The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, December 05th 2017 (Positive Self Care Values)


I'm not going into the college today. Barry the Bullet and I are going to work instead. This is one of the advantages of being a conscientious student. I get to have a little time off if I need it. I've given my studio time – my ''on air'' time – to another student who has yet to do some of her assessed shows and I don't have to go in for the mornings of either Monday or Tuesday as the work has been done. Tuesday afternoons were podcast afternoons and with me having passed all that now too then there is nothing to keep me in college for this day. So work it is.

Let me tell you, honestly, the thought of lazing around in a cosy college is tempting. Anything to avoid what will surely be another really cold morning. The only way I can think of getting the same effect as those first couple of hours in the mornings before the sun really sets in the sky and offers some solace is to run a cold water tap and then hold your hands under them until they are so cold that you cannot feel your fingertips and that your hands lose some of their usefulness. They work sometimes but there are times they won't respond adequately to your brain's demands of them. Sure, we use hot water in our window cleaning buckets, and it's so cold out there that I can't even feel the heat when I dip the hands in there, but the water is very quick in cooling and then it becomes just another enemy. It's tough going out there.

I have positive self-care in place though. When we were at the Charity Shop Cafe last week (the straw that broke this particular camel's back) I did manage to pick up a waterproof jacket for only £3.50 and we ordered some Sealskin gloves online and they arrived over the weekend. I am hoping that these might help me get through what will this week be a four day week. It's going to be tough, especially if Barry the Bullet lets me down at any point. Going out there on my own in this cold. It's something I may have to face over the next three weeks until we break off on holiday but for now I am confident he will be at the meeting point this morning.

I'm going to have to get used to working in the cold this winter. I need cash. The dentist gave me the bad news on Friday and I have received the email with details of the treatment needed. My next appointment will be a fifty minute one leaving room for root-canal treatment which will come at a cost of two hundred pounds. For one tooth. This is the tooth that has been of concern to me for a couple of years and that my last dentist in my former town was to be looking into repairing if only I would keep from rescheduling appointments for months on end. It's always the price. Two hundred for one tooth. When I factor in the rest of the treatment it seems ludicrous. I can moan all I want but this is just another example of me having to repair damage done while going through a long spell of not caring about myself.

There's money in the Credit Union. With Lindsay and I now living together it seems unfair that my teeth and my reluctance to look after myself properly for a couple of decades should come at any cost to her. It's be my Credit Union account that takes the hit on this work that needs to be done. I can slowly try to build some of it back up every now and then when I have good weeks at work. The two hundred bucks is the biggest bill. If I can get around that then the other appointments can be staggered over a few months. It's doable. I have to find ways of turning little setbacks into positives if I am to continue challenging my negative old self when problems arise and he starts moaning in the back of my mind, telling me to get all defeatist about things.

It's nothing if not further motivation to continue with my plans for a total sugar abstinence when February 07th comes around. Diabetes, poor teeth, the list goes on (although, to be honest, I can't actually think of any other reasons off the top of my head. Maybe weight? As I get a little older it'll be easier to keep it under control if I don't take any sugar whatsoever). The dentist says that the trick is to only take sugar at mealtimes. I've already made my mind up though. There will be no sugar. And if there's one thing I am learning about the sober Stevie it's that he's getting pretty good at quitting things that are bad for him. Enjoy the Christmas binges this year because next year the teeth will be repaired and there will be a diet consisting of absolutely no sugar. Things will be different indeed. Just like they were in 2015 when I had no drink on Christmas day, and in 2016 when there was nothing to get ''outta ma face'' and I had to approach the festivities with a clear head for the first time. And like this year will be when I don't wake up on Christmas morning and spark up a cigarette.

I think that when I find myself stressing a little it is good to sit and think about these problems in the proper context. These are effectively luxury problems I have. Work can be a motherfucker when it gets really cold on the fingers but when I think about the amount of people who don't work and are trying then it puts it into perspective. I do okay in this regard. Even people who don't want to work don't know the benefits of having work and so I think about them too and how lucky I am. I was in the Credit Union a few days ago checking my balance and the place was filled with people taking out loans for Christmas. Funny how this year, the year I am working, is the year I don't have to take out a loan of any kind. Working may be the more difficult way of getting this money (it is doing what I am doing anyway) but when the festive period is all said and done and in the past there will still be money coming in.

The dentist will be getting her fair share of it in the new year.

Better than giving it to booze and tobacco manufacturers.


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Stevie

1147

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, December 06th 2017 (Cold Disconnection)


Yikes! It ain't getting any warmer out there!

That's actually not true. Wait a couple of hours and it'll not be too bad out there at all. Perfect for cleaning windows. Last week at this time it was into the minus temperatures but it's back above now, even if just a little. It's cold enough to be keeping the rain away though, which is one of the main things for me at this stage of the year.

I have my penultimate session of the year with Dr. Bacon tomorrow afternoon and I wanted something positive to say to him. I had taken the chance to ask my brother about putting his address down as a mailing port for online purchases and he said it was cool and so there are a couple of deliveries, Christmas presents for Lindsay I don't want her stumbling across, that have arrived at his. I said that I would swing round and collect them one night this week. I've actually written a bit about that but have taken it out of this post and will make it tomorrow's post instead as it would make this one far too long. It gives me tomorrow off posting in the morning. I wonder however shall I cope!?

We didn't put up the Christmas tree over the weekend. This suits me. It's not that I'm a Scrooge type character (debatable. Actually one could probably say that I am very much like a Scrooge when it comes to most things in life. I struggle to connect with anything – I'm even in therapy for it, it's one of the symptoms of what I am now accepting as Borderline Personality Disorder – and I am pretty negative and more than a little cynical) it's just that I don't want to overdo it and get into the mood for celebrating prematurely. There is still much work to be done between now and the arrival of Santa and I don't want to start getting complacent now because my brain starts thinking that we are off on holiday already. There are more than two weeks of work to be done before that happens.

Another thing I didn't do that I had set out to was Monday's sports talk show at the college. I was there at quarter past eight as usual to get everything set up. I just had to wait until the others turned up and I was good to go. Nine o'clock came and went. No one around. I let the studio slot go to another student who wanted to do an Assessed Show and still no one showed up. They were not getting back to me on social media either so I left the college. Fifteen minutes after I got back to my town they started to ask where I was and if we were going to be doing it at eleven o'clock instead. If this is the competition then I should be fine when it comes to the workplace. I spent around an hour and a half on Sunday preparing that plan for the show though. It was good practice, I guess. It's a shame that because a show is first thing on a Monday morning it can't happen because students can't get into class on time. It won't be like this at university though, I am sure.

I saw English Sara the other day but only from a distance, not close enough to speak with, or even wave to, and I wonder if I might see her again this year. I visited the week I moved from her town to my new one, or early the following week, I can't remember, and I think it's unfortunate that she's never been able to find for herself a pleasant home life. Staying with Dennis now offers her a little more quiet than she had when she was living in the block of flats next to the cave for all those years but it's getting to be more and more chaotic living where she is. Neither her nor Dennis seem to care much about their surroundings and with the addition of two cats I worry about them a little.

When I walked out the last time I noticed for perhaps the first time the smell of smoke on my clothes. It was pretty strong. This must have been what it was like walking out of my own cave for so long but I never noticed it. Now it gets to my throat and chest when I visit places where much smoking takes place. Both Sarah and Dennis are kind of 'smoke them if you've got 'em' types of people, much like I was when I smoked my little heart out back in the day. It can make for an uncomfortable visit. I don't mind being with people who are drinking but when they are smoking in a confined space it can come with drawbacks. I don't know when I'll next see them. Maybe I should make a point of popping in at some point in the week before Christmas.

Since it's been a little milder out there I am enjoying my work a little more. There's still a part of me that thinks Barry the Bullet is going to fuck up again very soon and that I'm going to turn up at the bus station and he's not going to show. The same rules as before will apply: if this happens then he can have the rest of the week off. I want to show him that this business can run fine without him but if it gets any colder then I know it will take a whole new level of motivation to get me working on my own. I showed myself last month that I can do it but it was a pretty easy week to be fair, things won't always be that easy. In some ways I do need him to meet me in the mornings but if he doesn't at any point over the coming winter I will reach a very tough bridge to cross but one that I will have to nevertheless find a way to cross. It'll happen one day for sure.

