This Sunday will be my five years anniversary of being teetotal.
Yes, I am now going to talk about how interesting and troubled I am, please bear with me.
7th June 2004, the worst hangover of my life. The culmination of years of suicidal thoughts and an attachment to the drink, and there I was down in Glasgow Green, on the verge of jumping in the Clyde. When I realised that I really was minutes away from death, that’s when I realised how much I wanted to live.
I made the decision that I could never have another drink in my life. One drink would lead to another, either that day or a week later, and that would lead to more drinking, which would lead me straight back to being on the verge of topping myself. Only next time I would probably do it.
And that was that, really. Five years “dry”, as they say. Five years, and I’m still not sure if I’m an alcoholic.
I feel pretentious calling myself an alcoholic, because I didn’t tan a bottle of voddy a day or drink in the morning, but I think I was an alcoholic. Alcohol mattered more to me than anything else. I would have traded everything in for the booze. I remember thinking at the time that if I had to make the choice between the booze and everything else – everything else being my relationship, my pals, my job, a roof over my head, everything – I would have chosen the booze. Losing everything would free me to do the one and only thing I wanted to do with my life, and was to be drunk, all the fucking time, guilt free and without consequence.
But does that make me an alcoholic, or does that make me mental?
It doesn’t really matter, probably. The important thing is that giving up was the best thing I’ve ever done. And that I’m not dead.
