Drugs and Alcohol (young people)

I can’t tell you why but I think I can illustrate it with this story from my drinking days which kind of does it quite nicely. Was that I got a job in university in my second year. And I’d been searching around, money was tight and I finally got this job and I was very happy to get the job and I shouldn’t have got the job. It meant me starting at 7 o’clock in the morning and I talked to the guy and I kind of forced him into it. You know I was so forceful, I was so charming and persuading, most alcoholics are, that he gave me the keys and told me, ‘Look you’ve got to open up at 7.’ It was a little shop. You know open up at 7. I said, [smack] ‘Brilliant got the job’. Walked home, a nice sunny evening. Everything was right with the world. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. I’m going, I’m turning into my street. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. I get to my front door and the thought occurs in just, less than half a second, ‘Oh you’ve done so well today. You really deserve, you really deserve a drink.’ The next moment I’m waking up. I open the curtains. Bright light is streaming in. I look down at my mobile. It’s 11'00 am. I’m supposed to be there at 7'00. All of that hinged on that thought, that twisted alcoholic perception, that that single thought had been at the core of most of my problems in my life is because of that thought. 

So that’s, that’s probably the only reason I actually continued to actually drink alcohol because I do think I have an unhealthy relationship with it. So I generally don’t. I don’t go out drinking regularly. I just go for lunchtime drinks occasionally with people from work now. And maybe once every few months I might have an actual night out of drinking because I don’t trust myself on alcohol. I don’t like what it does to me. 

I’d done this thing which will remain nameless. I woke up on the morning of the 28th January and it was a beautiful winter’s morning. There was ice on the ground outside, clear blue skies, sun streaming in. My life had never been lower than it had been on that night. I was surrounded by empty cans of Strongbow in this shitty little room in [city area]. I came downstairs and I felt absolutely wonderful. I just felt wonderful. I didn’t know why I felt wonderful. I didn’t know what was going on for me. I just felt a huge sense of release. I looked out into the sky and I said to myself, ‘I’m an alcoholic’. And for the first time - I’d suspected for 3 years prior to that that I was - but for the first time there was no dissenting voice in the back of my mind. I went and sat down at the desk. There was some stranger sleeping on the sofa in the front room who I didn’t know and I said to him, ‘I think I’ve got to stop drinking.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah I think that sounds like a good idea.’ I took a sip from a can of Carlsberg that was lying on the desk and that’s the last drink of alcohol I’ve ever had. That was the 28th January 2006.