Social Pastime

I can easily dispute the ‘fact’ that alcohol is sociable because it is far from a fact. I suppose you could say that it is a social pastime if you change the meaning slightly. A lot of ‘social time’ will literally pass you by when you are a slave to alcohol. To refer to alcohol as a ‘pass-time’ would be a more appropriate description. Just think of all the happy evenings, nights out, weddings, christenings , parties, the intelligent conversation, the dancing, games, banter and the days you have missed because of alcohol. I am not talking about the times you missed when you were physically present but your mind was blown. I’m talking about the times you miss because you have to exercise willpower, discipline and control because of the drug. Often I would choose not to go out if I knew I had an important task the following day. I knew that if I did I would end up drinking more than I wanted or that I would feel deprived all night because I wasn’t drinking, which would be just as bad, so I would stay in on my own.

The main problem with alcohol is that you are never yourself whether you are drinking or not. If you have to restrict your drinking because you are driving, for example, then you will not be yourself; you will feel miserable and deprived without that drink. However, if you drink, then you won’t be yourself either. This is because it numbs your senses. In order to feel any genuine emotion you need your senses. Alcohol also slurs

your speech which, if I am not mistaken, is an extremely valuable aid to being sociable. The drug also takes away all reason and common sense. It makes you overemotional , loud and occasionally spiteful and hurtful. It can turn you into an obnoxious, annoying, slurring and argumentative person which is certainly not very sociable. Alcohol stupefies you but, more importantly, it removes those very important checkpoints between your brain and your mouth. You know the checkpoints I’m talking about; those that check your thoughts and stop unacceptable ones turning into speech. I shall repeat this for your own protection as well as everyone else’s. Alcohol removes those vital checkpoints. Consequently, no matter what comes into your head, no matter how obnoxious, rude, offensive or stupid, it ends up coming out of your mouth. You often end up talking complete and utter nonsense for hours on end; that is, of course, if the anaesthetic effect of the drug hasn’t caused you to pass out altogether which may be a relief all round. Passing out is a wonderful pass-time.

Alcohol removes those very important checkpoints between your brain and your mouth.

When I gave up alcohol I went to a lovely New Year’s Eve party. It was a black tie do with some very close friends. Everything was set for a good sociable evening: good company, good food, great atmosphere, great music and a good reason for celebration – New Year. Also

there was free champagne all night though; when I say free, I mean financially free, as there is always a price to pay for drinking alcohol. The first part of the evening was taken up with people asking why I didn’t drink and I will cover this later as it warrants a chapter of its own. The drug alcohol (or champagne as it was specifically named that evening) helped to destroy the rest of the party for many people, many of whom, unsurprisingly, became very antisocial because of it. One person I know was slumped on the bar for most of the time and was actually asleep before Big Ben had chimed in the New Year. What exactly is sociable about that? Others were fine for the first couple of hours; they were talking, laughing, interacting and being sociable, as was I.

The reason most drinkers are apparently fine for the first hour or two is because our bodies are very clever survival machines. As we continue to drink alcohol week after week, our bodies think there is no choice but to take this poison. They will automatically build up an immunity and tolerance to ensure our survival. This means that we need more and more to get the same effect or illusion. This again is why our first ever alcoholic drink floored us and we now need a lot more in order to achieve the same result. The more of the drug we take, the more the body builds up an immunity to it and the greater the immunity and tolerance, the more of the drug is needed to achieve the same illusory effect.

So, at first, everybody was fine and sociable. Again, I must emphasise that it was not the drink that made them sociable. What made them sociable was being at

the party and talking to people. I was being just as sociable without drinking alcohol because non-drinkers are just as gregarious. I watched this scenario continue for a little while but as soon as the alcohol started to really kick in, the inevitable began. It started off with ‘I f_ _ king love you!,’ then ‘I f_ _king love you, bastard!’ Then it just turned into ‘You bastard!’ In the end, what was meant to be the best party of the year turned into an occasion where people became argumentative, aggressive , obnoxious or spiteful. Others present were very overemotional, tearful or jealous. There were people falling over, collapsing on the floor, slumped over the bar and on tables. Others were literally being sick. The ones who managed to stay upright talked rubbish or danced (well kind of) and were not aware of the evening they experienced anyway as the real person was no longer there. They missed out on one of maybe only eighty or ninety New Year’s Eves they will ever experience in their lives. When asked the following day if they had had a good time, many said ‘I must have, I can’t remember a thing!’ If you can’t remember the evening, how on earth do you know if you had a good time?

The reality is that they were being sociable until the alcohol took effect but as soon as it did, they became antisocial. I was one of the only ones left standing and still wanting to dance at four in the morning. I wanted to be sociable but there was no one left to socialise with. Why? Because of the alcohol they had drunk. It is so obvious when you can see it objectively.

