Unhappy with the Hooch ft. Michael

So I thought I better just drink this stuff until I can learn to enjoy it, which is a bit ridiculous, really. If I could have done that with cabbage or something instead, that would have been great, but no, I started I think the first time I drank to excess was perhaps it was a new year's Eve, 1999. That's showing my age isn't that I was 17 years old. And I stole a bottle of wine from my parent's shed and went to a friend's house. And I thought we'd share that.

There's only two other friends there. Neither of them actually wanted to drink it. So I thought, okay, well I have to drink it all on my own. Then I was actually quite pleased with that outcome. So I drank the whole bottle on my. In a fairly short space of time and then spent the rest of the evening vomiting in the toilet. And that was my my first proper experience of intoxication.

When I was 18, I then I started at a job at my local park, you know, in the UK, we've got this culture of pups, very old buildings where they've been around for hundreds of years. And it's, you have to go along to your local and, and drink. And that's what I did. And I worked there and people would tip and buy your drinks. As you were working at the end of the machine left, I would then have about three or four pints of beer, usually two to drink when I'd finished the work.

And I first noticed things were a little bit off when I was 18, because on the nights where I wasn't working, I found myself really itching to. To have a drink and to go back down the pub. So if I wasn't working there, I'd go down there. And but I didn't always have the money for the drink because I was working part-time and studying. And I remember myself desperately searching around the house for coins so that I could go and buy myself a drink at the pub.

And I was picking up cushions from the sofa. I'd found a few coins there. And then when I still hadn't got enough, I started walking down the street, near my house, near the shop to see if anybody had drops, change outside the shop. And I, I did that until I had enough money to buy myself a Pines and hopes that when I got there, somebody else would buy me another one. And that was their first time I ever felt, Ooh, this, this alcohol might actually have a little bit of a grip on you.

And my relationship with alcohol continued like that. I'd spend I'd binge at the weekends. Or whenever I got the opportunity and then I'd usually stop when I had no money left. And that was, that was essentially how I've drunk for most of my life. Now the main difference being though that as I've got older and got better jobs, I've always had a bit more money left and my tolerance for alcohol increased.

So fast forward to, I think 28, that was a guy that saw a major shift in my relationship with alcohol. I'd been living with a long-term partner for about eight years by that time. I wasn't happy in the relationship and it hadn't been for for many years. It was a toxic relationship where he was very controlling would take money from my account occasions.

It would result in physical violence often if drink was involved I wasn't, I wasn't in a good place, but I felt trapped because I didn't have the money to move out and get my own place. And that year I also, I lost my best friend Juliet who had been, she'd been a rock for me since, since about the age of 16, when, when we kept in touch in a way as being best friends. And she was, we had a little plan where she was going to put me up at her place, I was going to leave my partner.

And she was gonna let me stay with her for awhile. And then she, she just suddenly passed away. And when she was 28 years old, she hadn't had undiagnosed stomach cancer. She went into hospital on the Wednesday. With pains in her leg, I said, I'd go and go down. It was a long trip because I'd moved into the north of England. So it was a five hour drive. I said, I'll go down and see you on the Saturday, the weekend. But unfortunately she passed away on the Friday night. It was that quick.

And that left me absolutely devastated because she was the family I chose and really we'd done all of our sort of growing up together. You know, those great milestones of going out to our first gay bar. She'd I'd got married to my partner and she'd been my best man. I'd been there when she first got together with her partner and all of a sudden this, the best person in my life at the time who I could depend on and who is going to help me get out of a toxic relationship.

She she'd passed away and I had no best friends. No escape plan anymore. And that's when I first started shifting from being a weekend binge drink, who did it socially and mainly out of the house to, I started buying alcohol on my way back from work. I'd start with the half sort of bottles of gin. I think that was what I started on. And I'd buy one of those every day and I would drink it on my own, my partner at the time, we wouldn't have approved of me drinking a home.

So I used to do it secretly. I tried putting I'd changed with whiskey and vodka, and I decided on vodka in the end because I thought it smelled the least, it was the least likely to be detected and I'd start sneaking that in coffee. And then I realized that, well, actually, they now you've got hot water on it. There's fumes going about the room. So I would then deliberately offer to make cups of tea and coffee in the evening, but my coffee would be cold and I would put vodka in cold coffee.