Tomorrow I have my second to last session of the year with Dr Bacon and we're getting ready to move into phase two of our work: the part where we start to look at ways of solving my problems. This is what I've been waiting for and I've no doubt that 2018 will be an interesting year where my psychology sessions are concerned. At the moment I do feel a little disconnected though. AA at the weekend made me realise how distant I am from them and on Monday morning I felt this at the college too, disconnection.

If I'm honest I've been feeling it a little at home too. In the time I've been living at Lindsay's now we have both gotten a little busier. She started her placement last week and this.

I'll talk tomorrow about what happened when I visited my brother and his family for the first time since March.

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Stevie

Connecting and disconnected.

1205

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, December 07th 2017 (The Penultimate Rasher)


As in a rasher of bacon, as in Dr. Bacon, my clinical psychologist. I'll be seeing him again this afternoon, finishing work a little earlier than I might be wanting to in order to make this happen. It'll be worth it in the end for sure. Just one more session after this one, in two weeks' time, and that will be a wrap for 2017 – the year where things started getting better for our once very much so but now only slightly disturbed narrator.

I know that for about a week now children all over the world will have been opening, and I'm sure that plenty of adults will be joining them, advent calendars and finding the little surprises that may be found behind every window of them, usually chocolate although I am aware that there are many different types of these things nowadays and so some might be getting little toys or even perfumes instead. I hope to the God of my Understanding that you, loyal and trusted reader, have such a calendar to be opening and that clicking onto the little icon for this journal's daily post is not the only festive treasure you receive every morning throughout the rest of the month.

Today is a bit more special than the other days of the week in that it is my anniversary day. Today I am now ten months off the cigarettes and going really strong. That also means I am ten months off the antidepressant medication (something also to be celebrated). This also means I am one year and ten months away from the illegal drugs and two years and ten months away from my last alcoholic beverage of any sort. I'm starting to build up some serious time now. I know that some people say that since it is a day at a time in recovery the day counts don't matter, and they don't, but when we reach these little milestones they do, so today it does, to me even if not for you.

Working day to day this week is saving up some cash to take with me to Edinburgh this coming Saturday morning where I will get in the last of my Christmas shopping. That's the plan anyway. I still need to get some things for Lindsay as well as maybe something else for my brother and nieces. Over all I have done well this year. The benefits of being prepared and starting early. The benefits also of working hard to afford the luxury of being able to start early. This week has been mild in terms of weather and so Barry the Bullet and I have done well again, despite some heavy rain yesterday, the first rain we've seen in December so far, but this morning the forecast is proving to be accurate and the temperatures have started to drop again. They are to continue to do so tomorrow and on Saturday. Saturday is fine. I can tolerate traipsing around Edinburgh in the cold (cities tend not to be all that cold anyway – all those people bunched up together keep each other warm) but minus temperatures for work during the week is a little tougher on the hands, on the soul, and so I had better get ready to hand some of my frustrations with this over to a God of my Understanding.

I was supposed to be talking about how things went when I paid my brother and his family a visit this week but it hasn't happened yet. I was so hoping that it would have happened before this afternoon's session with Dr. Bacon as it would be a good talking point – something to really set up the session in a positive way. It would allow my Healthy Adult to come out and be the most present and potent force within me during the session. Alas it has yet to happen. I go into today's session still not having spoken with my brother face-to-face for around nine months, by far the longest time this has happened in the time we've been born. I go into this session saying that I will be attempting to knock on that door at some point soon, which is a position I've been in many times in this room. It's not progress.

I did see one of my nieces though. The youngest one. She's four. Barry the Bullet and I were walking through the town centre and we bumped into her walking in the other direction with her grandmother. The conversation was short and sweet. She tells me that they have their Christmas tree up and that I should come and see it. I will as I have presents being delivered to their address. Their gran says that I sometimes still come up in conversation, whatever that means. It's different though. Since it has been so long I do feel a little. . . dare I say, disconnected. . . from my niece!? I don't feel as though I know her or her sister very well anymore. This sucks considering how close we once were but it's the way things are at the moment. I find it slightly irritating that sobriety should being with it poor relationships to those I was once so close to. It's my one big grumble with being sober.

Barry and I will be braving the elements this morning. There are weather warnings for wind and so I'll have to be careful while I'm up that ladder. Not just is it windy but the temperatures are down to the minus' and so things will be pretty tricky, pretty wintry, but we'll get through it. We'll be finishing up a little earlier so that I can make way for the appointment which is at half past three. After that I will be heading straight to my brother's to take up my youngest niece on her offer of letting me see their Christmas tree.

Hopefully I'll get to speak with her mum and dad to find out what it is that they are into these days which will give me some good ideas for shopping when I'm in Edinburgh. I don't want to go crazy for the Christmas shopping this year and I've already spent a lot of money. I'll get the very last of it on Saturday when I'm in Edinburgh. I like the idea of shopping online and have done a fair bit of it this year again but I feel as though while doing Christmas this way takes much of the stress out of the shopping it also takes the emotional connection out of it.

Emotional connections are what Dr. Bacon and I are working on each and every session.

I'll take them even where Christmas shopping is concerned.

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Stevie

Connecting with shopping.

1151

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, December 08th 2017 (Over the Tipping Point)


So today marks four full weeks since I moved out of my cave. It was actually eight weeks tomorrow that we rented the van and Kung Fu Pandis and me moved all of my crap from the cave to this here flat, my new home. Then I discovered that I had to give four weeks notice to the council before they would permit me to move and so I had to cling on for a while longer. I actually rather enjoyed the final four weeks I spent there. For a couple of nights a week, usually midweek when I was working so as to cut down on the travelling, I would stay there. There was no bed so I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag and it was not the most comfortable I've even been, but it was my last few nights of bachelorhood and I wasn't going to give it up without and song and dance. Four weeks ago this morning I woke up on the floor, made myself a hot chocolate, and then went out to work myself in the morning before Gillon drove me to the council office to hand in my keys. The very last of my things travelled with me on the bus that night.

This is not the longest time I have spent away from this cave. I spent six weeks away one time. That was around the time the council were receiving anonymous calls about the property possibly being abandoned and so I had people coming out to visit me in the cave and all the rest of it. Six weeks and I didn't set foot in the building. That was at some point around last Christmas and again over the summer. It was always nice to know that it was there as an option though. There were a few times when I had planned to go back to Lindsay's after work and so on but felt tired by the time it was over and needed a little solo time. This was when it was much more convenient to simply make the shorter trip back to the cave and lock the door. I don't have this luxury now.

So if I can make it until Christmas Eve I will have spent the longest time away from the cave since I moved in there back on September 01st 2013, eight months before I even began writing the original Sobriety Experiment journal on the old WQD website. Seems like a long time ago now. That was before the days of Dr. Bacon and when I was seeing two counsellors in John and Margaret. They were not nearly as effective. Counsellors are poor in my experience. Psychologists are good. That's what my experience has taught me anyway. Counsellors know little bits here and there but they just don't have the training or experience to really make a difference when people have long term problems. They are like entry level psychologists. You see one to get you through while you're waiting on your referral to come through. This was the longest time I'd spent 'living' in one place since walking out on my family.

Enough of this reflecting on the past, if that's what I'm even doing, and more thinking and planning for today.

Yesterday Barry the Bullet was thinking about acting as an anchorman for me doing a dodgy window (standing at the bottom of the ladder to support it in case of me falling) and he said he'd better do it as I was over the tipping point. I thought that this has often been the best way of describing my life actually. Possibly not now that I have calmed down a lot in recent years but definitely over the whole thirty nine years. It would have made a brilliant title for this journal actually. I may start another in the new year just so that I can change it. Over the Tipping Point. I love it!

Right then – yesterday I had my second-to-last Dr. Bacon session of the year and then went to visit my brother and nieces. What happened there?

One of the things I was told by Bacon was that in the last three years it seems as though I have made some really positive changes and a lot of progress in all areas of my life. He would even go as far as to say that I have come as far as I likely could have without doing any of the hard stuff. That's a bit of a backhanded compliment. As far as I could have progressed without actually doing any of the difficult stuff. He's right. Whenever I am in a position where a risk is possible, something that will put me out there emotionally and risk Little Stevie becoming hurt or embarrassed, I tend not to take it. I tell myself how far I've come and then bottle it. In this respect I am not any different from your average punter in Alcoholics Anonymous. I should be disappointed with myself but Dr. Bacon says that this is not the time for my Critical Parent to be running things, telling me that the way I am doing things is silly or that connecting as I am attempting to is unnecessary or doesn't matter.

