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Have you ever looked at a homeless person drinking spirits from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag? I used to see someone like that and think to myself, ‘Well I’m not as bad as him, so I must be okay.’ This was a way of justifying my drinking and convincing myself I didn’t really have a problem. Instead of feeling sorry for the guy, I used his misfortune to make myself feel better and to help calm the turbulence in my head.
How could I be as bad as them? I had a loving family, a lovely house, a nice car, my own business, and a few holidays to exotic destinations every year. Surely I was alright? Wrong... because what I didn’t have was freedom. I was never truly happy or at peace, and rarely found myself feeling calm or laughing without a care. Life coach Tony Robbins says, ‘Success without fulfilment is failure,’ and for me, this seems true. I had all the material possessions I wanted, along with the love and support of my wonderful wife and family, but I didn’t have true fulfilment. In fact, I felt like a failure.
The fact is, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a down-and-out drinking vodka in a park or whether you are able to function at work during the day after a heavy night of drinking. If alcohol holds power over you, and if you suspect you’re trapped in a vicious cycle that you can’t break out of, you’re not free either. Because if you’re simply going through the motions of your day until you can have the next drink, there’s very little in the way of happiness on offer. Well, there wasn’t for me anyway.
The most beautiful effect I experienced after a few weeks of not drinking was that I started to engage more with my wife and daughter. I was no longer putting wine first, and had the desire and energy to spend time with them. I loved listening to what they had to say, and found myself laughing as we shared jokes and played pranks on each other. When I looked back and wrote in my journal a list of the things that I’d neglected because of alcohol, I felt sad when I saw how I’d put wine ahead of quality time with my daughter, my wife, or my mum. However, writing this list also gave me strength as it made me realise what I should be putting first now – and it wasn’t booze.
Take some time to jot down your own list of people, situations, and events that you’ve neglected in favour of drink. Then write next to each entry what the same situation or event would have looked like if you hadn’t been drinking. You’ll find this process eye-opening and empowering, even if it does make you feel down.
I now realise that just because I hadn’t reached the point at which I was homeless and drinking on the streets, it didn’t mean that I was any different to that guy. No doubt he’d encountered some bad luck in his life that meant things had worked out badly for him. But the fact is we’re all caged in a self-built prison of booze, and we don’t know how to get out.
The good news is that you hold the key to that prison, as we’ll explore in the next chapter.