h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Aaah, that's ... vaguely human again. For the last 11 months I have been experiencing highly unsatisfactory living arrangements. My first two months were with a live-in landlady who is quite easily the most despicable person I've ever met.

Then in my panic to leave there I moved into a place run by a dodgy, cash-in-hand type of landlord. Deciding he was above as well as outside the law, he would make heavy-handed and arbitrary rules, make alterations to the house without warning and generally act like a crook. Unfortunately due to my lack of steady job plus intransigence partly caused by an increasingly worrying drinking habit, I didn't make a serious attempt to move out until he forced the issue a month ago.

After being dumped by my previous would-have-been co-tenants, I managed to find a place within two days that is actually pretty nice, and I my life in Oxford is finally on an upward spiral. Touch wood and everything.

Here's hoping you get a nice hot bath soon, too.

Thanks Would be nice, although I suspect the bath there is a little too small for my 6' frame, leading to me bathing in a fetal position

Oh well, since I've started. A couple of weeks after another miserable, booze-fuelled Xmas, I went to my first AA meeting. I wasn't convinced straight away, but was by the time I'd filled in the 20 questions in one of the newcomer pack thingies. Convinced I should stop drinking every day, that is. Hearing a few tales of woe from the speakers was enough to do that: "I promised myself I'd stop if I started coughing up blood. And then..." - that kind of thing.

I'm not in that category by a long chalk, and that's *not* me being in denial as the received AA wisdom seems to suggest. My drinking over the last two or three years has definitely been a problem but was never what a hardcore alcoholic would regard as excessive and was partly due to my unhappiness at the time. Yes, the main reason was that it had become a habit, but a habit that has hopefully been completely removed since my first meeting.

One guy said to me yesterday: "Maybe your drinking will have to get worse before it gets better." Well, no thanks mate I've been shown what would have happened if I carried on drinking as I was before - not at all tempting. Now I'm not sure whether I want to keep going to meetings or not...

I once heard a doctor on the radio say 'If you've ever asked yourself "Should I be drinking less?", then the answer is almost certainly "Yes." '

I have to say that I'm no expert in this area, (so be duly sceptical of any advice I might give)...but I believe that there are organisations out there who aren't quite as wedded to 'The Program' as AA. Some teach reduction, rather than abstinence. You can possibly find out more by some judicious googling. Alternately...do you have a good relationship with your GP? Or, if you don't feel like that, many local health authorities have mental health outreach services who will surely be able to hook you up.

Meantime...well done you , not only for your frankness here, but also for having the good sense to do something.

Thanks Ed, really

Yeah, the Program and the rather evangelistic nature of AA do perturb me a little [incidentally, AA vs the AA is a fine example of Brit Eng's current topic]. When I told one of the fellowship's old boys I'd been on the Alcohol Concern website, he got suspicious and said "Really? Who are they then?" as if they were a rival firm or something

And the guy I mentioned in the last post (a Mr John H Smith of 10b High St, Oxford ) said you come to AA to get sober - but I don't know if I really need to be *completely* sober, just cut down a lot and keep it at a low level. I think I will have another word with my GP about alcohol counselling.


Jack

I should point out that plenty of the alcoholics I have met have an inspired, caustic sense of humour that I both admire and share. And listening to the brutal honesty with which they tell their tales of agony and despair has been one of the most humbling experiences of my life. It has scared me into sense and stopped me drinking every day as I was previously. But there's this nagging feeling that I don't really belong.

The Sunday meeting I've been going to begins with everyone saying how long they've been sober - one day in my case, as I'd had a couple of glasses of wine the night before. I ended my 'share' by saying "I know why I'm here" meaning I'd need to come to the odd meeting to keep me on the straight and narrow, and would make every effort to keep my drinking at a low level.

Afterwards, having heard I'd had a drink on Saturday, 'John Smith' started badgering me: "Why'd you drink last night?", "You come here to get sober, not carry on drinking less often" etc. The whole thing is geared only towards getting sober - it almost seems that nothing else counts. I tell them I've only been sober for one day and feel ashamed - but why should I? In the 37 days since my first meeting I've had at least one drink on onyl six days (hangovers: three) and feel much better in myself. My GP was pleased when she heard this, why can't the AA people be?

I need to talk things out with a couple of the AA guys and ask them whether they really think I should carry on going to meetings. And if they give me the party line, at least I'll definitely know...

This always happens to me. After a month or so of being in a group I become a dissident. It's just my contrary nature I suppose - put me in a roomful of atheists, and I'll start defending religion; put me with some fundies and I'm instantly a rationalist. I suppose it's a useful quality but in can be a pain in the backside sometimes. Meanwhile, I will continue digging into the nature of AA and the Twelve Steps before signing on the dotted line...



Something about AA's logic has just occurred to me. (NB these are words that would be close to Graham Chapman's heart )

"I'm not an alcoholic, *honestly*."
"Ah, only a true alcoholic would deny his alcoholism."
"Well what sort of chance does that give me? Alright then, I am an alcoholic. Now, F*CK OFF!"

Jack's drinking before AA:



AA'a drinking plan:



Jack's remodelled drinking plan:

<

I am not an 'incurable' alcoholic, just a guy with a serious drink problem. That is curable without divine intervention. Read 'em and weep:

http://www.peele.net/bookstore/resisting.html

I was puzzled there for a moment. I thought that was a pint of lager and couldn't square it's appearance in the AA plan.

That's an interesting link. Anyone who advocates Cognitive Behavioural Therapy probably knows his stuff.

The AA plan:
?

Yeah, do-as-we-tell-you-or-else is not a particularly adult way of approaching the problem.

That's what I thought about the OJ at first too. All this means I am disillusioned, literally removed of my illusions, with AA and alcohol abuse. Which means I won't be going back to AA meetings (other than to say goodbye and thanks but no thanks) so I need to find some other club or society to go to...

However, the above is an alcoholic reaction to Alcoholics Anonymous, ie a bilious and hostile one. Right now it is not in my interests to reject any kind of help available to me. Thankfully I didn't burn any bridges with AA, so I can go back without any on my face.

Because after a surely record-breaking 3 weeks, I've been given my marching orders from the hippie household. While it's still a shock, I can't help but feel a little relief too. I moved from what was effectively a bedsit populated by people who never socialised together to a kind of family unit of mother, child and co-tenant. Obviously people's impressions of you start straight away, and I just didn't have enough time to make the necessary adjustments.

Add to that the insane pressure I was under from having to find a place in 2 days and money worries too, and well, I wasn't myself. An already difficult situation was exacerbated by a lack of communication, which led, I believe, to unfounded suspicions about my character which would have been quashed if I'd actually been consulted. Yes, I had a bad couple of days this week, and yes, I said and did some stupid things, but don't we all? The final decision that I should leave came, like all rubbish decisions, by committee

This wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't just happened 3 weeks earlier when, thanks to the paranoid tendencies of the agency regarding temp workers, my prospective co-tenants decided to ditch me at the eleventh hour. I'm trying not to sound sexist, but all but one of people involved in such decision-making were women. My sister's workplace is all-female, and she despairs at the way reason jumps out of the window when the others get talking together. But just to balance things, as Sting would have it: "Men go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one..."

And that was yet another example of my capacity for the melodramatic. No, they weren't all out to get me, it was only the landlady who objected to me really, and well, we never got on anyway. Still, I'm on the road again...