So I could sit there in front of the television, pretending everything was normal whilst I'm actually drinking a cup of cold coffee that is in fact half vodka and just try and act as sober as possible. And I was doing this more and more often. And now I still go out to the weekends and drink or deliberately make excuses. If my partner was going out and say, Up for it. I wasn't feeling well. And then I'd drink a lot more at home than I would have done if I had gone out.

The other thing that changed to that age is my tolerance for alcohol increased. So, whereas when I had been younger, I would probably drink until I became ill and was sick. And then that would be the end of the night. And I'd put myself to bed after a few glasses of water. Now I would just be able to continue drinking and drinking without ever being sick. And all that would happen was I'd become more and more drunk. My brain would stop recording what ever it was that I would do.

And I would just wake up without any memory of the second half of the evening. And it, that was the point where just blackout for me, became the norm. And blackout was actually what I wanted. I wanted, I was drinking not to have a good time anymore. I was drinking to. Reach a state of oblivion. And I always got that fast forward a few years and I found a new partner. Everything was really good, actually is really happy, good relationship.

And everything that was wrong with my first relationship seemed to be right with this one. It was genuinely loving and caring. We loved and cared for each other a lot. There was none of that toxicity. But the one thing I hadn't been able to change from my first relationship was this relationship I now had with alcohol. So everything was okay except for the drinking. And that was something I couldn't stop. Even when I was happy now I was just, it was habit. It was routine.

I, it wasn't any longer a choice. And I was in that relationship for seven years. And my partner left because of my drinking. I've been given an ultimatum. So it's me or the drink, because I can't put up with nursing. You looking after you anymore, you disappearing at night, you as breaking bones and having accidents, I'd get depressed and I'd overdose on, on painkillers and got to the point. And we said, look, I can't, I can't do this to myself anymore. It's me or the drink.

And I chose the drink and it's awful to look back and see that. But that's, that's the choice I made his drink had been there all my life. It is what is one constant one dependable through the good times and the bad. And that was probably the strongest and longest relationship I'd had was with alcohol. And I went with alcohol and, and stop. Relationship with a guy.

Well, let's say that I knew who was also a heavy drinker and there was, there was a moment actually, because I knew this person as a friend before we were actually split up with my partner and my partner at the time he used to say to me, all I want is for you to be the best version of yourself. And the time I thought that that was a lot of hard work to try and be the best version of yourself all the time. And, and that's, that's a lot of hard work.

Whereas my friend who'd you know, had the, at the Hawks for me for a while, let's say, and he said to me, I'm happy with you as the worst version of yourself. And I thought, well that's so then I don't have to any self-improvement. I can drink as much as I like, because this person has. He's happy with that version of myself and because he's doing exactly the same thing, it's I, there's no expectation I can get as drunk and as disgusting as I like, and this person's going to be okay with that.

That was a very easy option for me. So I went into that relationship with pretty awful consequences because we were both terrible drinkers. It's how we bonded. We didn't actually have that much in common other than we liked drinking to excess. And it was that it was, we drank and we had a good sex life. But that was the only clue. And unfortunately, I mean, I become a very depressive.

He became a very angry, drunk, and sometimes that then descended into violence and there is a few, a few times where he sort of beat me pretty badly. And I'd always tell myself, well, what do you expect? I mean, I would be very forgiving because I'm thinking, oh no, one's their best self when they're drunk. It wasn't him. It was the drink. And to an extent that's true because none of us are our best selves when we drink. And we do things that we wouldn't do when we're sober.

So, and at car, I think he's a lovely guy, but it's like with myself, we just don't mix with drink and we do not become our best selves when we drink. But I had to call the halter because it'd been a few times he'd been a bit violent. And then one day when we were out in London, in Soho, having. I don't really remember what happened, but I've pieced it together.

But he smashed my head against a wall outside, outside a bar and, and I was taken by ambulance to hospital and had to have 12 staples in my head to get my scalp put back together. And at that point, I thought you may be a worthless drunk because I had so much so such low self esteem, but you're gonna have to do yourself a favor. This is kind of continuous happened too many times.

