One week sober and...

...all I want to do is go out and get a nice bottle or two of red wine.

Not to get bladdered.  Not because my body is craving booze.

But just to get some relief from all the greed, selfishness, vanity, savagery, bigotry, trash and plain stupidity I can't help noticing all around me!

I don't need to make a list.  It's everything from violence in Gaza and Derry, to desperate refugees being turned back out to sea by populist governments, to people leaving their crap everywhere, to pre-school kids of Generation Z with their heads stuck in their phones.

The human race is nuts.  It's doomed.

I've found myself sleeping much more now.  Over the weekend, I've napped at regular intervals.  I've tried reading, but can't focus on it for long enough.  Sleep gives me some reprieve.  Death's second self.

I just want to escape.

"Accident black spot?  These aren't accidents.  People are throwing themselves into the road willingly to escape all this hideousness.  Go ahead, darling!  Throw yourself into the road!"

Withnail - 'Withnail and I'

(now I'll shut up and go hide again...)

  • NAS38247
    PERSONIFICATION RESEARCH PROJECT

    ...Mister Tom, you have been Spammed Twice by this, now (if not more?)...

    NAS, please notice and deal with it.

  • This post has been removed as it contravenes our community rules. 

    Ayshe mod

  • on the whole, I think the kids are all right

    I wish I could agree with you.  I don't think they are.  I was reading a report conducted by the Chartwell Foundation in 2013 which showed that as many as 40% of US children under 2 were already familiar with using mobile devices.  That was 5 years ago.  I can't remember the figure I read for UK children under 6 who now own a smart phone, but it was surprisingly high.  As with computers, say, 30 years ago, kids now have to learn this stuff.  It isn't really an option.  And I think it's quite scary.  We know (from the guys who invented them) that these apps and social media sites are designed to be addictive.  Easy to understand why with a business model predicated on advertising.  There's no freedom from it for kids now.  Their friends are all on there, constantly chatting and exchanging stuff - so you have to keep in the loop with them.  If you don't, you run the risk of getting shunned, bullied, etc.  You run the risk of getting bullied anyway online.  And groomed.  And trolled.  And hacked.  And any number of other things else.  I cycle past a number of school bus stops on my way to work.  All the kids have phones.  Very, very sad.  This is bound to have a detrimental effect on so many things in their lives, I think - not least concentration levels.

    I agree about older age groups, though.  With colleagues at work, ages range from 18 to late 40s (apart from me, at 59).  I'm the only one who can manage to get through the entire day without looking at my phone once.  Two guys in particular - one in his early 20s, the other in his mid-30s, have the thing to hand practically all day long.  Whenever I'm working with them, they're engrossed in the phones.  Which is okay, I suppose, as it saves me having to try to make conversation...

  • My worries are both more specific and more general.

    The specific one is just a current niggle, which is people walking along staring at their phone and completely oblivious to their surroundings.  There's NT protocol that you make accommodation with other people you're sharing space with, and even make eye contact, which makes sense to me. Even if I have a little problem decoding other people's intentions, I can make allowances for that. Now people are weaving left and right all over the pavement and they have no idea where they're going themselves. For example a mum with a buggy or pram may be taking up the middle third of a shared cycle lane: because she's staring at her phone, she can't see me on a bicycle, and I have no safe way of passing. (I suppose you could say I shouldn't be in a hurry, but, well there are better things to do with my life.)

    As I say, on the whole, I think the kids are all right. They always have been, and it's more the over-30s I still don't trust despite being one. Crime rates started falling in the late 90s, although I think it's levelled off now, although you might think openly carrying valuable bits of electronics might encourage robbery. I'm a late adopter in this respect and don't have a smartphone - I'm also worried it would be crack cocaine to an information junkie. There was a time when using a phone in public would just be considered rude - I believe there was an SF story, probably by Heinlein, which predicted the technology but not the shift in social mores: 'I can't talk now, I'm on the hyper-train' or something.