In terms of visiting my brother things could have gone a lot more smoothly. I thought I would message him to ask if it would be fine to come around and pick up my deliveries and he gets back to me before long saying that there will be no one in tonight as they are going out but if I want to he'll leave the deliveries in the back garden where I can get them. He then messages back saying that Youngest Niece had said that I was going to be coming round last night and that she was gutted when I didn't show up. I don't know if this was intended for me to go on some guilt trip but it has certainly had this effect.

Dr. Bacon then assigns me some homework. He says that while it is not his job to be my Critical Parent mode but that it is time he started to push me. That I need to be pushed. He suggests I contact my brother and explain that while it is okay for me to swing round and pick up my deliveries I would also like to see the nieces at some point. I have to start asking for whatever it is that I want. There are needs that are not being met and the main reason is that I don't ask for them to be. This has to change if I want anything else to change and the time to start doing this is now. Whe I get home I notice that Gary has messaged me to ask if I got the bag okay. I reply that I have but that I will have to pop in some time soon after letting Youngest Niece down last the other night.

I am waiting to hear back still.

I like the idea of being pushed to do the things I find difficult and I also like the idea of the most difficult parts of my recovery still having to be done.

It means that all of the biggest improvements and changes are yet to come.


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Stevie

Waiting by the phone.

1257

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, December 09th 2017 (College Christmas Night Out)


Lindsay is working this Saturday as well as next. This gives me the football feast that it Saturday afternoon without a vagina anywhere closeby – which is something that every man dreams about from time to time whether he admits it or not. Next weekend I will have a sporting bonanza with my student discounts as both my local football and ice hokey teams are playing at home (also with Lindsay absent through work) and so there's that to look forward to as well. Tonight we have the college Christmas night out but until then I have the house to myself. So I'm making the most of it and travelling to Edinburgh in a while to do some Christmas shopping. If I leave early enough I can make it back in time for the football starting at three o'clock. This is the plan. I like having plans.

On Wednesday night I had plans to visit my nieces but they fell through and moved to the following day where they fell through again. It's dragging on and on. Dr. Bacon and I are hoping that this can all be resolved soon so that I might move on to the next phase of the connection building process. It's okay reconnecting with family but I am not to be putting all of my eggs constantly in their baskets. Same with Lindsay. I have to get out into the world and meet new people, not exactly something I am filled with enthusiasm about. I find people to be generally boring and selfish.

Current places I am involved in which offer chances for connections are not working for me. AA and Restoration are both places which claim to offer this but we, Dr. Bacon and I, find these connections too safe. These are places where I am all but ensured I will be accepted. It's scary but true. I guess I am really lucky in this regard. To have a psychologist to help me with this. I could have been one of those people who get caught up in believing that those people I meet in recovery are the best people, that they ''get me'' while others out there never will, and that the best connections are the AA connections. I could have been one of those poor sods who ends up taking years, sometimes decades, to realise that this is not at all true. It's the connections we build outside of the rooms, where things are not so safe, they are the connections that establish the strength of our sobriety.

College peers are too young to really connect with in the way Dr. Bacon and I are really looking at. I get on with the class but they seem so immature being half my age. I was on the Facebook group chat last night for a little look, see what was being said about tomorrow's night out for Christmas, and there were a few talking about the Assessed Shows as we hit the mad rush period to try to submit all of this stuff in on time by the end of the semester. I didn't break a sweat but managed to finish all that off a couple of weeks ago. I'll be taking next Tuesday off so that I can work since I'll be taking Thursday off work to go to the Restoration Christmas lunch. College has become the bottom of my priorities at the moment but when semester two begins it will leap back to the top, after being sober of course.

I don't know quite what Dr. Bacon has in mind for me next year but it would appear that I will be getting much homework and that I will have to go out into the big bad world and attempt to connect with strangers in an unsafe environment, places where risks must take place, and go out there and be vulnerable. This is starting to sound awfully like what I had hoped and prayed that AA sponsorship would be like but never came close – someone that can show me how to live without not just booze but also trying to challenge some of the lifelong behaviours that I've picked up along the way that were reasons for me feeling that there was no option for me but a life of drinking and drug taking.

Dr. Bacon says it's important to remember that while I often feel as though just manning up will be the best way to go about things when I feel nervous and worried this is the worst thing to be doing, that I should remember that these are lifelong patterns of behaviour and thinking for me that started long ago with the unexpected and sudden death of one of my parents when I was but a boy. Manning up just isn't going to cut it. He also says that he is aware that we haven't even talked about my children yet. Does this mean that we will be doing so over the next few sessions?

We were doing some chair therapy at the last session. This is when we designate a chair to each part of myself we are working with at any given time. He wants to try to get to know Little Stevie more and so I spend most of the time in the Little Stevie chair. This is when I am to think and talk only in that mode. Try not to let any others come in and speak for him. I close my eyes and try to do the work as best as I can. Dr. Bacon brings up the fact that I have my eyes closed and wonders why. The truth is it is very difficult to look someone in the eye when I am taking this role. It feels ridiculous and embarrassing. I know that this does not bode well for me but when in that mode I feel unable to connect with my psychologist. I'm in trouble.

It's Saturday morning meaning that it has been thirty six hours since I contacted my brother and his wife separately – Gary to ask about coming around to see the nieces and Scottish Sarah, just as an ice-breaker, to give me some Christmas present suggestions for them – as I promised Dr. Bacon I would but there has been no response from either as of yet. One of the things I wondered was how we would just move on from this. How would we go about just explaining to Little Stevie that these relationships are dead and buried, if this is the way it ends up going down, and then how would he go about getting over that and trying some other things?

The time for this is not necessarily yet but the lack of response has put me into the thinking that when the next session comes around in a fortnight I want to start to put my brother and his family behind me.

With nowhere to go for Christmas dinner I should also start looking into finding out if there are any tables free at any of the nearby restaurants.

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Stevie

Lacking any kind of family.

1215

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, December 10th 2017 (Back to Church/A Suicide)


Edinburgh was pretty darn cold yesterday morning but I made it back for three o'clock was a nice little bonus. They were having a little something last night they called Sleep in the Park which was aimed at raising awareness of homelessness in the country. They managed to get together eight thousand people to all sleep together out in the cold of December in the hope that people might begin to understand something of what it might be like to sleep out there all year round. This will, of course, suffer from the same plight all charity work tends to in that only those who have an interest in the first place will jump on the bandwagon. I also feel that sleeping out in the cold, for me, was most distressing because of the loneliness associated with it. I felt like I was the only person in the world and that no one cared. I would imagine this is how most people feel when they are in similar and worse situations and so I don't really think that eight thousand people sleeping together helps to drill home that point. It's still great what they are doing though.

As I walk the Edinburgh streets I get to see how the other half live and it is disgusting. So much excess, so much having, and taking, and wanting, the true human cattle that we are, we're all but walking over one and other like the insects as we go about our business on a cold and frosty December. There's a lot going on in my head that makes me not really arsed with this place at the moment. My brother and Scottish Sarah have not send as much as a simple text message in response to my homework assignment for Dr. Bacon and so that is playing on my mind this morning. Add to that the homelessness in our country and the sickening difference between what some people have and what others do not and how little these worlds ever band together in common good and harmony, especially at this time of year, the time of greed and more excess.

More than all of this there is something else hampering my chances of enjoying a little shopping experience this morning. Lindsay and I were at a wedding back in May. Seven months ago. One of her friends was marrying a guy she's only just met four or five months earlier. No one seemed very sure about the whole scenario but I didn't know anyone so didn't really have a judgement to offer other than that Lindsay and I could never have imagined jumping into something that quickly. This friend, people suspected, was marrying this guy as a rebound from her husband killing himself a few months before.

So you have a suicide in August last year. Then there's a wedding in May of this year. There will be another funeral as I am told yesterday morning that this friend of Lindsay's had a fall out with her husband yet again this week and he has now gone and killed himself. So she's had two men commit suicide on her in the last sixteen months. This is bad. Lindsay was away gossiping with the girls over this last night while I stayed in and didn't bother going to the college Christmas night out. It's not much of a place for me to be connecting with people. I suppose it's better than sitting in on my own but I miss being able to do this from time to time and have done almost since the moment I moved here. It's not the cave I miss as such, it's just being able to relax by myself every now and then.

I don't know how he did it. Killed himself, I mean. You might not think it matters but I would want to know if it happened to someone I know. Did he really mean it or was it an attempt at gaining attention that went too far? There may be no way of knowing but there are certain ways that leave no room for wondering. Things like sticking a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger or jumping off a bridge. The former isn't likely as it's difficult in Britain for the average guy to get his hands casually on a loaded gun and there aren't many bridges within walking distance either. I'll maybe find out soon enough but to be honest it doesn't really feel like my business. I don't know any of the people involved beyond facial and voice recognition really.

