[Drinking] How's your drinking ?

Poojah said:

How's my drinking? Wow, there's a big question. For me anyway. It's ****ing great as it happens. If you're a brewery.

I'm probably about to open up waaay more than I should, but I'm going to on account of the fact that it's 9pm on a Saturday night and I'm already pretty much shitfaced. What else is there to do? I grew up in a middle class home, but one which was fraught with domestic abuse. My mum took her share of it, but I took the brunt from a pretty young age - 5 or 6 I think. My sister escaped any direct harm, but she recently shared that she's spent thousands on counselling to deal with what she witnessed. I've never done that. I still feel the guilt of ducking a punch meant for me that instead caught my dear old mum and knocked her clean out. She called in sick at work for the next two weeks, until the bruises had died down enough for makeup to do its job.

My mid-to-late teens were a nightmare. Mum refused to leave dad, despite my advice. There was constant conflict. Realising that I was the accelerant to pretty much every argument, I would keep well out of the way until both had retired to bed. I would head downstairs shortly after midnight most nights, microwave myself a Rustlers burger, watch re-runs of South Park and drink until I passed out. This pretty much from 16 all the way until I left home a couple of years later.

I actually met my wife the same day I left home aged 18 - and I'm 34 now with two absolutely beautiful kids. I think it took her a little while to spot the difference in patterns between youthful, social drinking escapades and an unhealthy, habitual relationship with booze that wasn't going to disappear with maturity and responsibility. She was too emotionally involved by then, even if I'd tried to warn her in the early months of our relationship. I think she took it as the drunken ramblings of the emotional young man I was back in 2003/4, but part of me wishes, for her sake, that she'd taken on board what I'd had to say.

My twenties were spent drinking habitually, but relatively harmlessly. I'd get through five or six tins a night, but such was my body's tolerance I would never be what most people would consider 'drunk'. I was drinking to feel mellow, to feel normal.

The problem is that you can't drink like that, and eat like shit, and remain in shape. In February 2016, I arrived at the cardiology unit at Leeds General Infirmary for a check-up on a congenital heart defect that had been spotted during a routine check-up a couple of years earlier. I'm 6ft 1, and at that moment in time, tipped the scales at around 17 stone. My condition had worsened, and would likely need major surgery in the next 5 to 20 years. Whether it was 5, or 20, was essentially up to me.

After heading back to the office in shock, chainsmoking 8 fags, going for 3 pints on my lunch break and grabbing a selection of Greggs pasties I made a vow to sort myself out. And I did to be fair. Cut out booze completely during the week, healthy diet, gym 5 times a week, supplements galore. I went from being a 17 stone lard arse to being 10.5 stone and, for a short period last summer at least, absolutely ripped. Six pack and everything. It was unreal - many people said so.

But it could never last. Whenever booze was available, I would take it. Abstinence made the thirst even worse. Last August, we took a family holiday to an all inclusive holiday in Mexico. We flew with the now defunct Thomas Cook. We were delayed by 24 hours, and so on eventual arrival at the check-in desk we were given £100 in vouchers to spend in the terminal. My missus took the £25 for the kids to get some magazines and sweets and left me to my own devices. Now I'm telling you, even in an airport, give a man £75 and an hour to himself, he can get himself pretty ****ed up. How I managed to get on that plane, I don't know. I slept nearly the whole way. The two weeks that followed are mostly missing.

That was the thing. My week long abstinence seemed to make my body crave it more. And when I allowed myself to get stuck in, boy would I get stuck in. I've done some crazy shit these last couple of years, and I'm ashamed of much of it.

At 19 I found myself briefly homeless, too ashamed to tell my now wife who I was dating at the time. I spent three months living in a car I couldn't afford to fuel in the car park of Wolviston services of the A689 near Hartlepool. Possibly the lowest point of my life came when I returned from the petrol station there having bought a tin of beans I intended to eat cold, only to realise that it required a tin opener. I didn't own a tin opener.

Fast forward to now. 2020 was always going to be a big year for me. I joined a small startup in Leeds in 2006. There were 8 of us. There are now nearly 300 of us. We got bought out in 2016 by a global organisation who employ 50,000. I've received some decent rewards for the role I've played over the past 13 or so years, but this year was the big one. I had six, maybe seven figures on the line. I'm really, really conscious that I am so lucky and in a much better position than probably 97.5% of the population right now. But I've potentially lost everything I've worked for, everything I've promised my family. Everthing I've planned to do for my children. It was all nailed on, and now it's probably gone.

I've not lost my home. I've not lost my job. I won't lose either. So who the **** am I to complain? But still, after all I've worked through, all I've worked for, for it all be taken away by something that emerged from a Chinese wet market, it's absolutely galling.

So yeah, how's my drinking? Steady away...

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Jimmy Grimble said:

Fair play for putting that out there. I hope that’s lifted some weight off your mind. Good luck in the weeks ahead. Look after yourself.

Click to expand...

Poojah said:

How's my drinking? Wow, there's a big question. For me anyway. It's ****ing great as it happens. If you're a brewery.