For years I was convinced that alcohol helped people to socialise, especially when they were meeting for the first time. I thought, ‘Top up their drinks as often as possible to get everybody talking and get over that awkward period.’ In reality, this doesn’t work as there is still that awkward period and people do not interact just because they have had a drink. If you are shy and inhibited, alcohol will not solve that problem any more than an ostrich putting its head in the sand will remove danger. On the contrary, it will release your inhibitions and stupefy you so the gulf between the real you and the drunken shy person becomes even wider. In the past I have been to parties where I have been drinking alcohol but remained in the same place all night talking to a small group of people I already knew. Isn’t that frequently the case? At social gatherings we tend to interact with the people we already know. Sometimes we talk to others, at a dinner party for example, but on the whole we usually head for people we are comfortable with and already know. Would I have been unsociable if I had been drinking something other than alcohol? Of course I wouldn’t. If I was stuck at home moping because I was off the drink or feeling miserable at a social gathering because I couldn’t drink for some reason then, yes, that would be antisocial. Again, it would have been the alcohol that caused these problems anyway as people who do not feel the need to drink do not experience them. If you do not feel mentally deprived, you will happily socialise, no matter what is going into your mouth.

There are non-drinkers who are very dull and boring, but then there are drinkers who are just as dull and boring . There will always be dull and boring people around as that is part of life and alcohol won’t help them socialise but will have just the opposite effect. It will ensure that they become loud, idiotic, abusive and display all the other unpleasant symptoms that go with drinking alcohol. In the end it will guarantee they end up even less popular than they were to start with. All drug addiction appears sociable … to the addict that is.

There is a park in Switzerland where heroin addicts are allowed to obtain heroin legally and shoot up. To them, the park is like a pub – the only legal heroin pub in the world. It is a way for addicts get their fix openly and at the same time socialise with other addicts. They go back to the same park day in day out. What would happen if they discovered that all of their friends were not going to the park that day – would they still go? Yes, of course they would. Not to be sociable but to get the drug. These addicts never go to the park for the atmosphere, the weather or the social life; they go for the drug. They feel better there than anywhere else, for everybody around them is doing the same thing. If there were only one pub where you could drink alcohol legally, you would go there, not to be sociable but simply to get your fix.

I have been into a pub by myself for a bit of peace and quiet on many occasions. I would get out my newspaper , have a drink and relax. I could have gone anywhere to do that, a library for example. It’s a lot quieter

there but I did not choose to go there for the simple reason that they do not sell alcohol.

Heroin addicts think that using heroin is sociable. Crackheads think taking crack is sociable. Alcohol addicts think drinking alcohol is sociable. I used to have such double standards when I was taking alcohol, as do most drinkers. I would say that alcohol is pleasurable and sociable but if someone was taking the drug at a different time to me, in the morning for example, I would immediately judge them. Don’t the majority of drinkers do that? Don’t all drug addicts do that? I needed to judge. It was a way of proving that I wasn’t like them. In truth, it was simply a way of saying, ‘Look everyone, this person is out of control of their alcohol intake whereas I am in control.’ By pointing out what I believed to be their weakness, I was in fact trying to justify my own. It’s the same with people who procrastinate all the time. Their life becomes a mess, but if they see that you have put off one little thing, they will immediately pounce and condemn you for your procrastination . You and I know that if someone is drunk and you are sober, you hate it. You don’t think that they are being sociable, confident, courageous, jolly people. You think exactly the opposite of what the addict thinks. You think that they are being very unsociable, annoying and stupid and usually you can’t wait to get rid of them.

If someone drinks eight pints in the pub, they are generally considered to be a social drinker. If a businessman downs half a bottle of Scotch every night, he is considered an alcoholic. If somebody downs half a

bottle of wine with lunch, nobody says a word but if someone is lying on a bench drinking a can of beer, they have a problem. Most drinkers judge other drinkers . Why? To make themselves feel better of course. I used to say things like, ‘Have you noticed how much so and so is drinking at the moment? She downed two bottles of wine by herself last night. I think she might have a problem.’ But another time I would say, ‘Do you know what I am going to do tonight? I’m going to run a nice hot bath, crack open a good bottle of wine and relax with a book.’ If I had said that I was going home to drink a bottle of wine by myself for the sake of it, that would have sounded as if I had a problem but, by making it sound good, I could justify my intake of the drug. That is what all drug addicts do: they try to justify their own intake. Haven’t you judged people because they happen to be drinking at a different time to what is considered acceptable? Have you ever criticised someone else for drinking too much? The drinker’s attitude is often ‘holier than thou.’

I have said that I drank to be sociable but what is sociable about drinking alcohol? Being sociable means interacting . How can you possibly interact with someone who has lost control of their senses? How can drinking alcohol increase your ability to socialise? It can’t, it’s yet another lie. The lie, or illusion, is created by the fact that you happen to be socialising while having a drink, consequently you believe that the drinking is sociable.

