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Extract from Chapter 1

"Making a Decision"

Sometimes you might feel that there are two voices in your head, and these voices are having a constant argument. One is saying that you really should change your drinking, there is an urgent need. The other voice is reassuring you that despite obvious evidence to the contrary, despite your life starting to come apart at the seams, you can carry on drinking. It is saying things like:  “Well, maybe I don’t really have a problem. I don’t need to worry. Maybe, I can just leave it as it is.” But before you leave it, ask yourself a few questions to diagnose whether you really have a problem.

Here are a few common pointers that alcohol might be a problem. Do any of the following sound like you?

Do you plan your day around your drinking?

If you work, do you go to the bar as soon as the workday is done? Or do you open a bottle as soon as you get in the house? Do you find reasons to fit in a little drink during the day? If you are not working, are you looking at your watch, trying to decide when would be a decent hour to have your first drink? If you are going to eat with family or colleagues, do you suggest places where you can be sure of getting a drink?

Do you know all the best places to get a drink?

If you are buying a bottle on the way home, do you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the places that sell your favourite brand? Do you know how much it costs in different stores? If you like a cold drink, do you know which stores keep your brand chilled, so you don’t have to waste time chilling your drink when you get home? Do you know all the places that have Happy Hours? Do you know the bars where the owner is most likely to offer you a free drink on the house?

Does a delay in getting your first drink of the day put you in a panic?

Be honest with yourself. Do you start to feel a rising tide of panic when something happens to threaten your regular drink? Maybe you need to work late, but all you can think about is when you will be able to get your usual drink. Maybe a family commitment comes up and you are expected to be somewhere smiling for the family photos, but in your head, you are desperately trying to figure out how you can excuse yourself and get to that drink.

Are your friends mostly drinking buddies?

You tell your family what great friends you have - they are always there for you, at the bar. You regard non-drinkers with deep suspicion. Even some of your friends irritate you if they don’t drink fast enough. In fact, you are the fastest drinker in your group. You find excuses to squeeze in extra drinks. You pride yourself on your reputation for always being the first to arrive and the last to leave. You boast about having a high tolerance for alcohol. You joke that vodka and orange is a health drink. You love telling drinking stories.

Do you drink to escape problems?

Whenever life throws difficulty at you, then you drink. In fact, you say drink is your friend. Without it, you would be really miserable, you tell anyone who will lend you a sympathetic ear. Just look at the bills you have to pay, you say, ignoring the thousands you spend every year on booze. Look at your health problems - another reason to reach for a drink. You can’t get a decent job, and your boss is complaining about all the days you have off with mysterious stomach complaints. In fact, life is just so unfair, you deserve to have a little drink, you say.

If that wasn’t bad enough, then there are the miserable people in your family who say that if you didn’t drink, then your health would improve. You would have the money to pay your bills and you wouldn’t have to buy the weekly groceries on a credit card. You would be better thought of at your job. What do they know? They don’t understand how tough it is being you.

Does your drinking embarrass you?

You’re worried that the guys who collect your recycling think that you’re an alcoholic because of how many empties you have every week, so you sneak a few bottles into your neighbour’s recycling at night when no one’s looking.

When you go to the supermarket to buy booze, you buy a bag of salad as well as the litre of vodka, so the woman on the checkout won’t think you’re an alcoholic. Also, you don’t buy alcohol from the same store two days in a row, as you are worried that the personnel talk about the amount of booze that you buy.

When you are awake half the night throwing up, you try to convince your partner it must have been because of something not cooked right in your dinner earlier. It couldn’t have been anything to do with all the wine you drank, you say, because it was a good vintage.

When the doctor asks you how much you drink, you cringe and lie outrageously. You don’t want to get a lecture on how drink damages your health because deep down you fear what you are doing to your body.

Do you drink when you don’t want to?

Sometimes it seems like too much like hard work, but you go for a drink anyway. You don’t really feel like it, but you know you have to. You tolerate having to listen to your drinking friends telling the same old boring stories over and over again, just because you haven’t drunk enough yet. Sometimes you drink when you are unwell. You still manage to get to the store, even though you feel like you are dying.

Have you tried to moderate or stop your drinking but found it too hard?

You have woken up a hundred times, swearing that you will do something about your drinking. Usually, your resolve is short-lived and by evening you have completely forgotten and are back at the booze. Maybe now and again you have managed a few days without a drink, maybe even a dry January.  But as soon as you started again, it was like a dam bursting. You might have even gone to an AA meeting or two, but then convinced yourself that they are a bunch of cranks and it was not for you.

Do you wake up in fear of what you might have done the night before?

Some mornings you wake up in a sweat, reaching for your mobile phone, worried you have sent someone an inappropriate text or sent your boss an email saying what you really think about his management skills. Worse, you worry you might have been in a fight or driven your car to get a take away while you were blind drunk.

Do you blame other people for your drinking?

When you drink heavily because someone has upset you, you believe it is their fault that you drank. You believe that your driving ban was the police’s fault, they should have been busy catching crooks, not good citizens like you who had just had one too many.

When you drink because something goes wrong in your life, you believe it is the fault of life, or fate, or the universe that you drank. You believe that you drink because life is unfair, other people are unfair, and that you just need a good break in life, then things would be OK, and you wouldn’t need a drink.

If any of the above sound familiar, then now is the right time to make a decision. In the past, you might have made a decision to do something about your drinking many times and then a few hours later your commitment has drifted off like so much confetti in the wind. It is easy to make a decision at four o’clock in the morning when you are hugging the toilet and feeling like you are dying after a big night on the booze, but then later in the day to have forgotten all about that decision.

So this decision needs to be like no other. It is a commitment to embrace change. This goes against the instinct of an addicted person. Addiction wants to keep you in the same self-destructive loop, day after day, year after year, until it destroys you. That is what addictions do.

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