I’m coming up on 13 years Livin’ La Vida Sober. No drugs. No booze. Just a shit tonne of sugar. Which OK, yeah, that’s probbaly a drug. And swearing. Not a drug. Fuck, I’m not a saint. Just sober.
I’ve tried to write about my sober journey a few times, and it always ends up a bit fucking preachy for my liking. And a bit long. Which, considering how much I usually write, is saying something.
Today I’m just gonna say this then: one of the reasons I first gave up when I was 25, was because of time. There was so much I wanted to do, and I couldn’t fit it all in to my day.
So I did a bit of a stocktake on what was ‘fixed’ and what was ‘variable’ and the standout variable time pit was ‘getting on it’.
Wait. Let me back up a bit. If you’re one of those people who can have just one drink or just one puff on your crack pipe, good for you. You can probably ignore this. But that ain’t me. I’m from The School of All Or Nothing. I have two gears: ‘Full steam ahead’ and ‘dead’. I don’t even know how to spell ‘moderayshon’. Because mostly, to me it’s a bit like mediocrity, and fuck. that.
Although my views have softened on that particularly subject over the years. My news on being wasted have not. Which brings me back to what I was supposed to be writing about.
I originally gave up drinking because I just wanted to do more cool shit. And to me, getting fucked up wasn’t as cool as creating shit. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some pretty epic and hilarious times off my nut. Like that time I got my car up on two wheels and blew out not one but two tyres when I landed it. Or a pretty ridiculously unbelievable story about a high speed car chase involving guns and gangsters and various untowardness that I’ll tell when I’m confident the statute of limitations is up.
But specifically, at some point in my mid 20s, I decided I wanted to write a film. One day I caught myself telling someone I didn’t have time to write it before going out, drinking all night, and sleeping all day. And I thought, well if I’m being honest with myself here, I do have the time, I just don’t spend it doing the things that are most important to me. So I did give up. And I did write the film. It was called ‘Three Chords & The Truth’ and it was a short film about being true to yourself creatively. It was also hideously fucking earnest and cliched. And last time I read it, even I didn’t understand parts of it. But hey, I wrote it.
Next time perhaps I’ll be more specific and set the goal of writing a film that doesn’t fucking suck. Or possibly even writing a half decent film. Lesson learned.
That first time I stayed sober for three years before I decided to have ‘just one’ because I am a fucking delusional idiot sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, delusional level optimism can be endearing at times, just not when you’re a textbook addict. That one drink turned into three years back on it.
Please know, I was an excellent drunk. My partner at the time, in what seemed like a really nice thing to say but retrospectively was probably pretty lousy, even told me she liked me better when I was drunk. Because mostly I was just pretty fucking hilarious when I was drunk. And an excellent dancer.
Ultimately, I was also a bit of an annoying fuckwit. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: I’m a bit like that now sober. So multiply that by ten, divide the sense of what I say by about a million, and add in some bad dad dancing. Exactly.
I eventually gave up for another year before another bout of Delusional Optimism kicked in, before having one more drink that lasted another 12 months.
I can’t recall whether it was the first time I gave up, or the second, but I do recall being in Germany and having a beer to avoid an international incident where someone who may or may not have been me called a local something that may or may not have been rather non-complimentary. Turns out they spoke English much better than I expected, words were exchanged, and they ended up buying us a round of beers as a peace offering. Initially I intended to just pretend to drink it until they weren’t looking, but they kept looking so in the end I raised a glass to ‘world peace’ and spent the next few months, or possibly years, toasting world peace way too often.
Then, on 31 May 2007 I was in Bali and I had particularly big night out with my partner, and when I woke up the next morning, we both felt like death, probably had ethanol poisoning and questionable face tattoos, and we both declared that we were done drinking. She lasted til about 3pm that day before smashing a medicinal Bintang on the beach. I’m still done and have since had my face tattoo removed.
I could tell you all about how my life has been infinitely better since I gave up, but I won’t, because people hate preachy annoying tea teetotalers even more than they hate loud mouth militant vegans who won’t shut the fuck up about it.
I’ll probably write some more about it at some point, but that point isn’t now.
For now, I just wanted to say how much I value my time on Earth, and how I try to make the most of it, even though often I don’t, and how I didn’t actually have much of a strategy behind giving up, I literally just woke up one day and said… “fuck. that.”
PS You’re probably wondering if we really got face tattoos.
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