Failed again!

Originally I decided I would not post when I had had a drink ... but now I think that posting when I've been drinking may actually be good for me. If I look back on 'tipsy' postings when I'm sober, I may be shamed into a) not drinking, but, more likely, b) not posting drunk.

On the way home from work tonight I went shopping and bought a bottle of spiced rum. If you look at my earlier post, I was going to have the one glass left in the bottle of wine that was in the fridge from yesterday, and maybe one rum and coke. Well, I haven't touched the wine! But I'm more than halfway through the rum ...

I went onto Google and looked up Alcoholics Anonymous Online and checked out a few of the entries. The trouble is, they are all for people who want to stop drinking ... and I don't want to stop, I just want to cut down.

I think/know I'm fooling myself when I say I can cut down. I think I've known it for the past (let me work it out ... I was in college, and a friend's mother was a counsellor. She said the definition of an alcoholic is someone who has to have a drink every day. I was at college, I had no money, I couldn't have a drink every day! But that sentiment stayed with me as I grew up, grew older, could afford to drink every day ... and did ... and began to need to ...) 20 years.

My glass isn't even half empty yet, but I'm wondering if I should go to the kitchen and top it up already ...

I went to visit a friend of mine yesterday. We used to work together, and we had some pretty frank discussions about the extent of our drinking. She left work because a) her job was crap and b) her boss was crap and c) she was busy planning her elder daughter's wedding and d) her younger daughter (aged 24) was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of leukaemia. Obviously I have not given them the priority they had in her mind, but I wanted to show the escalation of her distress and depression.

Sitting in the last of the evening sun in her garden, she had a cup of tea and I had a glass of water. I was dying for a drink - a proper drink - and I think she was, too, but because we'd both admitted our concerns about drinking, neither of us wanted to be the first to go for the bottle of wine in the fridge. And, as she said, 'My daughter hasn't done anything wrong. She's eaten healthily, she's exercised, she doesn't smoke and she doesn't drink - and she's got leukamia. I'm going to bloody well enjoy what I eat and drink!'

I recalled that my mother was slim, fit, didn't drink and died at 53 (she did smoke a lot though) and my father died at 58. He was slim, fit, didn't drink and didn't smoke. My feeling is that I want to enjoy what I eat and drink now, because I don't see myself getting out of the other side of my 50s.

It's gone my bedtime but it's Saturday tomorrow (well, today, now). I bloody well am going to go and refresh my glass ...

... Usually at this time of night/morning, and this far down the bottle I go into chat rooms, in search of someone to fill the void. I don't even think I have a void until I find myself in rooms dedicated to transvestites, transsexuals, gay, lesbian and bisexual. As far as I am aware (and I have spent many hours and weeks and months in therapy increasing my self-awareness) I do not belong in any of those groups except for the one common thread: we are all looking for someone to love, and someone who will love us.

I think, perhaps, I'm not sure, that the reason I drink is to free the joyous inner child in me: everyone loves a child, but no-one loves me. As a child I really was loveable ... as an adult I am prickly, unhappy ... and unloveable.

Time to stop posting now. This is getting a touch too painful.

If anyone out there is reading this .. please reply. I'm feeling really alone right now.