Horse with No Name
I was humming an old tune that came back to me. ‘Horse with no name.’ It had lyrics about ‘crossing the desert’, and ‘after so many days in the blinding sun…’.
Alcohol
I began to wonder if the songwriter was really referring to giving up the drink and going dry.
I am a middle aged man, a bit tubby, pone to laziness unless properly motivated when I’m rejuvenated with boundless enthusiasm.
In July of this summer, after a round of end of term drinks parties, and coupled with a particularly difficult period of family problems I realised my drinking had slipped out of control.
This was in fact easy to notice. The empty spirit bottle lying in the middle of the living room floor that wasn’t there when I last looked was a dead giveaway.
I’d gone to the pub on Friday evening with company to drink a few halves of bitter. By the time the company had left I’d moved on to pints. At home I’d passed out on the living room settee. There my alcohol level had dropped, which enabled me to return to the pub.
By Sunday I realised I’d done the brandy bottle, put aside for Christmas, during my sobering up phases without noticing. My befuddled brain woke to the possibility that I might have a problem of the drinking variety.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Over the next few days I read up what I could find on the internet on the subject of alcohol and alcoholism.
Firstly I discovered the term ‘alcoholic’ was coined by a voluntary self-help group founded in 1930’s America called ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’. Nowadays we are called ‘alcohol dependent’.
Alcohol dependent
I learnt that if as a drinker I had periods of memory loss whilst under the influence I was likely to be ‘dependent’. Yep! That’s me.
Any after effects which involved sweating, headaches, shakes, tremors, morning after drinks simply confirmed it.But I don’t really drink. I have days without alcohol which must put me in the safe category, surely? Or is it I manage four or so days off the drink before going out on yet another binge?
Smoking
Four years ago, after a decade of trying, I finally quit smoking. I am a non smoker. I enjoy being a non smoker. I don’t have the odd cigarette now and again just to be sociable. I occasionally stand outside the pub and chat to smokers. Now that’s being sociable. But I do not smoke.
So, if on reflection I met a forty a day man telling me that he occasionally makes it to lunch without a cigarette, am I to regard him as a sort of part time non smoker?
To be continued………
