Alcoholic Like Me

The Personal Story of A Recovering Alcoholic

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Foreword

I have a memory of watching TV with my Dad as a kid. We were watching a chat-show, or to be more accurate, we weren't really watching it, rather it was just on. I don't remember what the programme was called or much about it; I only remember that a woman in the audience stood up and told the whole world that she was an alcoholic and claimed that she hadn't had a drink in 25 years.

"Twenty five years! The stupid woman must be cured then!", I laughed.

While I laughed as a kid, the memory stuck, and that woman played a part in saving my life years later.

Here is my story...

1. Early Experiences

I didn't really fit in at school, but didn't know it at the time. I preferred my own company and was largely oblivious to other kids around me. That changed when I got to about 17 or so, when I decided that I wanted to 'fit in', but couldn't. I wanted to socialise and be part of a group. I wanted to have a girlfriend and do all the things other kids my age were doing. I discovered that for me, however, it was extremely difficult. I wasn't shy, but nevertheless, I was conscious of my every word and action, and even, of my expression when talking to people. I felt like the whole world was watching me all the time, just waiting for me to make a mistake. I thought had to achieve perfection in everything.

However, I quickly learned that if I had a few drinks, then things were much easier, and everything seemed to flow.

It was if there was a hole inside me, which two or three drinks filled quite nicely. After a couple of drinks I could relax and be spontaneous. I associated being mildly inebriated with being happy. So I loved drink, or rather I loved the effect it had on me, although I wouldn't say I drank heavily in the first couple of years. But alcoholism is progressive, and that's just how it was for me.

I left school and went to university. It seems strange now, but at the time I had two separate personalities. One was happy; I was getting drunk and seemed to be having a good time. The other was desperately lonely and confused. I did not understand how other people ticked and why they behaved the way they did; nor was there a single soul who understood me.

I knew I was different, and that there was something wrong with me, but didn't know what it was. I used to cut my arm and stub cigarettes out on the back of my hand. I visited a counselling service at my university. While it may work for some, I don't think it helped me, but it simply served to underline what I already knew—that I was inadequate in some way, but it didn't tell me why. I used to think that if only I could find a 'proper' girlfriend then that would fix me somehow, but could never understand why all my relationships lasted no more than a month or two.

I started to seek places which stayed open into the night, the more character—read squalid—the better. Like most alcoholics, I was looking for companionship and approval. I didn't find any. Instead I spent many hours standing at the bar analysing myself, replaying scenes from childhood, and generally trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I also wondered through graveyards at night believing I was somehow 'at home' there. I think it would be fair to say that those years were among the unhappiest of my life.

A common misconception is that alcoholism is self inflicted, and therefore alcoholics must be both stupid and weak willed people. My experience is that the opposite is true. In my case, I took the decision in my second year of university not to go to lectures, but to teach myself from text books instead. I knew it was going to be a lot of hard work, which it was. I'd buy a bottle of wine most days—one was enough then—and work through the night by candlelight like some Dickensian scholar. When the wine ran out, I drank black coffee until my vision blurred and I could work no more. I built up quite a library of arcane text books which I kept on show because I thought it made me look clever.

Amazingly my strategy worked and I left university with a very good grade. In fact, it worked so well, I believed then that I had found the solution to my problem...