    My more general worry I suppose isn't limited to phones, but more like what you say, experiencing the world through screens. I also relate this to urbanisation and separation from anything 'real'. People judge the information they get from one unreliable source via another and expect all information free at their fingertips, just get biased and polarising opinion instead, and think signing an online petition is political action. I'm one of the worst offenders myself – of course we are capable of being deceived that way if we don't find things out for ourselves.

  • Well done, 1986.  I can guess how you feel. 

  • I seem to have a lot of differences of opinion with people over this subject.  I find it really upsetting how drastically (in my opinion) smartphone technology has changed people and society.  It was little more than 20 years ago when you could go out and if you saw someone using a phone in public, you laughed at the pretentiousness.  Now... you're an oddity if you don't have one in public.  People cling onto them as if they're some kind of life-support pack.  I find it so sad, too, when I see very young children using them.  I walked along the beach on Saturday morning and a young dad was walking there with his two sons.  The younger boy was about 4.  He and dad were having a whale of a time horsing around, laughing, playing.  The older boy, about 6, was lagging behind with his head stuck in his phone.  Several times the dad called out to him to catch up - but he might as well have been whistling in the wind.  I was telling a young woman at work about how Macron is banning their use in all French schools for pupils under 15.  Her response?  'That's so unfair - and dangerous.'  Dangerous, I wondered?  How so?  'Because if there's an incident at the school, like a shooting, the kids can call home.'  Oh, I see.  I couldn't resist it.  'Yes,' I said, 'They can ring home and say 'Hi mum and dad.  There's a gunman in the school.  I'm sending you the last selfie you'll ever see of me alive.''  She grumbled.  'It's a generational thing,' she said.  'It was safer in your day.'  My day?  What, back when we had no CCTV cameras, you mean?

  • I don't really socialise at all.  I think if I went into a pub, anyway, I'd end up with a beer.  I do like pubs, though.  I tend to prefer the quiet ones, too, where I can go to a table in a corner on my own.  For now, though, I'll steer clear.

    Yes, I'll register with this association.  The council straight out rejected my application.  As a single person with no dependents, I would only qualify if I was either seriously disabled or threatened with homelessness.

  • Well done on your around 40 days sober. Why do we, humans and maybe particularly autistic people, seem to be cursed with this brain activity? Maybe you can redirect your thoughts to something else? CBT again?

    And yes, many people can be superficial as Tom says in the head post. I worry about addiction to electronic communication, since I seem to do it so much. But 'kids these days' - I met a bunch of older teenagers last night and they were polite, competent, and concerned over a local patch of natural land near me. I still locked up my bike just in case, but... There is nothing either good or bad but thinking make it so.

  • I'm around 40 days sober. I'm hating it right now. Just wanna turn my thoughts off.

  • Loneliness is a big downer for me. I've had to get used to a lot of friends settling down and raising families or moving away to different parts of the country. I do still keep a fairly active social life deliberately as I know seeing a variety of people, not necessarily close friends, keeps me in a kind of balance. I basically have managed not to think much about my situation in life, living day to day, as an attempt to avoid depression. And I think it's worked a bit, although it does leave frustrations as a I mention elsewhere. My life seems to have gone so fast, I'm now friends with my friends' adult children. It is what it is.

    The state of social housing is very poor at the moment, but people tell me it is worth applying to the list anyway, as length of time you've been on it makes a difference. I was told by an advice service that even with a diagnosis of autism and mental health problems I would probably be on the medium-priority list. Most access to sheltered housing for over-55s is also in this way, so that's an additional reason to apply. I just need to get around to it... I might cope with bingo, even, so long as there are also lectures on sculpture in the late Renaissance.

    Have you planned for any socialising in pubs? I quite like pubs (the quieter, traditional ones, anyway), and am content with lime cordial and soda water.

  • Things have certainly taken a horrible turn recently. And I am not sure how it can be fought. I did hear that magicians in the States are all sticking pins into Trump effigies, to render him more harmless, too bad they are not doing the same with Steve Bannon. 

    Maybe try valerian preparations? The cat would enjoy it too

  • Yes.  I've been drinking things I wouldn't normally, like Pepsi.  It seems to help.  I'll stay off the booze if I possibly can.