And so well that I finished that and I had decided I would try and work on my sobriety for a bit, but I didn't really have any of that skills. And now I was just living totally on my own and on my own meant that nobody was watching and all the things I used to do secret. Home with the drinking. I could, I no longer had to hide and it was quite liberating in a way, because I could just drink as much as I liked on the sofa. And I would, I'd just buy the full bottles of vodka.

Most nights I'd have work the next day. But I just buy them and I wouldn't spend money on mixes because I always thought, well, it's money. I spend on a mixer that could be money towards my next, my next bottle of vodka, because it all adds up. And I'd buy the cheapest vodka possible. And I I'd have a routine where I went to a different off license, which I think you'd call it a liquor store, a different liquor store each day to buy it so that none of them would think I was an alcoholic.

You know, they would only see me once every three days. If they saw me the same time every day, they'd be judgmental and think, well, look, he's got a problem, so I didn't want them to think I had a problem. So I had a mix up the the liquor stores that I went to. Often Irish then top up again, during the evening, I'd go out for a bottle of vodka. I would drink until the whole bottle is done. Neat. Cause I didn't want to waste money on mixes that diluted it.

And unfortunately for me, within a 10 minute walk of my house, there are 3 24 hour off licenses. So that meant when I finished drinking at 2:00 AM, there was always the opportunity to walk up the road and buy even more, which I would often do. By now I am thoroughly alcohol dependent. I am drinking every night. Sometimes I could miss out on Monday off and to recover from the weekend and then sometimes the Tuesday as well, but Wednesday definitely I'd be drinking.

I was going as, I mean in an orchestra. I don't have much orchestra and on Wednesday evenings we'd have rehearsals. And then every Wednesday on the way back from rehearsals, I'd stopped off at the liquor store. And that would be my, the beginning of my weekend.

If I hadn't already actually drunk on Monday and Tuesday, and every morning I wake up, I try and drink as I'd actually drink the the, the mouthwash and have a whole packet of chewing gum, wash myself thoroughly because you could smell alcohol coming out my pores and try and make yourself look as respectful as possible and go to work. And my office was a four minute walk from my house. So that was nice and convenient, but by the time I arrived, I would be absolutely covered in sweat.

And I was, have to go and get a load of paper towel, and I'd have to dry my brow off several times. And then just sit down with a window open. And that was from a four minute walk. It didn't require any exertion for me to be absolutely covered and people would notice, and sometimes people would ask if I'd had a heavy night and I'd always make out that there had been some sort of celebration or just put myself in a distant corner so that people couldn't see or smell me and smell my breath.

And this carried on me on my own in the evening. And I started seeing someone else, this has been, things really became, began to unravel and a size to go for a camping weekend. We both got a drink problem. So we decided that what we needed to do was go to fields in the middle of nowhere and have a few days without any. Which was a great plan actually. And first night was absolutely lovely. We went to Wales, which has just a very rural part of the UK.

So very rural country in the UK, lots of sheep and open fields and mountains and valleys. Beautiful. And the first night was lovely. We had no booze or anything. The second night we both sort of caved and we decided to we'd actually just get a few drinks. And then the idea of a few drinks started filling me with fears. Like, well, if we run out of drinks and we're not gonna be able to get any more, there's no 24 hour liquor store near here. Cause we were staying on a farm.

And so the few drinks that we decided to get for the night was one and a half liters of vodka and 16 pints of beer. We thought that should be enough for the two of us. And we made some pretty good progress on there. There's from three in the afternoon. I don't particularly remember the end of the evening of the. There was a lot of arguing and screaming. And it was a very busy campsite because it was the main public holiday of the year in the height of summer and seven 30.

The next morning, the campsite owner was knocking on the tent and saying, she'd never had so many complaints or heard such disgusting language in her entire life. And that we had to leave the camp site within half an hour. Otherwise she would call the police and I'm still feeling really quite drunk at this point. I'm, I'm S I'm not hung over. I'm still drunk. And we just had, we dismantled the tent as quickly as possible. And we just got out of there.

