Drinking, dating and defaults

A couple of posts ago, I promised that I would provide you, dear fans of TS&F, with an update on how the drinking was going. Out with a delightfully broad cross-section of the Gang yesterday afternoon, one of them (Little Agony Uncle since you’re asking) enquired as to why that update had not appeared, and I answered that as yet I didn’t feel that I’d quite worked out what my feelings were. I should have expected nothing less from an experienced agony uncle but was nonetheless still stunned by the simple brilliance of his advice: “Tell it to the blog.” So, here goes…

Since I took the big decision to try quitting for a while, and, following the success of that experiment, the arguably bigger decision to then try drinking again, I have certainly regained - or possibly, just gained – a sense of control about my drinking that was missing. It feels wonderful to be able to say that because, well aware as I was of the physical damage I was doing myself, and the wastefulness of spending entire weekends sleeping off the effects of one night’s drinking, it was the lack of control that had really scared me and finally prompted me to find the stop button. I still don’t feel that I’ve quite got the degree of control that I would like to have however, and as result my relationship with alcohol is still at best ambivalent.

It’s really hard to define what it is that I’m unsure about, but as I’m ‘telling it to the blog’ I’ll let you be the judge of whether what I’m saying makes sense. Since stopping, albeit for just a few weeks, there’s been a paradigm shift in my default drinking mode from drinking almost every day to drinking hardly any days, and from drinking more and faster than pretty much anyone to drinking no more and often much less than everyone. I’ve had a couple or three hangovers but nothing on the scale of ‘the old days’ and I’m satisfied that these have not been because of particularly excessive drinking – my biggest bender having been New Year’s Eve and even that was nothing compared to, say, my Bloodbath party - but because my body’s tolerance of and ability to process alcohol has retuned itself from that of a heavy drinker to that of a moderate one. Most satisfyingly, there have been no blackouts, no memory loss, no stripping naked and leaping into hot tubs (other than stone-cold sober in Chariots but that’s not for here), no turning up at afternoon parties already hammered and terrorising the children…you get the picture.

Yesterday I spent a pretty-much-perfect few hours with the boys in Le Shaz Bar and had just one shandy; last week at dinner with Big Sis I had one beer; on neither occasion did I want any more. So, complete abstinence I can do, and ‘just the one’, I can do; the grey area comes when I allow myself – and it really does feel like allowing myself – to drink, those nights (or days) when I consciously decide that drinking is on the agenda. Friday night and Saturday just gone were both such times, the former Glenda’s birthday drinks, the latter an enjoyable but ultimately unsuccessful date with the sexy Saffa from just after Christmas. On both occasions I followed the ‘old’ (and for most, ‘normal’) pattern of one drink after another and both times reached a point where I didn’t want to have any more; I’d chosen to press the ‘stop’ button.

The difficulty is that to be able to push the button, I have to be able to reach it, and it’s never in the bar or club or party that I’m at. If I stay, I’ll stay drinking – it’s as simple as that. I don’t think this is the ‘alcohol allergy’ that Bubble described; I can and do stop at or very near to the moment of my choosing; I just can’t quite get my head around doing that in whatever my present surroundings might be. Instead I have to do a Cinderella-like flit home, to the security – and sobriety – of home; to the sofa, a cup of tea, some chocolate…sources of comfort other than the bottle. Socially it can make things awkward. On the date, for example, about four hours and five or so pints in, I tried to engineer our going back to mine. Of course that was in part with the ulterior motive of getting a bit closer to the gorgeous hunk o’ spunk (that sadly was not on his agenda, unbelievable as that may be) but primarily because I knew that if we stayed out I would end up plastered and I just didn’t want to be. I guess through giving it so much thought – any thought even – I’ve created for myself a new guilt about drinking whereby anything more than ‘just the one’ triggers a thought process that can become quite self-accusatory.

All this leaves me not quite knowing what to do. I could quit drinking altogether, as not doing something is the only sure-fire way to not feel guilty about doing it, but for a reason I can’t yet grasp I don’t ‘want’ to be teetotal. I enjoy good wines, good whisky, a cocktail, a glass of champagne, and I don’t want to give those up. What I need to get to grips with is how to drink socially, if such a thing even exists. Maybe I’m sweating it all a bit too much; maybe I should just go a bit easier on myself and not beat myself up if I get a bit pissed at the weekend – everyone does, right? Or maybe a bit of self-tough-loving is the key to getting this drinking thing licked. For now, I’m happy, things are good, the future’s bright and I must say, that Agony Uncle gives damn good advice because ‘telling it to the blog’ - and may I thank you for indulging me - has made things a whole lot clearer than they were just 24 hours ago!