As I wrote that post I was acutely aware I was romanticising 'the good old days'. I enjoyed my days of excess, they shaped my career, my personality, they were central to my understanding of the world. I can now see that although heavy drinking and casual drug use advanced my network, made me a popular and successful writer, defined who I was and how I arrived there, it also destroyed my life, in many ways.
My wife jumped off a motorway bridge, the fall didn't kill her, the Citroen that followed did, I have spoken to the driver, the event hasn't done him any favours either.
This is not a recent event, this event happened twelve years ago. I went for counselling, I drank, I tried my absolute best to not let this mess me up, I drank, I sometimes took drugs, I became overly interested in having sex with lots of women, I drank some more. I failed at not letting this event mess me up, it messed me up good.
A result of the suicide of your wife turns out to be a general lack of trust in relationships, close personal relationships become impossible. You yearn for the interpersonal bond and attempt to give it back, sometimes you succeed in creating a believable version of a deep bond of trust but as time passes the holes become rather visible.
I am not an alcoholic because my wife killed herself, I am an alcoholic because when life threw me a difficult situation I didn't deal with it as well as I needed to. I took all the right steps but I didn't do it sober, I drank, I continued to drink but then I stopped.
Twelve years on and I have dealt with this situation as well as I needed to, sober. I have had some glorious years running away from this, my life has been fully acceptable. The problem has not been success or money or my amazing kids, which I have a great relationship with. The problem is that my inability to trust someone enough to really love them again makes long term commitments fall apart. My inability to deal with this issue made me almost always drunk.
I fell in love with someone two years ago, we got together and things were great, then good, then got a bit not so great. Then, out of the blue she asked me to move out, as this has become a regular thing I decided to work out why?
I don't want to relapse because when you deal with things sober they actually get dealt with, as you experience the pain you deal with the things you need to learn from the pain, no deferring the pain and its lessons, living with it and understanding it happens.
The amazing woman I was living with did love me, and I loved her, but I didn't trust her love or fully mean mine. I can pin this all on event or I can grow up and learn. I am finding sobriety lonely, I have not yet completely understood the manual that does not come with being sober. There are things I can't let go of yet that make socialising with estate agents or product design managers awkward. I delve deeply into life, as a drunk I was emotional about it, compelling and accurate maybe but drunk all the same. Now I enjoy clarity with a sober acceptance I still find I ask too much of people, maybe us folk with an addictive past care more post rehabilitation, we probably get annoying.
I understand addiction is now considered a disease. Having spent six months of honest personal acceptance I can see I have a life event that disturbed my ability to deal with stuff. Regardless of that event I think I am one of those people that just have no choice when it comes to acting in addictive ways. Unfortunately I just had to research the dark side to appreciate the light.
I think my former life of drinking had its place in my evolution, I have moments of wonder as well as regrets and many other negatives a drunken life creates but nothing that will call me back to the lies and the deceit the life of an alcoholic provides.
My life has been full of fun, adventures and ridiculous situations. I now recognise that being drunk made most of them happen. Being sober does not seem to make these things happen, ergo, my nostalgia for the 'good old days' has its place.
I really struggle relating to people, I find most people's lives tiresome, dull at best, inconsequential if I am feeling dramatic. Yet I aspire to this life of mediocrity, I genuinely wish I cared less.
I am on this site because I am an alcoholic, I have stopped drinking for six months and I am proud of that, it has improved my life and I appreciate all those improvements but I am lonely and I crave human interaction. As a drunk that interaction came easily, now it does not.
I will stay sober, maybe one day my sober self will be as interesting as my drunken self? What I need is some friends and in a world without booze for a forty year old writer with a history of drunken nonsense pickings are slim. There is a perception of me that no longer applies, a person people expect to meet but now they get a sober version that doesn't fit at all, it's quite boring.