I was thinking, well, I'm too drunk to drive. So I plan to drive to the nearest village, which was about a mile away. And I knew there, there was a cafe and a car park, and we could have breakfast and try and make ourselves human. So I, I did that drove up the road, but unbeknownst to me. The campsite owner had already called the police and said she was about to expel a couple of people who she thought would be over the influence.

So she had already called and when I got to the village and started filling up with petrol at the petrol station, the police were already there. And that resulted in a, a DUI, I think a driving ban of 18 months, the fines and legal costs came to over 1500 pounds. So I think that's what about 17, $1,800. And that meant I couldn't drive anymore, which was terrible.

And we'll also what that meant is I never had to worry again about whether I'd be safe to drive when I needed to, because I was never going to drive. So that meant I could just drink as much as I liked anytime. And it wasn't long before. Well, a consequences of making. Driving ban was, I didn't tell work immediately. And then when they did find out I was suspended from work. So, and that the process of that was, it was very stressful. It went on for a long time and I just about saved my job.

I I appealed it and I won the case. It was at as an appeal. And I kept my job on a final written warning. And I decided to sober up not immediately after that, I drank for quite awhile. And then until the point where I had an evening where I'd been drinking for too long, true days, and with friends and cocaine then became involved and drugs is something that I've only ever done when I'm drunk, I've never been sober and thought let's have some cocaine or let's.

When I've been drinking and somebody has got some drugs and they offer it to me or offered to sell it to me, I'm making bad choices by this point. And sometimes I've taken drugs and not even known about it until I've been shown video evidence the next day of taking speed or some things. I don't remember that part of the evening, I was already in blackout and at the end of this two hour binge. So I two day binge on alcohol and cocaine. I was just, I was in the pit of despair and I wanted to die.

And I, I just, I was just lying down on the road, waiting and side to that. I just was going to lie on the road and wait for something to run me over. I just hoping a fairly fast and big vehicle would come along. And I was taken to hospital to the psychiatric assessment. I was released, I was given some, you know I had to have some therapy. But I was so decided that this alcohol has got to go. This relationship with alcohol has, is, has turned very, very sour.

And that's when I decided to, to give it up. And I did a lot of hard work. We, the country went into lockdown then as well. So I, I decided I wanted to give it up and I phoned my parents and I said, dad, look, I can't control my alcohol anymore. Do you mind if I come and live with you for a bit? I, I was fed up with living on my own. I didn't trust myself. I knew that if I was living on my own, if I had a craving, I would go out and I'd buy alcohol and there'd be no one to monitor me.

And so I asked my dad if he had like. Lip with them for a bit. And I stayed there a week and then the next week we were down in lockdown. So it was actually quite good timing because that meant actually we weren't going to be leaving the house for three months and I did not want to do lockdown on my own. So as the pups were all closed and ship shopping was limited.

And I was staying with my parents that was actually locked down, was a real blessing for me because I didn't have to give them to any social pressures to drink. There were none, I didn't, I didn't get bored and go to the pub or the bar because they will shop. And I continued like that for three months. Then I decided I've got to have a stab at living on my own and keeping myself safe because I'm a grownup and that's what I should be doing.

I can't be living with me with my parents at the age of 38. And I went back and everything was going pretty well and I wasn't drinking. Very bored and very lonely. I think one thing I discovered in that sort of early sobriety was that I, one, I didn't really have any friends that weren't drinking buddies. And secondly, that I was terrible at entertaining myself for the entirety of my adult life. My entertainment had been pouring poison down my throat. That's just what I did for fun.

And I hadn't really had any hobbies and interests and stuff that didn't involve poisoning myself since my teens. And I've got all this time now I'm not drinking and I'm not spending hours and hours recovering from drinking and then sleep I'm, I've called her this time. And I have no idea how to fill it. So I suppose like I formed a couple of a couple of new addictions during that sort of early period. One was I downloaded Grindr again and just buzz as promiscuous as I could.

That gave me a sense of validation. And I didn't feel so lonely for a few minutes when everything, you know, for the half hour or so, they would spend there. And the other one was crossword puzzles. I did 200 in a week. That was, I'm glad to say that I've got the the grinder things gone. That was a, yeah, I've managed to wean myself off that, but every now and then I can't help myself with a crossword puzzle.