Suicide is something I never talk about anymore but that did take up some of my thinking time in years gone by. I feel as though every year, around this time actually, I was getting more and more geared up for it. I resented everyone and so in a way this would be a way of punishing them. It likely would have worked too. It was more than just that though. I really didn't and couldn't see any other way of living other than that which I was living at that time. I now know how premature my thinking was, how narrow my scope, how limited my insight, and it's very easy for me to forget how it was back then. I feel like I'm trying to remember what feeling suicidal feels like but I can't do it. Makes me wonder if I was serious about those thoughts. I remember thinking that I was serious about them at the time but right now I just can't recapture it, can't connect with it. Right now I am seeing and hearing all about how those who it leaves behind connect with it. Not nice.

I'll be leaving soon to go to church. This time I'll be going on my own. That's okay. I have the choice of three now that are close by (four actually, if I wanted to try one I haven't been to – there are shit loads of them in this town when you start looking) but I'm going to go to the one we went to when we last went to church two or three weekends ago. It was adequate although I prefer the one in my old town the most. I'm not in the mood for walking all that distance this morning, don't have time now anyway, and the bus times kinda suck around here on Sundays.

After that I will be returning here for to do some housework and then to help put up the Christmas tree and decorations. We'll be getting into the festive spirit for the coming two weeks. Then there's the Manchester derby. It'll be the new week before I know it.

So we're getting into the spirit of things at last, eight thousand people slept out on the streets last night and suicide continues to be the main killer of young men in Scotland.

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Stevie

Lives on. . .

1183

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, December 11th 2017 (Accidental Death)


Morning. I hope you're well. I'm heading into college today but I don't exactly know what for. Everything has been done. Last week I had a little look ahead to the second semester which will begin in late January and end in June when the study year ends. It looks like it's going to be a piece of piss (a pretty straightforward affair) and it's nothing I'll be worrying about. Keeping things a day at a time should mean that I'm not supposed to be thinking about it either at the moment but there is literally nothing for me to be doing regarding college work at the moment and so as a way of keeping me interested and motivated I am looking, even just peeking, at what will be coming next and seeing if there is anything I can be doing to prepare for it but as things appear there isn't much to prepare for. I'll just do as I've been doing so far in this little educational journey and I'll be more than fine. I'll be taking another day off to go and work with Barry the Bullet tomorrow so I have only one day to get through. I'll get to find out how the Christmas college night out went, which is at least something.

Turns out that he fell out with her after a blazing row and then beat her pretty badly. This caused him to go and score some heroin (which I understand he had not taken in some time) and then was found the next morning having had an overdose. I certainly wouldn't class that as a suicide. I think words need to be chosen more carefully. This was an accidental death, am overdose having not taken the drug in a long time. Either way it is a tremendous strain on everyone involved at this time of year – the time of year we pretend we have a happy family. For them there will be no such delusions this year. Or maybe the surviving members will band round and show one and other a strength they never knew they had.

There seems to be no such strength shown from my own family and we are struggling to communicate with one and other which has been the story of this family since at least my birth. If there's one thing I am learning from therapy with Dr. Bacon it's how healthy adults deal with certain situations and it is now staring me in the face how obvious it was going to be that I was going to grow up exactly as I have done – with a king-sized Detached Protector mode! My mum and brother and sister-in-law suck at communication every bit as much as I do. It's just that I am the one with a psychologist behind me trying to push me in the right direction and so it would appear that I am the one making all the effort to change my ways.

Mum is to be having a boxing day dinner as usual but whether or not I show up will depend entirely on whether or not I see my nieces between now and then. I'm not begging to see them but my brother and Scottish Sarah know that I am keen. Dr. Bacon was specific about this – I have to be better at communicating what it is that I want. Now the ball is in their court although I have yet to hear back from either of them.

This Christmas is potentially an enormous turning point in my family dynamic. I'm going all in this year. I know how much stress this has caused me in 2017, how much of my time with Dr. Bacon has been taken up with my mother and brother and nieces and how much we've talked about it and looked at it and thought about it, now we're acting on it, and it's causing me stress I don't feel is worth it any longer. There is a whole raft of psychological expertise within Dr. Bacon and it's waiting on this family situation to blow over so that we can move on to the next phase of my recovery from my dysfunctional family life and upbringing.

This next phase has been outlined. He wants me to start taking risks in the new year by going out and actually being a member of society. This means trying to connect with other human beings. This will be very difficult and I don't think it can happen when so many of my eggs are in my direct family's basket. The sooner all is resolved with them then the sooner I'll be able to go on and try to build these new connections. In this regard Christmas and the New Year will be coming at exactly the right times. I get to (maybe) see my family members one time all the while being able to acknowledge and accept that I may not see them again until next Christmas. Having this knowledge and insight now makes everything seem a little easier.

In many ways I feel more disconnected with the world than when I was drinking. I didn't go to the college night out. That sucked now that I think about it. I've been disconnected from my family for a long time now too but I am realising that these people are damaged too and don't really have the means of trying to connect that I used to give them credit for. Still doesn't help me feel connected though.

I'm off from the college again tomorrow so that Barry the Bullet and I can get back on with all things window cleaning. This week and next week is all we have left of the working year. Let's make the very best of it. There are big differences between him and me this time around. I would be comfortable this year even if we were snowed in from tonight and never got out to clean another window or collect another door until mid-January. I know that Barry is not living like this at the moment. He's very much on the breadline still. He's talking about his stash of cash that he's hoarding for over the Christmas period which reminds me of my own stashes I used to keep and may very well return to keeping (you really never know what is around the corner in this life) and he's not nearly ready for what will be coming in two weeks.

He's where I used to be every year. Everything left until the last days then a mad rush to get everything done. At least he knows that he'll be with him mother and sister on Christmas morning. All I know is that I'll be waking up here for breakfast and present exchanges.

I don't know what the hell we'll be doing for the rest of the day.

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Stevie

There's still much ambiguity regarding Christmas day.

1175

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, December 12th 2017 (Absent Families)


There are two little towns that the Loser's Bus journeys through on its way from the town I used to live in and where the cave may be found (the town where my work and college course is) to the town I wake up in every morning now and they have lovely Christmas decorations lighting up the streets. With it being dark from around four o'clock these days I will be getting to see them every time I travel between towns after work or college from now until our last working day which is scheduled for the Friday next week. It would be nice if one time they would put on a double-decker bus as these decorations would look really nice from the top deck of a bus. They help put me in a happy mood from the lower deck just the same though.

I mentioned yesterday that I had been in touch with my mother and we ''spoke'' (Facebook) again last night. With two weeks to go until Christmas one might think that I am overreacting in my panic about not knowing where I will be going but in previous years it has been clear. This year it is in no way so. The more time passes and we get closer to the day the less time Lindsay and I have to go about booking somewhere to eat should we find ourselves without family to go to. It's already likely too late to get a table most places. Lindsay's family is slightly less absent than my own since we see her father around once a month but he's already explained that he is going out to get steaming drunk with his friend on Christmas day and is not bothering having a dinner or anything like that. Her brother and his wife do things turn about – this year it is their turn to go to her parents' for dinner. That leaves my family. My dysfunctional family.

For years it was a case of: I do Christmas day and then mum does boxing day. In recent times it has been my brother who does Christmas day but mum has continued to do the boxing day thing. She tells me that she is planning on doing it again this year but has left it this late because she's been busy. Busy? Too busy to text or throw a quick message up on Facebook? She must really be busy. She hopes I'll be there. It's not boxing day I'm worried about. I would be happy not to bother going if I'm honest but I have to ask how badly do I want to see my nieces this Christmas!?

I am struck by a disturbing new thought pattern. I don't know if I am all that bothered. My nieces used to be so important to me. Things are changing. I am beginning to realise that this battle for the love of my family can never be won and am seriously thinking about this Christmas being the last involvement I have with them. This would mean not knowing when I would next see either niece. There is always social networking and Scottish Sarah uses it as a platform, a little stage to show off her creations.

