The Lucky Country
 

G'Day Mate,
Just over a year sober, this is something I threw on the barbie earlier:

Richard Wiseman did a ten-year scientific study into the nature of luck that has revealed that, to a large extent, people make their own good and bad fortune. His research revealed that "Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, making lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, creating self-fulfilling prophecies via positive expectations, and adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."

When an achievement is based on good fortune is the accolade deserved?

I am lucky. I am blessed to have been born in Australia. You can't choose your family, I couldn't choose a better one. You can choose your friends and I'm lucky they chose me. The people close to me are fun, loyal, supportive, diverse people who I can be myself around. I am gifted with a good education and lust for knowledge. I am ****** lucky.

Alcohol is normal. As a pup (child), drugs were some elusive, cool, scary, dangerous thing. Alcohol was normal. When I became an adult drinking was normal. Whether it be a party, a birthday dinner, the footy (Australian Rules Football), Friday night, a weekend away, camping, someone died, normal. Drinking 3 beers a night is normal. Drinking 12 beers in a night is normal.

When my drinking was no longer "normal" was I'm guessing about mid 2011.

Have you ever had a hair of the dog? After waking up with a splitting headache from partying for days taking a wide selection of "drugs", Alcohol fixed me up. Just to bring me back to normality. That hair of the dog lasted until June 14 2016.

Nothing terrible had happened to me, I wasn't drinking to escape the yawning blackness of reality. Booze just got me.

Alcohol began as something that was part of my identity, I'm normal, I drink just like everyone else. Then it became my whole identity, it just takes from your life until it owns your entire identity. A bit like Google. I embraced it to some extent. Ewan McGregor was an alcoholic, Samuel L., Richard Burton, they're cool. Lou Reed sings on Blue Mask

"It's the same old story, of a man and his search for glory
And he found it, underneath the bottle".

The truth is the hardest to hear when it's from yourself. I was drinking minimum 4L of 13.5% wine per day, all day, everyday. This is equivalent to over 1L of spirits a day. If I'd go out to the pub and drink beer I'd be sobering up. Depths of drunkenness are pretty horrible places. Anger, grief, hopelessness, confusion are the results. Unless you are honest with yourself no-one will be able to help you.

Again Lady Luck smiles on yours truly, I was never forced by anyone to not drink. Whether it be family, friends, police or doctors I was allowed to continue to make the choice to drink. I was 26 when I had my last drink. I decided alcohol was ruining my life and I am going to stop. I made this decision about 6 months before going to detox. My biggest fears were doing the hard part then ****** it up immediately and the hard part, detox. Alcohol withdrawals are having all your hangovers at once.

So, now I'm sober. Just over a year totally abstained. I am lucky. There's heaps of stats thrown around about success rates and the like. Success is too hard to define. If someone lapses but is still actively trying to stop drinking they have not failed. I am in a pretty rare category of someone who had a serious drinking problem that quit completely successfully on their first attempt. Is that luck?

hi Footcrazy :)

I think each of us has our time. If yours was first time out, then I'm very glad for your 'luck'.

I'm certainly lucky in a lot of ways too but I had to work hard to change myself. The booze had me by the throat.

I made my own luck in that respect and I'm assuming you did too.

I'm not one for accolades either but they're deserved I reckon :)

I'm an Aussie as well - since I got sober is that not everyone drinks the way I assumed they did.

There's a lot of normal sensible drinkers, and a lot of folks who don't drink at all.

They never registered on my radar before - I surrounded myself with drinkers like me - and it still astounds me.

There's a fairly decent sized Aussie contingent here.

Congrats on your year and welcome to SR :)

D

Congrats on making that realization at age 26, when it takes some of us twice that time. I wish you continued success Footcrazy!

Hey FootCrazy - welcome to SR and thank you for posting.

Way to go on 1 year sober... I too had enough and although my road to recovery has had some bumps... I am sober and happy ... lucky? Yes sir!

