contract. It tied me in for £70 per month for two years. All neatly signed by me! This was from the friendly local Vodafone shop. Done and dusted!

To this day, I remember nothing of both occasions. But I definitely remember the years of struggling to pay everything off.

So who’s fault was it?

Mine, obviously. I got slaughtered on wine or whatever, and staggered into two corporate, money-hoovers when I really should have stayed home in bed. Simple. Got me bang to rights, guvnor! Stick the cuffs on.

But I have questions! Not many, but a few.

You’re a phone sales human, or a bank human. You see, hear, and smell an obviously intoxicated person stumbling in through your doors. Obviously, you gently persuade them to go home and come back another day, right? You’re not going to get any sense out of them. Or you go to your manager and ask for advice? He/she would advise the above, obviously?

Obviously not!

You go for the money-shot. Straight into the pockets of the vulnerable and pull out as much cash as possible. Drain that bank account and milk it for what it’s worth! For years! Because you’ve got them where you need them – vulnerable! You may as well kick a homeless person in the face and steal their change whilst you’re at it. Pull a feeding baby from its mothers breast as well. Why not eh? It’s all the same thing. Taking advantage of, and taking the money from, the most susceptible people who walk through the door. Making the figures look good. Having your tongue firmly wedged up your greedy boss’s ass.

I’ve heard so many similar stories like mine from friends and ex-clients. Mine isn’t a one-off story. I’m not the only addict who’s been taken advantage of like this. Unfortunately, I won’t be the last.

But I’ll tell you what! What goes around, comes around! Many of us recover. We begin to shine and we never forget being screwed-over. We make our own money and pay our dues and debts. You’ll never take advantage of us again. When the going gets tough, the tough get creative. We write letters, books, essays, memoirs, emails, messages, posts, and blogs – sometimes about money-stealing, life-wrecking, cowardly excuses for humans.

If you are one of these modern-day robbers, I do forgive you. But I hope after reading this you’ll never screw-over another addict’s life like that again. Be fair. Be nice. Be a decent human being. Just be kind to your fellow humans. Life is too short. Simple.

Have a lovely day, stay amazing and be safe xx

Art by Mark Masters. Click photo for his site

Taking on the Beast

Day 1097

It’s been a while. Lots of things have happened since I was last here.

The pandemic and the endless lockdowns. The world has changed for us all. Thankfully, I managed to stay sober and hit three years alcohol-free yesterday. But I’ve lost so many friends to drink now, it’s well into double figures and counting.

Alcoholism is the age-old global pandemic that will never go away, and it has no vaccine. It probably never will.

COVID19 has killed so many addicts. Ironically, not of the virus. Recovery services going virtual because there is no choice. Confinement. Four walls. Boredom and the lack of physical contact are the real killers for addicts. You need some serious mental tools in your head and a strong recovery network to survive a pandemic clean and sober. Many are not so lucky, unfortunately.

I’ve let this site go to rack and ruin a little with zero activity. Must do better. Below is my personal letter to the beast.

Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay amazing. See you very, very soon.

We can all do this! xx

An Illusion Called Time

Day 468.

This is a dark post. A bit grim and raw. It’s not in the slightest bit uplifting, because it’s the ugly truth. It’s a snapshot of the future if addiction gets hold of you. If you want your day brightening up, I’d skip this post today. It’s not for you.

* * *

The days, weeks, months, and years are so full of time. We continually think of all that time, time and time again. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Addicts can magically erase all that time. Poof!

Once our bloodstreams, brains, and bones are flooded full of our substance of choice – time, no longer exists. It never did – poof! Every day is a filthy, bloodied, tear-stained, non-existent, Groundhog Day. Our next drink or fix dissolves the minutes, hours, months, and years into a liquid and mercurial state.

Addicts exist in a swirling grey fog of nothing. It’s the first wish granted when we rub the magic addiction lamp. Eventually, further down the line, ‘I wish the next drink will kill me’ is the one wish that never seems to come. But give it time. That final wish will come true. It always does. Just give it time.

Every day we hear people say the same thing. Time flies! Where does all the time go? I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed! The time has literally gone! Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

Anything and everything merges into mush. Life (whatever that may be) swirls around us like the filthy blood sloshing around our veins. We have given ourselves a licence not to think any more. Our feelings put on pause. We laugh and we cry but never know why. Some of us cut and slash our sick, yellowing skin because we need to transfer the searing mental pain onto something tangible. Something we can see. There is enough rage and guilt in our bodies that the cuts never hurt. The pain moves a million miles away. The screams become distant echoes.

The dried blood and scars become the addicts Braille our fingertips read when the lights go out.

The door never opens because it’s always locked. The phone never rings after it’s unplugged. The outside world is simply that – outside.

Outside exists only when it must: when we get our drinks, when we meet our dealers, or when we finally have to sleep in it. Life never comes to us because we never let it in. Too embarrassed, too angry, too ugly, too far gone, too paranoid – too dead.

We don’t know where time is anymore. Time rots our food, rots our guts, makes us stink, takes our kids, un-employs us, desexualises us, imprisons us, removes our souls, cages our minds, makes shop doorways our beds. It builds our crosses and crucifies us.

But we don’t care. We never care.

We’ve spent many years re-wiring our brains with poison. We hacked our fleshy, sputtering software so that giving a shit does not compute anymore. We’ve crashed our system – blue screen – error 404. No option to reboot or reinstall. We are totally corrupted. All data lost. Blip! Gone.

Our tiny universe has stopped all the clocks. Nothing revolves around our world – only drink or drugs – drugs and drink. Our weather is toxic; the ground is a waiting grave. One day we will be worm food, plant food, maggot-ridden and fly-blown. It’s then up to heaven and hell to fight over our ragged souls and show us our new home.