And then the winter months came along and it was October and I've always had a real struggle. I mean, I'm in the UK, the weather isn't famously great here. We have quite nice summers, but from, from October through through to April, rarely, it can be fairly grim and it's not the sort of weather you want to be going out in. And it's, we have a phrase here it's like, oh, it never rains in pups. That's one thing we say, it's like, what should we do? It's raining. It never rains in pubs.

That's the default option. And I was still on my own. I was getting depressed and. I went out for quiz night. I'd been socializing in pups since I'd been back and I hadn't had any problems. But this one night I I'd had a horrible week at work. I was feeling depressed. I started dating someone who decided to end it and I'd been drinking Coca-Cola in the pub all night and with the cocktail menu in front of me. And I thought, you know what? I could have just one I've control.

I've learned to master this. Now my relationship with alcohol must be different. And so I had one and then I had a second and I got drunk really quickly. I had not had a drink for seven months and then I had a third and I think I was really quite trunk by three sort of double measures of Jack Daniels and Coke. And then we went to a back to a friends and I remember having one drink there. And that's where the end of the night was for me. I don't remember the rest of it.

And needless to say, though, there'd been some drama and I. I was arrested and for for like just terpenes and I couldn't remember any of the nights, so that was my, so my first night back with alcohol after seven months, and I was back in the police elsewhere, you know, the second time, maybe third and my life. And I then drank that, that, that one drink that I was going to have, allow myself to have.

Cause I obviously could drink, come to control through not drinking for seven months while that lasts. That was a four month binge. So it wasn't then until the February, I actually managed to stop drinking again again, I'd had a, a night of binge drinking or two, another two days of binge drinking. Actually it was, and cocaine had been involved. And again, I, as up at the psychiatric. And that was the first time I've ever had.

I've lost over 24 hours to blackout because as far as I was concerned, I'd gone out, I'd got really drunk. And then I passed out and woke up the next day. But what had actually happened is that I'd had some sleep I'd woken up. I've been drinking as soon as I caught up, I try and get out the day I went to sleep again. It's just, I had lost a whole day and I'd been talking and I'd been, you know, I'd been active during that day, but I just don't remember the entire day.

So I just, I thought I'd woken up and fallen asleep and woken up the next morning, but I'd fallen asleep. I had a whole day of activity gone asleep again and then work just lost a whole day. And that was pretty scary. And so then I started the process again, it was a bit different this time. I thought, you know what? That seven months of sobriety. It wasn't a waste because there was some really important skills that I learned and put into practice and I can do it again.

The most important thing I learned through that first stretch of sobriety was that it was possible for me because before that I thought I am a hopeless, cause recovery is not possible for me. And I had proven myself wrong. And so I thought, well, actually it is possible for me. And I've learned some useful coping mechanisms and I've also learned that even when I'm feeling like I've got a lot of sobriety behind me, my sobriety is really fragile. You're not don't kid yourself.

You're not ever going to just have one. And so I lodged myself back into it and that was just over 10 months ago and touch wood still going strong. I have absolutely no desire to ever tell. Drink again. And I, I think this time I managed to model my life around not drinking. I've got a social life. I've got, I've got with friends who don't drink. I got better friends. Now. I'm not trying to just do everything I used to do, but without alcohol there's everyone else's drinking.

Cause that's bloody miserable. I've discovered drunk. People are very annoying when you're the most annoying person in the bar. You don't notice that. Sorry, when you're the drunkest person in the body, don't notice that. And that's always what I was. And, but when you're sober, you can enjoy the first half of the evening. And then once they put, everybody's had three or four drinks, it's all downhill from there.

And all the things that you used to think were hilarious are actually just very annoying and usually are then just go home early and let them descend into chaos, not go home, feeling a bit frustrated that I hadn't enjoyed myself. So I think this time it's different. I'm not going to say never because that's setting myself up for failure. If I become too confident, then I might become complacent. So I'm not going to say that I'm never going to drink again.

Cause I honestly thought I wouldn't drink again last time, but I am just a lot more circumspect now and I do more to protect my sobriety. I don't take it for granted and think is something that I've nailed. I know it's fragile and it's, I know it's something that I have to maintain every day.

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