“I’ll put you on this cutting edge medicine,” he said.
“But no alcohol. Deal?”
We shook on it.
(Even if I hadn’t agreed, he’d have put me on it. I mean it’s not a binding kinda zero sum thing is it.)
It was a good deal for me. My bones were turning into cinder toffee. My back had collapsed on itself. I had thirteen – 13 – pressure fractures in vertebrae. That’s a lot. It hurt. I couldn’t walk without sticks.
I've lost six inches in height after my spine collapsed. I'm lucky to be walking at all, I know that.
Thirty five years gone in one handshake.
I meant it, too. No alcohol. Deal. Shake. Done.
Fuck, the evenings were boring. Long. Weird.
Fuck, the journeys home were longer and bumpier.
But weirdly I didn’t mind going for a pint which was non-alcoholic. The main problem there is that you get bloated way quicker somehow.
That first pint, the cold, wonderful nectar on a hot day – still magnificent. So it wasn’t really the alcohol there that was doing it was it?
I’ve not been on a long-ass away trip with footy though. That’s a tricky one to navigate. But I probably will do it. And I probably will navigate it. (I reserve the right to access herbal medicine, though. Come off it).
I have to say that the Universe is doing its best to make me get pissed. But so far, I’ve managed to swerve that somehow.
And if I did slip, did drink – well, just don’t do it again. I mean that’s the way to be kind to yourself isn’t it. Nobody’s perfect and all that.
It gets easier. You can easily fill the time with searching for the perfect NA drink. It doesn’t exist in the same way that the perfect pint doesn’t exist, and nor should it. The fun is in the search and the trying and the putting-it-on-ice and the supping. The whole point of beer is that it’s there to be drunk then pissed away again. Alcohol or no. But after a couple of months it’s kind of a dull thing to consider anyway. Drink, don’t drink, who gives a fuck and what the hell was all that fuss about?
Stu, a brilliant writer and top bloke, said once that he hated drinking but wouldn’t stop. That’s familiar (he has stopped, and continues to be stopped, but if he slips – he’ll get back up and start stopping again). Wouldn’t, not couldn’t. I think that’s an important distinction.
Going For A Pint is alright isn’t it. Running to catch the offy and buying two bottles of cheap wine in case you run out and want a drink is not alright, I don’t think. Being a grown-up on paper means being able to buy small bottles for the journey home and a big bottle to have with dinner and another big bottle in case we want more after the big bottle runs out, and oh fuck it another one for tomorrow but yeah ok one more before bed and let's open it and away it all goes. Being an adult by dint of age means being able to buy a bottle of cheap rum and necking it all to chase down oblivion.
But you always wake up again and feel like shite.
If you drink, you get hungover so deal with it. I used to tell people and myself that all the time. It’s true but at some point drinking ceases to be social and fun and begins to be an activity that is circular and thus pointless. Drink-bed-wake up-work-drink-bed-wake up-work etc etc. That I could function for so long on that locus isn’t anything I’m proud of, or actually ashamed of either, and now each and every second of every minute my bones tell me I fucked it up.
Mind you, says a little voice in my brain, it could easily just be a quirk of genetics.
Also true, I suppose. Also true.
I mean I smoked like an absolute bastard for 10 years nearly exactly: 20-40 rollies a day, unfiltered. Cough cough, horrendous stink, and my desk was a fucking nightmare of ash and crud. Disgusting, really. Now that’s a fool’s game, smoking. Terrible. Bad For The Bones. (The worst blues song of all time.) I’ve done nearly 20 years off of that stupid shit and I think technically it means I am back to the baseline of a non-smoker. That does feel good.
So a year NA done and I don’t think I feel a single iota better in general, given the pain and whatnot. On the other hand, maybe I’ll get to still be able to walk properly for the rest of my days. On the other foot. Strange phrasing. Strange days.
Stopping getting drunk, stopping taking alcohol, is not the same as stopping smoking was. I did like being drunk – sometimes. What’s the equivalent for a smoker? A really nice cigarette? Nah. They do exist now and again, nice cigarettes, and sometimes a rollie could inexplicably taste of coffee or something. Tastebuds burning out with a last flourish, is all. Drinking leads to being drunk. Turning the world off outside and inside your head, if you’re lucky. But a lot of the time it just pokes demons and traps them inside you, which is way worse. And the doom’s never too far away.
Taking alcohol. That's how David Nutt describes it in his ace book about it. Taking it. A drug. If only that framing dominated.
A year. My mind is clearer, I think. I used to think I could feel my brain losing its power. Maybe I could. Maybe my vocabulary’s returning: I can even remember where I am in books I’m reading now.
Still, if they invented alcohol without the bone-crumbling side of it I’d probably be one of the first in line to give it a go. As I write that I can hear most of my brain railing against the prospect. That’s gotta be good, hasn’t it. Something's being reprogrammed. Overwritten. Tentatively, then stronger.
Logic has nothing to do with it, though. Feeling will always take the lead. Alcohol without the bad shit? Bring on the cocktails: I’d line them up and neck them one by one, and let the devil take the hindmost.
The cutting-edge medicine doesn’t appear to have done a great deal for me. I’m not gonna have any more scans til the course is over, and I’m only just coming up to about a year on it. The first year of two. Perhaps by the end of the 24 months I’ll be absolutely flying and pain-free. At this moment I am neither. Trying to calibrate various pain-relieving tips and tricks, medicines from various plants and molecules. Some send me to semi-sleep. Some put a half-smile on my face. But none of them have the wonderful, deeply treacherous blanket of familiar sinking self-abused comfort as a quarter bottle of whisky does. So they pale in comparison.
Hey though. A year. That’s good. That’s great. I don’t need to drink and never did. I needed to fuck everything off, including my whizzing brain. And alcohol could do that. A bit. Sometimes.
All I need to do is walk (stumble, stagger, limp) less than 50 yards and I could re-up my booze again. It’s legal and I’m old enough to do it. I just haven’t for a year, and I don’t think I’m going to do it today either.
No guarantees, mind. Just a handshake with a consultant a year ago.
Really though it was finally a handshake with myself.
Ultimately, that’s the only real deal that ever matters.
