Published on 12, July, 2020
...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...)
Sobriety sucks. Eight days now - including these last three days off work, which have been the hottest of the summer so far. And I'm ready to throw in the towel. I'm back to a state of almost permanent low-level anxiety. My inhibitions are backing up like so much mental constipation. And I'm bored. I can't focus on anything for more than a few minutes. I know it's early days, and I'm bound to feel this way for a while - just until I get properly used to being sober again. But the world sober is driving me nuts. I look at it and think 'So, this is it, eh?'
I slept this afternoon, but I'm off now for an early night. At least it'll take care of the next few hours.
Can you not see the magic of the world around you or just it’s mudanity? Or is that what the alcohol is for?
The dear poster Disambiguating Cynosure raises the very pertinent point that if you remove something from your existence then it creates a hole, a gap that needs replacing. Have you given this any thought?
Yes, I have - and I realise I'm sitting on my pity-pot a bit. I was once told in AA that it's a bit like grieving. You've lost something that once meant so much to you. And I used to say to myself 'Don't think of it as 'I can't drink any more', but more as 'I don't need to drink any more.''
I've been drinking Coke and Dandelion and Burdock. I'm going to try some CBD Oil.
Yes... I see the magic. It's partly what prompts me to write poetry and fiction. Maybe my head's been out of kilter for just too long now. I see lots of negatives - I know this. I have a fundamentally negative outlook on life. Maybe age is having something to do with it, too - and a certain sense of disillusionment. All too easy to drown that in booze, of course.
I'll keep on with it. I'm not sure what for yet - but it'll come to me.
I'm not sure about pride. I'm really not sure. I wouldn't call myself a 'proud' person. Yet I suppose I'm proud of certain things I do, and have done. I try not to wear it like a badge.
I suppose pride is bound up a good deal with self-esteem - and that's always very fragile with me.
Cash was a legend in so many ways. The coroner who presents 'Autopsy' says it's a remarkable testament to the human body's resilience - and to the indomitable spirit of the man - that he lived until 71. He was an old, old man at the end, though.
My father was legendary in that way, too. A heavy smoker of the strongest (untipped) cigarettes for almost seven decades. A phenomenal drinker from his early teens - and I mean phenomenal. And he made it to 77. Am I trying to reassure myself again?
I suffer greatly from pride, do you? ... and Johnny Cash is quite a legend
That's a heap of external circumstances. I hope it doesn't sound patronising if I say that you seem to self-scaffold remarkably well in the circumstances.
I've spent the evening watching documentaries about the effect of drugs and alcohol on human health, seen through the prism of the final hours of George Michael and Johnny Cash. There are mixed reasons for this, I admit. Partly it's about showing myself the damage I might have already done. Partly, too, it's about reassuring myself that there's plenty of room for more damage yet. This isn't a good way of thinking.
I'm still sober, though. White-knuckling it, I guess.
I suppose I don't need any more proof that I have a problem.