Just read what I wrote again. Just wanted to add a bit.

The name's Foot's'crazy. This is a pun nom de plume that I use as an internet pseudonym. It's referring to a suburb in Melbourne called Footscray which is the home of by beloved football team.

I am getting a very strange feeling writing like this. It's been a very long time since I've sat down and actually thought about what I'm writing.

It's a wonderful feeling and one of the reasons why my sobriety has been an absolute blast. I am rediscovering stuff all the time, things I'd forgotten I can do and enjoy.

Reading that, seeing it in writing also puts my age into perpective a bit. I used to feel like I was drinking so much I was beyond help. My thinking was with the assumption that booze will get me in the end. I'm only 27 after all.

I don't have much but what I have is the very very best.

I wrote this after my footy team mentioned above won the premiership for the first time in 52 years. This was October last year.

I'm 27 in a couple of weeks.
Grew up in Melbourne went to private school (was ****) studied industrial design. That was great met heaps of cool people. In 3rd year I started drinking in the morning, I was living in a sweet sharehouse in West Melbourne, party house, smoking cones all day etc. but was still pretty happy. Once the booze got me I was drinking first thing in the morning. This would have been mid 2011. I dropped out of uni and just drank and smoked all my savings for about 8 months then had to move home.

Being back home didn't change anything, I was drinking all day, first thing in the morning til pass out at night. Got my system down pretty well money wise. Aldi has $9 goon sacks and thats 4l at about 10% and smoked rollies $10 a day so for $20 a day I could drink and smoke all day.

My mate got me a job at Travel Money OZ basically sat in a booth changing money. I coped at the start by giving my self an hour or so in the morning to get as much booze as possible into myself to make it until lunchtime then go to the bar smash 2 scotch and cokes then that'd be ok(ish) until I finished. Very high functioning alco. My boss was pretty chill and I was good at my job so once I was accepted I started filling a Sprite bottle with goon and drinking on the job. Lost that job about 2 years ago and then back to drinking my savings away. So it got to the point where I was drinking at least 4l of wine a day plus anything else I could get my hands on - red wine (I hate red), 20 y/o ****** port with bits of mouldy cork in it, at parties beers with butts in 'em I'd still drink it, anything. I'd wake up after 6 hours sleep with the shakes, couldn't go anywhere for more than 2 hours unless I knew I could get booze. I never drove which was a pretty responsible thing in retrospect.

In June I'd had enough, I was really sick. Didn't go to the doctor much but I was starting to lose weight (5'9 57kg) couldn't remember what I'd eaten for dinner the night before. It was awful. I didn't really have an epiphany or moment of clarity or anything but I knew I was done so I went for a 10 day detox.

Alcohol withdrawals are f''ek, that pretty much sums it up. They just gave me handfuls of valiums so I can't remember that much of it. 320mg a day was the most from about 2nd-5th day but did it and I haven't had a drink since.

Now all I had was the Dogs. I've got good family and friends but no job, no money, no girlfriend, depressed about wasting so much. The only game in Melbourne I've not gone to in the last 5 years was the Cats game when I was in detox. I LOVE the Bullies.

Earlier in the year we were playing some seriously good footy, A.B. (after Beveridge is what we should call this era, A.B.) our best has been as good as anyone's. We all know the story but I thought after the second Cats game that we were pretty much done.

We won the flag. I was there. That night I got home to everyone and their sister's mate's cat congratulating me. Texts from Gothenberg, London, Osaka, people I haven't seen for years (many due to me being a wino). I was standing outside looking at the stars and something changed me forever. I have felt like myself, like I have an identity. I didn't believe I deserved good things in life until that night. The world makes sense.

Since that day I've reclaimed my life. I don't think it's an understatement to say the Western Bulldogs FC 2016 GF has changed my life.

bark on you crazy bulldogs

I got the Footscray thing.
Sorry for the typo Footscrazy :)

D