I feel as though this is one area of life that has really seen me stagnate this year. I've wasted so much time trying to find ways of connecting with a family that was never going to be there no matter what was said or done. Mum says that I am welcome at her house on boxing day and that she is aware that I do not get along with her partner. I find that a really strange comment. We don't speak. That's all that really happens. He speaks to Gary while I sit and listen. The last time I spoke with him was when I, as the only sober person at Gary's wedding, drove him home drunk and left him lying on the floor. I don't particularly love the guy but I wouldn't say that I don't get along with him.

She says that he and I are very similar in that we are both very difficult to get along with and so she understands why we might clash. Again – I don't get what she is saying. We don't clash. We just don't speak. When mum tells me – or rather, when she tells Little Stevie – that he is very difficult to get along with, he hears that same thing he has heard all of his life from this woman. He's fundamentally unlovable. She is basically saying that it is my fault that she has been absent all this time which is what I've always thought anyway. Little Stevie has always known that there was nothing he could ever do to make her feel the same way about him as she does about his younger brother.

Growing up knowing all of this is the main reasons I am in therapy to begin with. This is great stuff to be talking about with Dr. Bacon when I see him next week but in terms of connecting with my mother I have realised that it is pointless. No connection can ever be made. It's time I looked at things within my family not as I'd like them to be but as they actually are. It's about time I faced up to the future without them. Mum says that she doesn't have a great relationship with my brother either and that they are ''hopeless at returning text messages and phone calls'' and that she only hears from them when they want a babysitter.

I wonder if mum ever looks at this and wonders why she has very poor relationships with both of her sons, her only children. Does that not tell her something? It tells me something. It tells me that the Detached Protector in me is so strong because I had some truly gifted teachers. My mother and brother are fucking experts at detaching from things and just hoping for the best. They act a good part, they may even have convinced the world that they are not detached in any way, as I probably have to some extent, but the truth is becoming clear. We don't connect because us three are so alike in terms of being cut off from our feelings and desires. If I was allowed to say so I would comment that it is pathetic but Dr. Bacon doesn't see how any good can ever come of being critical like that.

In the next year there will be many changes in my life once again as I take therapy to the next level. We are going to be looking at other places I can go to find people I can try to connect with. My efforts with my family have been incredible failures but that is because it took me so long to see that there was no interest there. Things will be different from now on. I won't be wasting time this year with people who don't want to be a part of my life.

I still don't know if I'll be seeing any of my family over the Christmas period but next year, whatever happens over the next two weeks, I think I'm ready to say goodbye to my brother and mother. I'll keep my distance.

It's time for a completely new start.

Roll on 2018.

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Stevie

Looking forward to the new year.

1266

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, December 13th 2017 (Parenting Little Stevie Adequately/Twenty-Four Hours a Day)


Perhaps those in AA could say that the ultimate goal for them in attending meetings in the frequency that some of them do would be connection. They call it ''Fellowship'' but what I think they are really meaning is connection. They are attending the meeting because they strive connection at that moment in time. This would be good parenting for their young and vulnerable inner children, I think, although I still get very confused about all this at times. This would at least be them setting it out clearly what they are getting from the meeting. They are outlining clearly what the psychological need is that is not being met before the meeting that can be fulfilled by going. To say that you are going to a meeting to stay sober even though you are years into recovery does not seem to be good practice in being honest.

I wonder why it is then that I don't go to meetings more often. AA appears full of lonely people who have struggled their whole lives to connect with others in a meaningful way, just like me, and so I guess that for many of them to at least have some kind of connections with people, even if it means to sit around a table eating chocolate and drinking caffeine while talking about the past, is something of an improvement. I could say that I am not doing my homework with Dr. Bacon very well as I am giving up the opportunity of practising connecting with people but I like to think that I am doing my homework well: I don't go to many meetings because the connections offered there are weak, insignificant, unfulfilling. They don't meet my need for connection. So I have to continue to look elsewhere.

I do like some of the ideas that can sometimes be found in some (very few) of the meetings and so the literature is my only real way of doing this. I say ''literature' but I mean just that one book: the Twenty-Four Hours a Day book. This past couple of weeks there have been a couple of interesting things said in there. It's just a little book where there is an entry for each day of the year. You get the page for each day split into three sections:

1) Thought for the day
2) Meditation for the day
3) Prayer for the day

It's the first part that interests me (the other two seem a little patronising and are designed to keep you locked into the fellowship) and after each day's paragraph it is summed up in a question. I have to say that I can never answer these questions with a direct and instant answer either way, which is often slightly worrying, but it is proof enough and reminder that I am not 'sane' yet, I am not 'well', just because I no longer feel the need to go to meetings on a regular basis. I am still very much a work in progress and need daily reminders of where it is I am and where it is I want to be.

Some of the questions I've been asked this last couple of weeks or so that have got me thinking are:

Do I look for the good in people?

Am I less sensitive?

Have I gotten rid of inner conflicts?

Am I making good use of my money?

Am I on guard against wrong thinking?

Am I keeping my thoughts constructive?

At first I can read these questions and give an instant 'yes' or 'no' but then within a fraction of a second there is doubt. Do I look for the good in people? It would be easy just to assume that I don't but I think that I am always on the lookout for signs of people acting in selfless ways and that much of my pain and distaste of all things human is because I so seldom find it. Much of my sense of disconnection stems from me not actually liking the fact that there are humans on this earth – let alone the fact that I am one! It's a big concern. The other animals may not have this problem. They don't care what they are. They just get on with it.

I think I am making better use of my money but if I have some to spare, which I usually do these days, why am I not putting more into my debts? Would clearing them as quickly as possible not be the best for my future? I think so. Yet I am fine with my debts being as they are for the time being.

I know that wrong thinking hurts and so I am vigilant but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't still sometimes 'enjoy' being negative. It's a part of my personality that I may have to work on accepting more of and trying to change and tweak less of. We'll see.

Over all things are definitely better and I'm looking forward to a third sober Christmas although this will be only the second one I can honestly say that I've enjoyed as 2015 totally sucked. This Christmas is still a big unknown. Lindsay and I have shown ourselves to be poor in communicating what we want to do and so we are looking at spending Christmas day in the flat our two selves as a very real possibility. I'll be ready for it if it is going to happen. I always say that the fun of Christmas is in the two weeks' build up and that the fun ends on the night of Christmas Eve. I think this could definitely be the way it turns out this year as well.

At some point on Christmas morning Lindsay's dad will be picking her up and they will be going to see her son. He stays with his grandmother in another part of town. During this time I will be in the flat on my own. Some Christmas. What I'd really like to do at this point would be take the walk to the next town and visit the AA meeting that I am told will be open at midday. The guy who runs it also doesn't have a family and so has promised to open the meeting. I would like to be able to say that I attended an AA meeting on Christmas day but the lack of transport would mean a five hour walking round-trip. I don't think that Lindsay will be away for anywhere near that length of time. I don't know.

Whatever happens I have been better enjoying these last couple of days. It's back to work today and then the Restoration Christmas lunch is tomorrow. I've looked out my Santa hat for the occasion.

I'm slowly getting into the spirit of things.


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Stevie

Getting into the spirit of things.

1169

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, December 14th 2017 (The Restoration Christmas Lunch)


On Monday I learned that I was wrong not to attend the Christmas night out with the college crew. I have a place within the group I may not have been aware of until I walked in late on Monday afternoon for the only class I have to still attend in this first semester. Not going was a mistake, an opportunity to bond and connect with those who, assuming I take my studies all the way, could be spending the next two and a half years with missed. I'll know for sure for next time.

Today I have the chance to connect with people from addiction social group and peer support service Restoration. I am the longest running member of the current group although I barely attend these days. I think I've been once in the second half of 2017. This makes me wonder why I am bothering to go this year. I don't know the people who attend now and many of them are without their main drug of choice but are still pissing around with drink or other drugs they consider to be lighter. I don't know if my involvement in this place will be coming to an end this afternoon. With Barry the Bullet and I not getting out to work yesterday due to the first rain and sleet of the year I could perhaps do with bumping this thing today and going out instead. It's not that I'm desperate for cash or anything, it's just. . .

Lindsay seems to be getting on much better with her placement now. Today marks the end of her fourth week of sixteen of her sign-off and so in three months or so she will have finally graduated at last. She should be working by the time we fly off for my fortieth birthday holiday.

We've booked dinner for Christmas day at a local restaurant. Tired of waiting for confirmation that something will be happening with my family Lindsay and I decided just to book a table before we ran out of time and there was nothing left. We have dinner at four. Eighty quid. Not long after this I received a message from Scottish Sarah asking me to stop having parcels delivered to her address. I had asked my brother (over the phone of course – I haven't seen him in person for nine months) and he said it was fine, his wife has issues with it though. It was all very timely. I had just booked dinned for Christmas day when I get this message. I took from it that their door was now firmly closed.