I'm probably about to open up waaay more than I should, but I'm going to on account of the fact that it's 9pm on a Saturday night and I'm already pretty much shitfaced. What else is there to do? I grew up in a middle class home, but one which was fraught with domestic abuse. My mum took her share of it, but I took the brunt from a pretty young age - 5 or 6 I think. My sister escaped any direct harm, but she recently shared that she's spent thousands on counselling to deal with what she witnessed. I've never done that. I still feel the guilt of ducking a punch meant for me that instead caught my dear old mum and knocked her clean out. She called in sick at work for the next two weeks, until the bruises had died down enough for makeup to do its job.

My mid-to-late teens were a nightmare. Mum refused to leave dad, despite my advice. There was constant conflict. Realising that I was the accelerant to pretty much every argument, I would keep well out of the way until both had retired to bed. I would head downstairs shortly after midnight most nights, microwave myself a Rustlers burger, watch re-runs of South Park and drink until I passed out. This pretty much from 16 all the way until I left home a couple of years later.

I actually met my wife the same day I left home aged 18 - and I'm 34 now with two absolutely beautiful kids. I think it took her a little while to spot the difference in patterns between youthful, social drinking escapades and an unhealthy, habitual relationship with booze that wasn't going to disappear with maturity and responsibility. She was too emotionally involved by then, even if I'd tried to warn her in the early months of our relationship. I think she took it as the drunken ramblings of the emotional young man I was back in 2003/4, but part of me wishes, for her sake, that she'd taken on board what I'd had to say.

My twenties were spent drinking habitually, but relatively harmlessly. I'd get through five or six tins a night, but such was my body's tolerance I would never be what most people would consider 'drunk'. I was drinking to feel mellow, to feel normal.

The problem is that you can't drink like that, and eat like shit, and remain in shape. In February 2016, I arrived at the cardiology unit at Leeds General Infirmary for a check-up on a congenital heart defect that had been spotted during a routine check-up a couple of years earlier. I'm 6ft 1, and at that moment in time, tipped the scales at around 17 stone. My condition had worsened, and would likely need major surgery in the next 5 to 20 years. Whether it was 5, or 20, was essentially up to me.

After heading back to the office in shock, chainsmoking 8 fags, going for 3 pints on my lunch break and grabbing a selection of Greggs pasties I made a vow to sort myself out. And I did to be fair. Cut out booze completely during the week, healthy diet, gym 5 times a week, supplements galore. I went from being a 17 stone lard arse to being 10.5 stone and, for a short period last summer at least, absolutely ripped. Six pack and everything. It was unreal - many people said so.

But it could never last. Whenever booze was available, I would take it. Abstinence made the thirst even worse. Last August, we took a family holiday to an all inclusive holiday in Mexico. We flew with the now defunct Thomas Cook. We were delayed by 24 hours, and so on eventual arrival at the check-in desk we were given £100 in vouchers to spend in the terminal. My missus took the £25 for the kids to get some magazines and sweets and left me to my own devices. Now I'm telling you, even in an airport, give a man £75 and an hour to himself, he can get himself pretty ****ed up. How I managed to get on that plane, I don't know. I slept nearly the whole way. The two weeks that followed are mostly missing.

That was the thing. My week long abstinence seemed to make my body crave it more. And when I allowed myself to get stuck in, boy would I get stuck in. I've done some crazy shit these last couple of years, and I'm ashamed of much of it.

At 19 I found myself briefly homeless, too ashamed to tell my now wife who I was dating at the time. I spent three months living in a car I couldn't afford to fuel in the car park of Wolviston services of the A689 near Hartlepool. Possibly the lowest point of my life came when I returned from the petrol station there having bought a tin of beans I intended to eat cold, only to realise that it required a tin opener. I didn't own a tin opener.

Fast forward to now. 2020 was always going to be a big year for me. I joined a small startup in Leeds in 2006. There were 8 of us. There are now nearly 300 of us. We got bought out in 2016 by a global organisation who employ 50,000. I've received some decent rewards for the role I've played over the past 13 or so years, but this year was the big one. I had six, maybe seven figures on the line. I'm really, really conscious that I am so lucky and in a much better position than probably 97.5% of the population right now. But I've potentially lost everything I've worked for, everything I've promised my family. Everthing I've planned to do for my children. It was all nailed on, and now it's probably gone.

I've not lost my home. I've not lost my job. I won't lose either. So who the **** am I to complain? But still, after all I've worked through, all I've worked for, for it all be taken away by something that emerged from a Chinese wet market, it's absolutely galling.

So yeah, how's my drinking? Steady away...

Click to expand...

Jimmy Grimble said:

Fair play for putting that out there. I hope that’s lifted some weight off your mind. Good luck in the weeks ahead. Look after yourself.

Click to expand...

Jimmy Grimble said:

Does anyone have a link to the giving up booze/dry January continued type thread?

Would be interested to read how that went for people as I’m taking this situation as an opportunity to have some time off alcohol.

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Bozza said:

You seem to be replying to me as if I'd said "I'm drinking a lot, but I always drink a lot". That's not the case.

As I've already said, I went over consecutive 200 days without a drink last year and, in fact, I went about 45 days without a drink at the beginning of this year. There are several threads on here where I, and others, chronicled our changing relationship with booze.

And, whilst my drinking has increased over the last couple of weeks, I could reduce it or stop again at any time I choose. I've just not chosen to. However, I had already decided that I'd go back to "event drinking" only after tonight. Events are few and far between right now, obviously, so it will just be virtual get togethers with friends as and when they happen, for the foreseeable.

Now, please excuse me - I have some cider to smash through.

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