  • This is all rather negative don’t you think?

    As I said, though - I tend to think of things negatively.  It's very debilitating.  It's a mindset I've had for many years.  But yes, I know you're right.

    There is another factor in all of this that I might have been ignoring - or maybe pretending to ignore.  The documentary on George Michael, looking into his lifestyle and the things that may have helped contribute to his death, mentioned much about his loneliness.  After Wham!, he spent much of the height of his solo fame on the road, and would mostly - after a concert - return to his hotel room alone.  Someone who knew him at the time mentioned that he often commented on how difficult he now found it alone.  On top of this, he still hadn't come out about his sexuality because of his fears about the impact it would have on his family and his fanbase.  His partner died of AIDS-related complications in 1993, which was a hugely difficult time.  Then, three years later, he lost his beloved mother.  There is some suggestion that he never really got over these losses and that they haunted him for the rest of his life.  In spite of later partnerships, he seems to have been quite a 'lonely' individual - and he died alone, following an argument with his last partner, who'd left and slept in his car that fatal night.

    It all got me thinking and realising a few things.  I've said that I've always preferred my own company, that I've never really wanted friends, that I like being alone.  But I suppose, since mum's passing, this is really the first time in my life when there truly is no one else.  On top of this, I'm now working in a place where, for absolutely the first time in my life, I'm the oldest staff member by a long way.  Even the next oldest is closer to the average age - 26 - than I am.  So, I'm pretty much the 'lone wolf' in more than just my autism.  I don't really have anything in common with anyone else there, whereas in my last job there were at least a few more people who were around my age and shared a generational bond.

    I don't know.  Maybe I'm underestimating the effect that all of this is having.  Being totally alone.  Feeling old and generationally adrift from my colleagues.  A lot of age is a state of mind, and I maintain a young outlook.  But I can't help feeling isolated now much more than I ever used to.

    Oddly, I was talking with someone online the other day about the housing crisis, and explaining how difficult it now is to get affordable rents where I live.  I said I'd tried to get on the council housing list, but don't qualify on many fronts.  They then suggested a local housing association.  I said I knew of it, but thought it was for elderly people only. It's a place with onsite carers, communal lounges, bingo nights - that kind of thing.  When I checked, though, it's for over-55s.  So I qualify.  It's listed as a 'retirement village'.  Gosh.  How scary!

    I suppose all of this, anyway, is tumbling around in my sober head.

    I need to leave for work - but I really don't feel like going in today.  I feel quite low this morning.  Maybe I'll have to have a migraine or something.

  • I think the problem though, DC, is that increasingly for me 'alcohol' means 'getting drunk'.  Once I start, I find it hard to stop.

  • I agree. Alcohol is not "bad", it is "getting drunk" which is bad...

    (.. I might run away, now, sorry...)

  • This is all rather negative don’t you think? Such strong terms such as challenging and difficult... try to put things in a positive light..

    every hour without a drink helps to resolve you’re connection with your body, makes you a healthier individual, proves you have the capacity to take back control. 

  • I’d like to think that ocean kitty’s wear very smart bathing suits. It is a real Aspie trial to receive a compliment. You are a much valued member of the community (including bees and reptiles) x

  • Um... To both of you...Thanks Muchly... You may both be able to tell that I am not good at emotions or recieving them, because all I can think of to write in reciprocation is...

    OCEAN! KITTY-CATS! OCEAN OCEAN OCEAN! CUTE FLUFFY ANIMALS! (Including Bees and Reptiles!) Whenever I see the Sea I think OCEAN!   ...Um, Thanks again, though...  (!)

  • I have not had an alcoholic drink in quite a few years. If life sober was not better than drunk, then I would be drunk. I like being sober so much more. I say this, not only as it is true for me, but to suggest it’s not all White knuckling. It is possible. As far as replacement is concerned, sweets can help. There’s a lot of sugar in booze and there’s not point craving booze and sugar. Just stick to the booze for now. You can deal with the sugar once the booze head quietens.