After a brief exchange of texts and me promising I would not have any more delivered there but that I am still expecting one more thing to arrive in a few days, and asking if there was anything that my nieces might want as presents ( I asked this of her a couple of times last week and this and never got so much as a text message in response), I received this very telling message, which starts with her talking about whether she had thought of anything yet that the nieces might want:

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I've not thought about it no. If I was ask them they'd probably say you since you've disappeared from their lives this year. I'm pretty pissed off about how you went about dropping out of Gary's birthday and letting my kids, your nieces down a few times this year, saying you'll be somewhere and then didn't bother. Pretty brutal if you ask me. I've never contacted as I was angry and didn't want to speak to you whilst feeling like that. If you want to buy them something they're needing. . . ''

and so on. . .

So what I am learning about my family this year, and it would seem that this extends now to people who have recently joined from other families through marriage, is that we DO NOT COMMUNICATE AT ALL!!!!! How many families are like this I wonder? Scottish Sarah's method for communicating after being hurt by me is to ignore me for an entire year and then have an outburst two weeks before Christmas. My brother's method is to just ignore me for an entire year. My method is to talk with my psychologist about it and only through his help and guidance make attempts at communication.

Gary and me learned not to talk about this when we were very young. Things just get boxed up and put away, never to be talked about. Now it would seem that this is Scottish Sarah's method also. Lindsay says that her family is exactly the same. Yesterday would have been Lindsay's mothers' birthday. She died three years ago as a chain-smoker and active heavy drinker. It's a real shame. Her father seems to try, I think, in his own way, to get to know his daughter and to help connect with her and keep a relationship open. I think he struggles. He lost his father when he was a little boy too and so communication was perhaps the same from his parents regarding this. You don't talk about it and it will all just work out itself by magic. Magic doesn't exist though. There is only communication.

I wonder about Sarah's comments. I had no idea at the time but I am assuming that the Metallica gig was Gary's birthday thing that we pulled out of. I wonder about some of the other things though. When were these times when I said I would be there and then didn't show? If anything it has felt more and more like I have been excluded from their lives as each month has passed. It's all down to a lack of communication skills from anyone in our family.

My mother is as bad as any of us. I have learned this through working with Dr. Bacon as well. When I wanted to speak with mum about dad for the first time in our lives she guided me to her house. She lets out a house to a family and in the locked attic are dad's things. Mum said that if I went to this door and asked her tenants if we could arrange a time to get into the attic and collect these things then we would talk. Now I am thinking that this is her following her own pattern of a lifetime. Rather than contact these people herself she asks me to knock on the door of her let house and ask people I've never known to arrange something. It's the sort of behaviour a Detached Protector would demand.

Today I have to put all of this to one side though. I have to don a Santa hat and go sit with a bunch of recovering alkies and addicts and eat some Christmas dinner. I've no intention of eating breakfast and will be walking to the restaurant (eight miles) and then walking home again (eh. . . another eight miles) and so will have earned a bath when I get back.

Then I think Lindsay and I had agreed to watch The Wolf of Wall Street tonight.

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Stevie

Starting to realise that communication is KING!

1226

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, December 15th 2017 (A Lunch For Eight)


I've brought my plant indoors. They say that we are so useless when we sober up and come off drugs that we should attempt to keep a house plant alive for a period of one full year, This will teach us about responsibility and so on. I managed to kill off two plants when I first tried this but last June I gave it another go and bought a Dragon Tree which lived with me in the cave for the first part of its life. Having made it successfully past its first birthday (I even bought it a Peppa Pig ''You Are 1'' birthday card, believe it if you will) and then it made the move with me to Lindsay's a couple of months ago when we rented the removal van where it has lived out on the balcony. It's getting a little colder at nights now and so it has been moved indoors to a much warmer and plant-friendly environment. This plant that was a challenge to keep alive for twelve months will be eighteen months come the 31st of December. I don't know what that means her age is in plant years. . .

So yesterday I went to the Restoration Christmas lunch and it was fun. I walked there and back. I've been trying to get the miles in this month after a pretty lame October and November. I wanted to get to fifteen hundred miles for the year and today's efforts put me just over fourteen hundred. Ninety nine miles over the next two and a bit weeks and I'll reach that goal. It takes me to seventy five miles for the month which is as good as I might have expected to manage given the decrease in temperatures and the early sundown. Going out after the sun goes down is getting to be more and more difficult. I arrive at the meal just on time.

Turns out that I am not the only one in attendance who will be spending Christmas day with just one other person. Turns out that two of the eight of us at the lunch will be spending it on their own. I'm lucky to have one other person as far as things go from a drinker and drug-taker's perspective. It's pretty sad. For some of us this today is effectively our Christmas day dinner. Eight is a very small number for a Restoration Christmas night/lunch. Last year there were three tables booked at the Serenity Cafe in Edinburgh for our group and there were around eight at each table. Things have definitely downsized in the last twelve months.

It's a good thing that it's still running. It's in its sixth year and I remember when I first started going back in 2014 it was held once a week in a little room in the DAPL office in my former town. Since then it has moved into the church and for a while was held in their room, eventually moving into the main hall, and has expanded to other towns now too. It is getting bigger, spreading wider, but for some reason there are nowhere near as many of us celebrating Christmas together this year. It has also shrunk a little in terms of the events held each week with us scrapping the Thursday evening gatherings some time last year. I think the funding has been cut again and I know that Nikki was struggling to find sponsorship and was being rejected by most places she was trying. Raith Rovers used to give us free tickets to home league games as well but that all stopped at the beginning of last season.

On Wednesday they are going to the Edinburgh Christmas Market but I won't be going. I think that Lindsay and I are to be heading there a week tomorrow and I'll be working with Barry the Bullet next Wednesday hopefully. The weather is supposed to pick back up again by the middle of next week actually and we're looking at perhaps temperatures in the early teens which is unbelievable when I think about it. Well, okay, maybe not unbelievable, but pretty good news for us window cleaners.

So yeah – loneliness. I wonder if it is even that. There's no doubt that Christmas expects you to feel sad if you are alone on the day itself, I know I did a little on the two Christmas's I spent on my own, but I don't believe that any of these people I am sharing an all-you-can-eat buffet with this afternoon will feel anywhere close to suicidal during this whole coming festive period. I think there will be a sort of quiet perverse and bitter joy at spending the day of stress alone. Their thoughts will turn to family that had passed on and is perhaps no longer with us but in general I think that it will be just another day for some of them. I know it was for me. That last Christmas day I spent on my own I woke up in the early afternoon, watched the queen giving her annual speech, put on Toy Story 3, which I had never seen before, and by the time it had finished I was passed out drunk. I still haven't seen the end of it to this day. People will keep themselves busy and so loneliness will be kept at bay.

It's the loneliness that comes from being alone for many consecutive days that is the real killer. This is when things like Restoration and this Christmas lunch come into play and can be seen for what they really are. Restoration is, and hopefully always will be, a way of stopping people in recovery from isolating by giving them a safe environment to interact with. It may not be there to help anyone come Christmas day but it will be running right up until a week today and so it helps people throughout the course of what can feel like a very long year. I'm glad it's still there.

We are talking a little about what happens over Christmas in the jail since some of us have spent time over the festive period in there. You get a turkey dinner. It's not all the trimmings or anything like that but you do get a different dinner from the rest of the year and you also get five pounds as a present. One woman says that it's shocking that prisoners can access this yet the elderly are currently struggling at this time of year to pay heating, let alone afford a decent Christmas dinner. I have a lot to say on the matter actually, she makes some really good points, but that's for another post.

Lindsay has the big court date this morning regarding her son. Every now and then there is a hearing to determine the next steps and tomorrow is one such meeting, a children's hearing. My name will be starting to get introduced into the fray now that the mother in question and I live together. It won't be long before my criminal record gets brought into it if it hasn't already. It shouldn't have a dramatic influence on things, I hope.

Right – I had better get moving since I'm well over my word count again.

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Stevie

Smashing his word counts.

1240

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday December 16th 2017 (The Day of Sports)


Barry the Bullet and I had a decent week again this week. A couple of days off during – Wednesday because of weather and Thursday due to the awkward timing of the Restoration Christmas lunch – but we made the best of the time we had and I took Tuesday off from college again to give us the chance of getting the most done we possibly could. I won't likely be able to take time off the college next week like I have these last two and so there are probably only three shifts between now and Christmas: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. That'll be it until the week of the 8th January.