Not long after I’d stopped drinking I went to a place called Aberdovey in Wales, for a water-skiing weekend

with friends. On the first night we all went to the pub and I was asked what my ‘poison’ was. I replied that I would like a pineapple juice and lemonade. The person buying the round responded by saying, ‘No, come on, what are you having really?’ I thought that the last thing I wanted was to get into a discussion about not drinking, so I simply said that I was driving. That still wasn’t good enough, as my friend said that he was also driving and we could all leave our cars where they were and jump into the minibus they had ordered to take us back to the hotel. I then explained that I wanted to start off with a soft drink. Everybody then started to comment and ask what I intended to have after that. In the end I was forced to tell them that I didn’t drink alcohol any more. I really don’t know what reaction people get from their heterosexual friends when they tell them they are gay but I can only imagine that it is similar to telling people that you have stopped drinking. I had absolutely no idea how much interest and disbelief that this ‘admission’ would cause; I felt as though I had just come out.

Inevitably the first question was, ‘Oh I didn’t realise that you had a drink problem – are you an alcoholic?’ The question appears obvious as we have been conditioned to believe that if you stop drinking for good it can only mean one thing: you have lost control and are an alcoholic. This question is ridiculous when you analyse it. I don’t drink any more, so how could I have a drink problem? The irony was that they were drinking alcohol (taking the drug) while asking me if I had a drink

problem. You would think it odd if a heroin addict took heroin in front of you, offered you some and because you refused, commented, ‘I didn’t realise that you had a problem with heroin – are you a heroinoholic?’ How absurd would that be? Who would you, or in fact anybody , think had the problem? You really don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out do you?

My friends in Aberdovey reacted by saying things like, ‘Come on you boring bastard, what’s the matter with you, you antisocial git?,’ ‘Go on, let your hair down, we are here to have fun’ and so it went on.

Just when did I become boring? At what point had I become antisocial? When did I say that I wasn’t going to have fun? Just before they asked me what I wanted to drink, we were in the same place, talking, having a laugh and being sociable, so what had changed from the moment that I said that I didn’t drink alcohol? I was still the same person; I was happy, not boring and being sociable because I was out with people. The only thing that had changed was that the drinkers could no longer take their drug without having to think about what they were doing as I was no longer a co-conspirator. Hardly anybody who takes alcohol thinks about it when they are in a room full of people taking the same drug. They are, after all, telling the same lies and believing them. I realised something that night that I had never understood until that point.

When I smoked and saw people around me who had stopped, I would envy them because I wanted to be like

them. I knew that all smokers would love to stop given the choice and that all smokers envied non-smokers but I never thought that would apply to alcohol. Even when I was drinking and saw people who had given up or stopped for a while, I never envied them; in fact, there was a part of my brainwashed mind that actually felt sorry for them. I was, after all, suffering from the delusion that they were missing out. The real problem was that they were too. That is why I didn’t envy these people when I was drinking; they were miserable and depressed because they couldn’t drink. They were pining for a drink and feeling deprived. Why on earth would you envy people like that? There is nothing to envy about feeling miserable, uptight and depressed. As this is the image we have of people who don’t drink, no wonder we are scared of giving up. Unlike smoking, of whom there are now literally millions of ex-smokers who don’t miss cigarettes, people who stop drinking still feel as though they have made a sacrifice.

However, there I was, in a pub of all places, being sociable , laughing, talking, interacting, dancing, having a good time, not moaning because I didn’t have a drink but actually feeling elated because I didn’t have to drink any more. I never realised that this presented a totally new image of me. This was why they started to envy me as they began to realise that I was still being sociable and doing everything I had before except drinking, and that I was not being a bore.

When you take a drug of any kind and somebody else isn’t, you start to question why you need it and they

don’t, especially when they are happy without it. These friends started by saying I was unsociable, boring and had a drink problem but finished by questioning their own drinking habits.

I digress slightly. I will return to ‘other drinkers’ in a later chapter. The point I am making here is that there is no such thing as ‘sociable drinking.’ When alcohol takes effect, you cease to be sociable, instantly. Being sociable means interacting with others and if you are doing this without consuming alcohol, you are still being sociable. What you shove down your throat doesn’t make you sociable. The sociable aspect of alcohol is just another fallacy.

The sad reality is that a world in which alcohol is drunk by the vast majority of people would be a world of beatings , rapes, violence, arguments, obnoxiousness and overemotional behaviour. It would be a world of stress where true courage and confidence has been lost in a bottle or two; a world of suicides, murders and muggings . It would be a world of family hardship and abject poverty. That is what the world would look like if the majority of people drank alcohol. How do I know? Because it does.

I mentioned earlier in this chapter that there is always a price to pay for drinking alcohol, whether it’s physical , psychological, social or emotional, but what about the financial cost? Have you ever really worked out how much money you will spend because you are hooked on

the stuff? I know I never did but it is worth looking at, as it’s anything but a …