Free falling
21/05/11 • 3 Comments

My last blog post wasn’t particularly cheerful, so for this post I’m going to focus on one of the positive experiences I’ve had over the last 7 weeks, because it certainly hasn’t been all doom and gloom even though some days I may feel like it is. Just after completing my first week on the wagon I went skydiving at Coolum Beach. It had been pre-planned for some time and had also been postponed twice before due to the inexplicable amount of rain that Queensland has had this summer, so it was purely a coincidence that this ended up coinciding with my first week off the grog. That said, I can’t think of a better way to kick off this 12 month challenge. I had never been sky-diving before but it is something that I’ve always wanted to do, so when I turned 30 last year my parents bought me [...]

Here comes a regular…
19/05/11 • 3 Comments

7 weeks have now passed since I first decided I needed to stop drinking. After the first few weeks I started withdrawing from the world again – after going out to a couple of gigs I found myself feeling very disconnected from every one around me. I couldn’t relax and I struggled with conversation. I just felt awkward and out of place. It almost felt like I wasn’t even really there. I felt lost. During this time I also attended a friend’s wedding in Maleny and the reception was my first really big challenge. Being confronted by a fridge full of beer and wine with a ‘help yourself’ policy was incredibly tempting. I found the alcoholic voice in my head trying to reason with me: “It’s a wedding! You should have a drink! One or two drinks won’t hurt. You can always start again tomorrow!”. I opened the fridge and [...]

Early Dawning, Sunday Morning
22/04/11 • 2 Comments

I don’t really know where to start, so I’m just going to get straight to the point – my psychiatrist told me that I should stop drinking alcohol. He told me this during our first session back in February. My immediate internal response was an emphatic NO. That just wasn’t possible. My whole social life is based around music and alcohol and it has been that way for the past 12 years. Without a drink in my hand I am incapable of conversation. Without a drink in my hand I am incapable of having a good time. So I told him that I would stop drinking when I was by myself, but I wanted to still be able to have a drink with my friends. If that was the case, he said, then I should limit myself to one drink, two at the most. That sounded okay – I’d been [...]