Both my local football (soccer – we don't have American football here, not at local level anyway) and ice hockey teams are playing at home today and so I am going to watch them. I'm treating myself to a Christmas present in the form of two sporting events on the same day. Lindsay was supposed to be working today but has the day off and I had feared she might want to come with me but thankfully she says that it is too cold and so it's just me, the way I like it.

I can walk to Stark's Park from here in around half an hour (I walk past it many times on my weekly walks) and from there the ice rink is less than an hour away so I'll be getting exercise in today too. I've been to watch my football team loads of times over the course of my time living down this neck of the woods and used to go quite a bit when Restoration were providing the free tickets but I haven't been at all this season or last so it's been a while. I haven't been to watch the Fife Flyers ice hockey team play ever and have only been to the ice rink three times in my life – twice to try to ice skate (once with Restoration actually) and once to watch Lindsay's brother's amateur team get their asses handed to them 14-2 the other weekend.

With my student concession I can get into the football for around a tenner and the ice hockey for around the same. I'll be taking my flask with me and will eat at Wetherspoon in between matches so food will only cost me a fiver. The day will probably cost me around thirty bucks all in which is damn impressive when you think about me getting two live sporting events thrown in there. I'll be taking with me some essentials including a flask of hot coffee, my hat, and gloves. It's not going to be the cosiest stadium to be sitting in.

Lindsay's friend has had a shitty time of it recently. What a Christmas she's having. Her recent timeline goes something like this:

August 2016: Husband kills himself.
February 2017: Meets new fella.
May 2017: Wedding between her and new fella after knowing each other only a few months.
December 07th, 2017: New husband beats her and then leaves to buy heroin.
December 08th, 2017: New husband found dead from overdose.

That's what they say, innit!? When we go ''back out there'' we do so in style. We forget, or don't give a fuck about the fact, that we haven't kept our tolerance levels going for the period we've been abstinent from our drug of ''choice'', and so when we go all-in for a rage-fuelled relapse our bodies can't cope. This is apparently quite a common way for ex-drinkers and users to go.

Now this poor woman has returned to her old ways in order to cope with what is happening in her life and she's moved in with her mum (also a former heroin addict) and now both of them are getting charged together. Mother and daughter chasing the dragon together. I would say that I hope it doesn't end in disaster but it's already there. I hope it doesn't get any worse. I would say that it couldn't but I learned from WQD member Twiggy from the old forum that every situation has the potential to get better, and worse. There are plenty of ways that story could unfold. Watch this space.

Lindsay had the children's hearing yesterday morning about her son, who's now fifteen, and it turned out to be a success. From now on Lindsay does not have to have supervised visits and can see him any time she wants to. This includes on Christmas day. They are going shopping tomorrow afternoon. I will have to keep my distance though as we have not met yet and it isn't something anyone wants to rush. It has to be planned. It'll happen. He won't be coming to live with us anytime soon but that is the plan for the long term. It's going to be a bit of a challenge but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

It'll be interesting to see what happens now that they are to begin forming some kind of bond again. I don't know if Lindsay realises how lucky she actually is to be getting this chance. Her drinking has caused this problem in the first place but in the end, and after a relatively short time, it can start working itself out now. I don't know what my own children are up to these days as it's been so long. I tend not to follow their activities on social media although I know that it would be possible. I don't really know it I'm interested in what they are up to in their lives.

This journal is about me though, not everyone else's lives, and there isn't really much happening in my life that is so filled with drama that would make for exciting reading. That's not true actually. There's the drama within my own family. My sister-in-law and her recent text message to me that told me just how pissed off she's been with me this year for supposedly vanishing off the face of the earth and abandoning her and her family. It's not been as straightforward as this and anyone who's been reading this journal, even intermittently, over the course of 2017 will know how much stress the whole situation has caused me. I've mentioned not seeing my brother for the longest period since we've been on this planet and not seeing my nieces for months at a time. Dr. Bacon knows all about this too.

It's not him, or indeed you guys, that need to know about this though. It's them, and as things stand I have yet to get back to her.

It feels very much as though the ball is in my court at the moment but for some reason I'm not able to play.

Hopefully my local football and ice hockey teams don't suffer from this same problem this afternoon and evening.
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Stevie

Not playing ball.

1178

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, December 17th 2017 (Another Sunday Service)


I'm going to church again this morning. I've been around since I sobered up and have been to close to a dozen churches when I was doing my Step Two in AA and trying to connect with a Higher Power and more recently as I've been trying out churches in this town (for an as yet unknown reason actually) and I think I've found one I like. I've been there twice already – the most recent being last week – and feel as though I want to be there again this morning. That's when you know you've found something, isn't it!? When you begin to feel the pull towards it? I'm not saying that I'm gonna become a lifelong member of this little community or anything like that, or even that I'll go to this church, or any other for that matter, when the new year comes, but certainly on this fine, crisp winter morning I will be travelling there and I'm looking forward to it.

Yesterday turned out not so much to be a day if sport as I had hoped and had advertised. At eleven o'clock, four hours or so after I had posted yesterday morning, there was a pitch inspection at the football ground and they decided to call the game off. A frozen pitch. According to their website the grass had been under protective covering for several days and nights but with the lowly temperatures we've been having this week they had to make a call and cancellation was what was decided. We're two games behind the other teams in the division now after an away day at Stranraer was also cancelled last month – actually, it was abandoned midway through with the score tied at one goal each – due to a waterlogged pitch. Football in Scotland.

I seemed to be the only person not to read about this though and it wasn't until I was walking up the road to the stadium wondering where everyone was that made me wonder whether or not the game was on. Good exercise though, which is something I'll need over the next two weeks to keep the weight stable as we head into the thick of the festivities. I'm hoping not to have a repeat of last year which saw me hit twelve stone and four pounds – the heaviest I've ever been! - and then get myself into Slimming World weight loss experts for four months to get myself back down to eleven and a half where I feel comfortable.

I walked back up the road and then watched the football results come in on the telly. Later I was to be going to the Fife Ice Arena to watch my local ice hockey team but after the events of the day and the freezing temperatures out there when the sun goes down I decided to stay in and watch the Strictly Come Dancing final on the television. Some day of sport then. Ended up a day in front of the telly. Not like me and not a habit I have any interest in forming. Was fun at the time though.

We've been watching a couple of shows later on in the evenings actually. One of them British and one of them American. Peaky Blinders and Stranger Things. I'm much more into Peaky Blinders while Lindsay is more into Stranger Things. They are both a little daft but at least with Peaky Blinders you have a really interesting and well done protagonist. Stranger Things offers very little of genuine interest. I watch it though mainly so that I can snuggle up on the couch and have some intimate time in the bubble with my babes.

When I come back from church it won't be long before Lindsay's dad comes to whisk her away for some lunch and Christmas shopping. He'll be swinging round to pick up her son on the way though. Lindsay is now allowed to spend time with her son without it having to be under social work supervision. This is a major breakthrough. So the three of them are going out this afternoon. I still haven't met this lad yet and it won't be happening today either. It needs to be thought through and looked at first. Personally I don't think it's all that much of a big deal but I understand that we shouldn't just spring this kind of thing on him. Here's the new guy that lives with you mum. I do get it.

It's also great that this has all happened in the build up to Christmas as now her family are all meeting up and sharing time together. I am really hoping that this can come at a time that gives me the opportunity to nip off to the next town and get to that AA meeting. There's a meeting being held on Christmas day in my old town and I would like to be able to say that I did it, that I was at a meeting on that day, but I don't know what'll be happening yet. Had I been living in the cave still then this would have been my closest local meeting, it having just opened up six months or so ago, but as a result of me moving through here is is a four and a half hour round trip on foot. No public transport on Christmas day. I'm not sure on the time it starts (and as usual AA websites are shockingly sparse when it comes to being updated and informative) but I do know that there is to be a meeting at that venue on Christmas day.

Lindsay and I have our dinner booked in at a restaurant in the afternoon and in the morning she'll be spending time with her father, brother and his family (which includes her two year old nephew) and her son. I'll not be seeing my own family until we can arrange something. At the moment my family members are still being dominated by their own (and our collective) Detached Protector modes and it's ending (as it always will when those modes are running the show) in an uneventful stalemate. I don't have a Dr. Bacon session until Thursday which is leaving it quite late in the day and so perhaps I will have to act beforehand.

Trusting myself to find the Healthy Adult from within when I need him.

