Against the ropes

You know things are bad when I, of all people, start using sports metaphors. To be fair, I do feel like I’m fighting against myself at the moment. My post-ex-girlfriend-dying meltdown has reached a crescendo, getting to the point where I was drinking a litre of cheap supermarket whisky a day. That’s not an exaggeration, it really was cheap and nasty stuff.

What made me hit rock bottom, you ask?

Well, to cut a long story short, I sent a flirty message to one of the bartenders at my regular pub on Facebook, which he had a massive sense of humour failure about. The next time I went in there, he refused to serve me and got the manager to give me a private talking to. I was devastated. While I wasn’t banned or anything, I politely finished the one drink the manager did serve me, left on the verge of tears, and haven’t been back since, opting instead for staying at home, alone, and attempting to drink myself to death with the above cheap spirits.

Sigh.

What can I say, I don’t work there, the message was sent privately on social media (he'd accepted my genuine and innocent friend request months before), and I wasn’t in the pub at the time. I’m still not sure why the pub had to get involved but, well, they did. I just don’t know what to do or say, so I’ll probably never return. I knew it was a mistake to try bonding with those people. I always… ALWAYS… manage to screw things up. If I do find a new pub, I’ll just go back to sitting quietly in the corner trying to remain as anonymous as possible. That way I won’t hurt, annoy, or embarrass anyone.

Well, that was two months ago now, and I finally got fed up of the whole drinking-myself-to-death thing. It didn’t seem to be working, obviously, and being a full-blown alcoholic, rather than just a scrappy little binge-drinker, is very expensive and time-consuming. Plus, unfortunately, even if you give up on life, life doesn’t give up on you. The bastards keep sending you letters and trying to call. So, yeah, I haven’t drank in a week, and I’m hoping to keep it that way indefinitely. My recovery tactic is to just eat whenever I feel like a drink. Eating always makes me happy and puts me off boozing, so it seemed logical. I’ve just put in a grocery order filled with instant noodles, soups, couscous, bags of pre-prepared stir fry vegetables and the like, which I’ll snack on throughout each day to keep my brain from trying to convince me to drink. It’s VERY good at doing that. Plus there’s lots of local takeaways to splurge on, should I find myself really struggling.

Actually, today is the first day where I’ve started feeling positive and upbeat. The hangover from two months of heavy drinking took that long to shake off. It had gotten that bad. I’m not sure what my long-term plan is, but at least it’s not whatever I’ve been doing lately. I’ve got plenty of audiobooks and DVDs and guitars to get on with playing, so I’ll just focus on that for now. Let’s face it, going to the pub just means sitting quietly in another dark room not doing much, so I may as well do that at home and save my pennies.

And sanity.

I’m sure I’ll crack in a few days, especially if some new disaster is looming but, well, at least I can say I’ve tried.

Not that I’m cynical or anything.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!