The lost years
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Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: Australia
Posts: 1,499
I blew a lot of big opportunities career-wise. I could have had a significant career with a very large global enterprise, but higher-ups knew I was a drunkard because I would show up at Monday meetings hungover. They gave me plenty of opportunities but eventually told me I had no future with them. They didn't say it was because I drank too much. It wasn't the end of the road though, I managed to make a decent career at the next place and I did okay all things considered. But I did miss out in terms of money, status and better financial security.
The thing is, that whole scene was making me miserable anyway. It was part of the reason I drank. I was destroying myself trying to be something I wasn't, where my reason for being was to make rich people richer, where everyone was judged by their cars, holidays and houses. The entire edifice was about criminal excess made acceptable by a society with completely misplaced priorities.
Sobriety saved me from that delusion. They were not lost years, they were years I needed to suffer through to get to my real self.
And I made it to Portobello market only once in the 3 years I lived a 15 minute walk from it.
The thing is, that whole scene was making me miserable anyway. It was part of the reason I drank. I was destroying myself trying to be something I wasn't, where my reason for being was to make rich people richer, where everyone was judged by their cars, holidays and houses. The entire edifice was about criminal excess made acceptable by a society with completely misplaced priorities.
Sobriety saved me from that delusion. They were not lost years, they were years I needed to suffer through to get to my real self.
And I made it to Portobello market only once in the 3 years I lived a 15 minute walk from it.
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Join Date: Feb 2016
Posts: 3,597
Originally Posted by Robbie64 
I lived in London for several years. The first two years Iived there are still clear in my mind, I can even remember (in detail) the day I moved there and that was back in October 1985. However the last few years are largely lost in a drunken blur. All I remember of those last (and lost) days are either drinking or suffering from horrendous hangovers. Plus a bit like yourself while in Germany, there was a very large market on my doorstep that I overlooked. Not to the extent that I didn't know it was there but to the extent that in the year or so I lived in Notting Hill Gate I can't recall ever getting to Portobello Market! I always intended to go there but don't think I ever did. There's a pub (it's still there) at the Notting Hill Gate tube station end of Portobello Road and that was as far as I ever got on a Saturday morning when the market was on. What a waste of that part of my life, as well as a waste of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_LUFvofAkg
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Thread Starter
Join Date: May 2019
Location: UK
Posts: 3,942
🤣 I grew up about 10 miles north of Notting Hill. They certainly weren’t lost years, but my area’s certainly gone downhill whilst Notting Hill has gone the other way. I’ve only visited Notting Hill in the last decade or so and can see the attraction. Plenty to keep the non-drinker occupied there now.
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