my lil' wagon blog

Or are you giving up alcohol?

I bet you did something really fucked up whilst under the influence or have developed a severe case of liver disease.

Dish!

pussy.

Thanks guys.

I knew if I talked about it on here I'd get exactly the sort of smothering sympathy I really need right now.

In answer to your question, some alcohol is still allowed, but no beer and no binges.

So last night I drank one Ardbeg.

Day 2 - still feeling hungover. It irritates me that the toxin purge continues to mke me feel as though I have been indulging when in fact I have been abstemious.

Day 2 without alcohol and Steve's already emotive.

Where's that cold, matter-of-fact a-hole now, eh?

Please continue this blog. It's bound to reach great heights of pussiness. Make me proud.

I never made this claim.

Ok, Day 2 of not being a god damned booze-bag drunk twat.

That better?

PS: Tears. More virtual tears please.

had another ardbeg.

feeling lightheaded and sleepy and, well, kind of drunk.

the spectre of brain damage is with me.

I am taking this very seriously.

It's the final phase in my progression from:

sex-addicted chain-smoking alcoholic drug addict with crippling depression (1995)

to:

monogamous, non-smoking, drug free, moderate-drinking person who is reasonably well adjusted (2009+).

I think I should be living a pretty happy, stable life by, say, 2012. Or possibly 2013. Sources differ.

I don't think I should be reading or commenting on this blog. Unless it reveals the secret to bypassing the crippling depression.

I can comment, but most of what I would say would end in gnashing of teeth and tears unbecoming a he-man such as myself.

day 7. I think.

OK so the weekend was fairly uneventful. All I can say is that the 'few glasses of wine' recommended by the doctor are all very well and good except for the 2-3 hour period of craving more alcohol that follows them.

It's a conundrum. If I tell my system it will recieve no alcohol at all, it immediately rejects this idea as an obvious falsehood. I do not want to be a tee-totaller, anyway.

But if drink a little like I should, I spend the remainder of the evening fidgeting and tapping the arm of my chair.

The crippling depression just kind of faded away when I totally gave up on the idea of being a sucessful, well-liked person.

or your own? Being liked at all, much less well-, went out the window for me a long time ago so I don't think it's that one. But I remain haunted by the idea that I am somehow letting myself down and that I could improve my life considerably if I were able to relinquish certain idées fixes which continue to dominate me. Probably my real problem is nigh-total self-absorption and depression is just a side effect.

But I do like the idea that persistent depression means you just haven't tried hard enough at giving up.

I think I used to conflate social sucess with interpersonal success because the world seems to work that way. So if you are some awkward bastard, your chances of long-term success at work are probably going to go down the shitter as well. Only the smooth, self-preening types get anywhere, ultimately.

The depression retreated when I worked out that this was only my problem if I attemkpted to participate. Actually, I do more stuff since I made this discovery.

Fuck I want to drink, though. I have been drinking habitually for about fifteen years.

A poor self-image may not always be totally reflective of reality but it is harder than the dickens to shake off. And in my case I do believe it to be reflective of reality; you have no means of gauging reality other than your own perceptions even if you are aware that they are probably flawed. It's a choice between bad tools or no tools. I had hoped, too, that time might lend me some seasoning but nigh a decade down that road I seem to be the same bumbling man-child as ever. What really distinguishes the smooth self-preeners from us awkward bastards? Is it something more that they know or something less? Is it just a matter of being able to lie to yourself successfully, and how does one do so with even a semi-functional internal bullshit detector?