Not something I'm particularly hopeful of. . .
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Stevie

Still wonders about Christmas.

1105

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, December 18th 2017 (Forcing the Festive Feelings)


Just one week to go. One of everything and then we are off for a break. One Monday afternoon media law class at college; one more week of cleaning windows; one more Friday evening debt-collecting mission; one more session with Dr. Bacon; one more weekend. Then it's all over for a brief period. I always say that Christmas begins two weeks before the day itself and ends effectively at five to midnight on Christmas Eve. After that the magic is gone and things seem to be overwhelmingly anticlimactic. The day itself can be a right pain in the ass and the two weeks that follow can be some of the more boring of the year. They should help to make me better appreciate my college course and work. But why the hell am I thinking this far into the future? 'Tis very much still the season to be jolly. . .

Over the weekend I popped onto the Facebook group chat that we have at the college just to see if there has been anything happening. One of the students has taken it upon himself to start up a booking schedule of sorts for the spare studio. The idea is that people contact him and let him know which time-slot they would like and then he adds them onto a little system he has going and then sends it to the lecturer for approval. At the moment the maximum length of booking time is at two hours so that everyone has a chance to get in there in the final week. Special priority will be given to those who are really far behind. It's a good idea. I especially like having the maximum booking time. As things stand there is nothing actually stopping people from getting into the studio early and pissing around in there for hours without doing much. Last year during the sound production you had to email the lecturer to let them know when you wanted the studio, what you planned to do while you were in there, which microphones you would need, everything! It seemed a much better way of running things.

Reading over comments going back to the start of the week I can see that everyone besides Shaun and one or two others are regularly asking for times in the studio. They'll be alright, those students. They'll have the option of going to Sunderland in a couple of years to finish the degree. These other guys who are currently miles behind and frantically trying to get as much studio time as possible will also, of course, have the same opportunities, but you can't help but feel as though they will come to a crossroads in their education soon where they will either have to really pull their socks up and completely change their attitudes towards their studies or drop out. The choice will be theirs.

To be honest I can't see how anyone can be behind at this stage. I've not been in class much at all over the last three weeks but will be going in this week. We have the Secret Santa thing so I have my gift all wrapped up and ready to come with me to class this morning. I think we are to be getting an assessment at some point too, something the lecturer emailed me about last week when I was asking if I could take that week off to go working with Barry the Bullet, unless he's moved this to next year to give people the chance of catching up with classwork. There may be little reasons for me being in class this week actually, now that I come to think of it.

One thing I did do was respond to the Facebook group chat and offer my services. If anyone wants me to work on any of the production elements of their projects for them I am more than happy to and it's something I am getting good at. It would save them a lot of time if they had someone else doing the clipping and the editing. While I am doing that they could be working on something else. Anyone interested should just ask me when we are in class this morning. It gives me more practice too. So far there have been two responses so I guess when I go in this morning I might have something to be doing after all. I could do with the practice. It feels like more than three weeks I've been away.

I am glad now that I put the effort in. I was in the same situation as everyone else at the end of October and then I wrote out all of what would be needed for each of the Practical Assignments and Assessed Shows in this journal. This helped me to lay out exactly what was required for each. I then went about them systematically and by the end of November I was done. I essentially managed to do three months' work in four weeks. This left me in the position where I no longer needed to be in classes other than the Monday afternoon one (it's a theory class not related to the other classes) and so I have had the luxury of time off. It just took a little planning and then a commitment to myself to go and do the work. Four Assessed Shows, a three-part podcast series on a topic of my choice (I went with NHS in Scotland) and create a fake radio advert. It isn't much work to be honest.

Other than that it's been a decent little weekend and I'm all focused now on the final week before we break off for our little two week holiday for the darkest part of the year. The shortest day will be later on this week so after that it will start getting lighter again in the evenings, if only by two minutes per night.

It's taken a little longer than I might have expected for me to start getting into the festive spirit of things. I guess this is more to do with my strained family relations than anything else. People say that the older we get the more we realise it as just being another day. I disagree. Like I've said a few time: I think the day itself sucks but the build up should be enjoyed. It's the build up that makes it a special time of year.

I just wish I could start feeling it a bit more. I am wearing my Santa hat to college today to try and force festive feelings a bit.

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Stevie

Forcing the Festive Feelings.

1126

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, December 19th 2017 (Filler)


You ever read some of these entries and think of them as nothing more than filler? It's like I don't have the content now to be posting every single day. It's usually around the middle of the week, isn't it!? That's when I sit down to type and feel the writer's block coming on. It's quite good what I've done to be able to write like this for so long now on a daily basis, shows pretty incredible commitment really. It's something I've just not seen on a forum such as this before. Today may be one of those filler episodes because I don't feel any burning desire to say anything, as is sometimes the case, so you'll just have to bear with me. Still I must get my one thousand words in for the day though and so I had better get my thinking cap on and come up with something. . .

I guess that the upcoming Dr. Bacon session has got me thinking. It's looking into the future, this I know, but in thinking about what might be the content of this weeks' session is a good way of looking at how things are in my life at this moment, as well as what I might realistically be able to do to better my situation between now and then. I still have two days to give him good news in place of what is currently bad, and so on. The main issues we have at the moment relate to my immediate family and my constant lack of contact with them. This is something that we have made little progress with in the year that I have been having these sessions.

On Sunday I messaged my brother to explain what I saw the problem to be. I mentioned that I felt as though it would appear to be a case of some kind of. . . Let me scrap that as it is exactly my problem just now: mincing words and taking forever to get to my point. I need to be tactful here but also not shy in putting across what it is that I want over the coming Christmas period.

The response came and was much as I would have expected it to be. My brother says that he's just been super-busy with university being a little tougher than he had bargained it would be and that as ''pissed off as'' Scottish Sarah is – this method of not communicating with anyone is not his preferred method. I wonder. He says that meeting up would be a good way of getting all of this ''back up and running.'' I think that his wife has some other issues and I am being used as an outlet for her anger, a way of providing a target for her hatred. It will have been something else she was pissed off with last month. This month it's me.

I've been there. I remember waking up every morning and hating something, anything, anyone. Something had to be hated as soon as I woke. If nothing could be found instantly then I would focus my energy on hating myself. I thought it was just a part of the alcoholic condition. That we found our own lives to be so disturbing and unsatisfying that we had no option but to concentrate all of that ill-feeling onto some external source so as to divert it from ourselves. I can remember this going on for some time. I hated it (but I also find myself missing it a little, in the same way I miss most things about the drinking and drug-taking life. It's not that I want to go back there – don't be silly – it's just I think I miss that whole abandonment of expectation and responsibility, that ''nothing to lose'' mentality) but don't get it as much anymore. I can't really recall exactly where or when this subsided.

I'm not saying that my sister-in-law has this problem. I'm just saying that she sometimes gives off the impression that she isn't a complete stranger to it. I would do well not to take anything personally here. There is still much opportunity to salvage this and then work on improving my relationships with the people within this household over the course of the next few weeks. Oldest Niece will have a birthday in early February (actually the day before I celebrate my third sober birthday – not that I actually ever celebrate my sober birthdays). Dr. Bacon will be happy about all of this when I tell him about it on Thursday afternoon.

In ''other news'' Lindsay bumped into my old AA sponsor in the shops over the weekend. She has done so several times over the last couple of months. He's changed jobs and works fairly close to where we live. Our local shopping centre would be his local one too since the little dump of a village he lives doesn't have any shops, not really. So they keep meeting, only he never acknowledges her. This time I am told that they practically walked into one and other as they were turning around the corner of an isle at the supermarket. He looked straight to the ground. I don't know why he does this. He was with his wife so I guess he could say that he was protecting Lindsay's anonymity by not saying anything.

It's at the stage now though where I can't actually believe that I went along with this guy for as long as I did. That I could, even for a moment, believe that this guy has, or had, anything that I want, or wanted, out of sobriety and the rest of my life, is mind-boggling and a true reflection on how much better I am doing these days (or how sick I have become but just don't realise it). I remember defending him when an AA Elder said to me that he was all ego but now I can see that the real Stu is actually really difficult to find – his ego protects him and is as masterful at it as my Detached Protector is at defending and protecting me. He is all ego. That the God of my Understanding that I got out when I did.

Off to college now and this will be the last day until January 08th. I wasn't going to bother going in today but it'll be fun, it being the last day and all, and we have our class Secret Santa as well so I had better go.

Think I'll leave it at that for this morning.

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Stevie

Not so much ''filler'' after all.

1129