I wonder if Jesus still does his water into wine trick! Does heaven have a rehab? Can the biblical and eternal screaming hell that our churches and priests condemn us to, match up to the hell we created for ourselves?

I doubt it. It’ll walk in the park.

Anyway, happy thoughts, eh!

Stay amazing and safe, everyone xx

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

Bus Babble

Day 262

What happens when you’re a struggling addict in recovery, and stuck in hideous traffic on a packed, smelly, noisy bus? Anxiety is making your teeth float. Get creative. I wrote the following on my phone in my rehab days. As you will be able to tell straight away, I’m no poet. Keats or Yeats, I ain’t, but they ain’t me either. Writing these two pieces of bus babble, helped to stop my head exploding into slime on various bus rides home. The picture beneath is one of my drawings from many moons ago, in my twenties.

* * *

Bus babble #1

THROUGH DARKLY EYES

Praying this glass is the killer,

The TNT in the heart,

The body gets sicker and slimmer,

The explosion is waiting to start.

Dulling takes more and more poison,

Much more than a human can take,

The blood paints its walls with ‘NO CHOICE,’ on,

No matter the soul is at stake.

I shamble as the puppet strings snap, creak, and fray,

Clawed fingers no longer life-sleek,

The master looks down, unable to say,

“Don’t pray to me I am too weak.”

The hope of that second heart beating,

Beneath the smile of my son,

His eyes slay my death that is cheating,

His wings take us up to the Sun.

The End.

Actually. Strike that.

The Beginning!!!!

* * *

Bus babble #2

Essentially, life is like concrete. Hard, unyielding, and tough to crack. Some chip away, others take a pick axe and tear through it. Many just walk over it without a second thought because it’s there, it serves a purpose and necessary. But one thing’s for sure, you can’t sprinkle it with pretty glitter and hope the winds never blows its false beauty away. Dig, chip and smash. We do whatever we can. Because it’s underneath, beneath the cracks and the filth and the darkness were the diamonds and the stars truly sparkle. And behind filthy curtains that hang down like the rotten, tattered, bloody wings of long fallen angels – new born wings unfurl behind. Ready to guide and fly with us – if we dare to look and hold out our hand – and trust. Then we will rise and rise and rise. Because that’s what we chose, because now, we can. I’ll meet you at where we all want to be, not were ‘others’ want us to be. We began with the hope of choice. Our one and only prize. . . life!

Stay safe everyone xx

Newborn

Day 260

Early in sobriety it seems much of our time is spent trying to explain to non-addicts (family, friends, loved ones, work-mates, partners) what addiction is, because they don’t get it. I totally understand, it must be so frustrating for them.

But we are so busy saving our own lives daily and getting on with our recovery, we don’t have spare brain-space to explain to everyone who doesn’t get it. We are teaching by example simply by living as well as we can. Also, we don’t get it. We just had to live it.

We are as newborns in recovery, seeing the world for the first time. We stumble out our first terrifying baby steps.

Staying sober and holding it all together is a twenty-four-hour job. It’s stunningly hard. It’s impossible to try and explain the never ending can of worms that is addiction to everyone we meet. Most people ask the usual questions, ‘why didn’t you just stop? Why can’t you just drink normally?’

Professionals have been struggling for decades to define, pin-point, track down, research, treat, and explain addiction. How the hell are we supposed to do it?

I mean, how do you explain wishing the next drink would kill you? Your hygiene is so bad but you don’t care. Running out of hiding space for bottles and cans until the floors are rolling in glass and tin. Wearing the same clothes for days, weeks or months. All control of bodily functions is lost; it’s ok just because that’s the way it is. Sobbing your heart out for no apparent reason. You’re in pain and seeing your own blood so often you could identify it in a line-up. But it’s inconvenient to go to the doctor because waiting rooms cut into your drinking time. The phones are unplugged or switched off. The doors are locked and the curtains are never open.

Anything to do with the people you love are cancelled because they can’t get hold of you – nobody can. You’ll stop drinking tomorrow, but you don’t: it’s Christmas, new year, my birthday, your birthday, week off work, holiday – eventually you run out of excuses and it’s simply just another day. Tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. Ever! Hell is the norm.

Eventually you don’t/can’t even try to stop because your body is so chemically dependent that it won’t let you anymore. But your daily prayer is that the next drink kills you. But it doesn’t. But you still pray for it and you still pick up that bottle or the can, praying at the altar of alcohol, because all other gods have failed. Nothing else matters.

That’s just a mere fraction of what was my daily life. My addiction/your addiction/our addiction! Everyone’s addiction! Alcohol, drugs, whatever the substance.

How can you explain all that to someone who doesn’t get it? Life’s too short to even try.

So, why/how did we survive and stay alive?

Luck. Pure luck.

I’ve seen many people pushed back into active addiction by constantly trying to explain and justify past actions. If people don’t get it that’s their problem – not yours! You just stay busy living with addiction and ripping its throat out! keep doing that! Every day.

Baby steps. The biggest steps you’ll ever take!

Stay safe and amazing!

Stumbling Towards 2019

So, I’ve been sober from alcohol now for 230 days (7 months and 16 days). I’ve decided it’s time to knuckle down and write about it.

Write a lot!

I’ve started this blog as an experiment to upload blogs, non-fiction, essays and maybe some fiction.

I’m not exactly sure when I’m going to kick all this off here, but no doubt very soon during 2019.

I’m still working out this site and what it can and can’t do. But I thought I’d at least kick it off with something.

See you on the other side. This could be quite a ride!