I have been blissfully unemployed for over six months and it has been Elysium. I hadn't been this happy since before adolescence. But recently the danger of employment reared its ugly head and the old monster depression was right back on top of me, making me realize that familiar horrors are worse than unknown ones. I have been giving more than due consideration to active and overt self-sabotage in order to avert this juggernaut as opposed to my typical practice of more passive and mostly unconscious self-sabotage. If I walk back into the trap of wage capitalism of my own free will I deserve whatever may befall me. It's like inviting a vampire into your house. And the thing is that I ultimately really have so little self-regard that I will probably do it, even though making this type of "practical" decision has reliably made me more and yet more miserable at every single crucial juncture in the past.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL HAVE TO DO WITH GOING ON THE WAGON YOU ASK. I love alcohol and I feel that I should drink it to make happy times more happy. Drinking to cope with stress can be an effective -- and sometimes the only available -- solution, but as the stress piles on it becomes an ever-deepening abyss. I managed to crawl out of this by removing my source of stress, to wit work. So I am afraid that if I go back to work, I must needs go on the wagon too else rapidly become dead and/or inutile. But really, is being dead or inutile so much worse than the prospect of twenty to forty more years of life with nothing to enjoy in them? Which is, of course, why I started drinking heavily in the first place. It is amazing to me that something that makes me so abjectly miserable as work is regarded by Society as a vital necessity, and has nurtured in me since I was a child an uneasy sense that this is no accident, that Society regards me as its enemy by nature and intends to trammel and miserize me deliberately, maliciously, by all necessary means. And really, my beef isn't so much with Work qua Work -- it is the social structure scaffolding and integrated with it; the humans. With their cold eyes and dead laughs, looking at you, judging you. It's all to do with being an awkward bastard.

I don't think I really added anything to what you said already. I just took more space to say it in, as is my habit. I am, as they say, trying to work through this.

I quit my job in early december and I haven't worked since. It had gotten to the point where I literally could not bring myself to go in anymore. Since I already suffer from crippling depression and anxiety, why the fuck should I be doing something that only makes it worse -- work?

I quit drinking three years ago, after the last time I tried to kill myself. In the past month or so, I have finally stopped craving it. I realized that it wasn't alcohol that I craved so much as I crave some sort of spiritual anaesthetic.

i didn't know that you had been so low, daisy, and now i feel kind of bad.

i have never been close to suicide. hope the lack of craving means you are actually feeling better.

i'm more of the giggly, staggering, drunk, obnoxious, later embaraassed / remorseful type. i actually feel ok quite often.

anyway i am off to the provinces tommorow where there is no grog avaiable in most places, so this like 4 days of forced sobriety.

I love alcohol and I feel that I should drink it to make happy times more happy.

This is ultimately my problem. In a weird way, giving up harder drugs was easier becuase my life sucked at that point and they were an obvious culprit. Actually it was hard but in a different way.

Giving up smoking was not too hard because I wasn't actually anjoying it by the time I gave up. Not smoking was better.

But drinking is awesome. How am I supposed to stop doing something that I still think is such a good idea?

Day 12 - Given my last comment it was to be predicted that I would fall off sooner or later. Actually it's twice now. To a casual observer I would now appear as one who is waking alongside the wagon with one foot on and one foot off, and it would be unclear if I were attempting to push it along or to reboard it.

But I will persevere.

Day 30.

I'm still going. The pattern of lapse and recovcer continues to abate. Generally consumption is way down. Also I seem to be recovering the rt of having three of four drinks and then STOPPING. It is unbeleebable.

Also I could dream for Australia now. LIke, every night is a movie marathon. I think there is a backlog.

Lapse and recover picked up a lot in the last 2 weeks seeing as they sucked.

I tend to drink when things suck well as when they go well. Bit of a problem really. However despite all this my consumption is still down on what is was.

Not by very much though.

:(

I probably need to start this again.

A bit down by how much?
How much were you drinking before and how much are you drinking now?
Give yourself credit for any success, no matter how small.

but I am FUCKED. I drank nearly a litre of whisky last night.

Things are way worse in the last week.

I have a birthday coming up one June 1. I think I might just admit defeat and start again.

A litre of whiskey?
Good god man, you are fucked.

Good luck and stay strong.

Remember, drinking will eventually make you fat and stupid.