How much you drink is NOT relevant to anybody else, only you, because it’s all about you.
For example, two glasses a night could be highly dangerous to one person and to another it could just be their starter. Everybody is different.
When I stopped drinking, I noticed that the first thing other drinkers ask (or think) is, ‘Do you have a problem?’. This is only to make them feel better about themselves. They are just trying to gauge themselves against you.
By stopping drinking, you are a shining beacon. You are doing things differently, taking the path less travelled, wanting a better life. You have decided to leave the tribe. This tends to make anyone staying in the tribe feel uncomfortable. They want to believe the only reason you have stopped is because you have a problem or you have found a new religion! Other drinkers need to put you in a box, label you, and then forget about it. They don’t need to ask any more questions. They can go on drinking as normal.
Even with my regular alcohol intake, I ran my own successful marketing agency, have been married for 25 years and have three wonderful, grown-up children. But every day, I was putting this poison inside myself, thinking it was some form of relaxant, stress reliever, anxiety killer.
But I was overweight (well over 17 stone), short of breath, anxious, short-tempered and doing very little exercise. These were all symptoms of too much alcohol consumption and an unhealthy lifestyle.
I did do some exercise but not enough to make an impact on my weight and mental well-being. I went cycling and played golf, always spending time at the 19th hole.
Being in my 50s, my body was not what it used to be. Even two drinks the night before would lead to a hangover. I never really looked at it as a problem until well into my 40s, when my body started to tell me that it just could not cope as it used to with the mental and physical effects.
I don’t think much has changed in 50 years regarding the way alcohol is promoted though media.
Even though the amount of information we receive has massively increased in volume through social media, the internet and smartphones, alcohol is still pretty much positioned the same.
When I was a boy, there were only a handful of TV channels – BBC1, BBC2, ITV and, in the early 80s, along came Channel 4. There were national newspapers and local papers, plus magazines. There was also radio – with only a few stations to choose from, including national BBC stations and local independent radio. To watch a movie, you had to go to the cinema. There was no internet.
The home I grew up in was alcohol-free. My mother and father were not drinkers. There was never alcohol in the home apart from at Christmas time when it would appear for a week or so in the form of cans of beer, a bottle of whisky, maybe Malibu and Baileys and a bottle of Advocaat that would become a Snowball if you added lemonade to it! There was no wine. Wine in the UK in the 70s and 80s mainly consisted of a German sweet white wine called Liebfraumilch.
My parents did not drink during the week. On a Saturday night, when they would go out dancing at a local club, it was only a couple of pints of beer. Other than that, I think my dad would have a couple of pints during the week if he went out to play skittles so, in total, he was drinking maybe four pints of beer a week maximum and my mother much less than that. So, my parental role models drank, but hardly anything at all. My older brother, who was 14 years older than me and lived at home until he was 21, did venture to the pub more often, so this probably had some influence on me as a young boy.
Alcohol was very much associated with successful people. Of course, there were the drunk tramps drinking out of bottles concealed in brown paper bags, but they were classed as alcoholics. The very clear message through TV, cinema and all media was that the more successful, richer and more famous you were, the more alcohol you could afford. Success was a bar in your house; success was drinking champagne. In sport, it was James Hunt covered in champagne after winning F1; Bobby Moore drinking beer in the communal bath after winning the World Cup; George Best pouring champagne into a pyramid of glasses. In the movies, it was James Bond drinking his Vodka Martini. On TV, it was Leonard Rossiter enjoying a Cinzano Bianco with Joan Collins. Anyone who was successful usually had a drink in their hand.
The TV adverts were creative and appealed to younger people with their catchy slogans, staying sharp to the bottom of the glass, probably the best lager in the world, refreshing the parts other beers cannot reach, follow the bear and reassuringly expensive.
This definitely had an effect on my subconscious mind. I was being groomed. Every media channel was telling me alcohol was good for me. Successful people consumed it. Adults consumed it. It was fun. It made you sociable. You became a fun person if you drank it!
My recollection is that I never thought of drinking alcohol until I was probably around 14 years old.
Outside school, social life consisted of a weekly youth club and the odd disco in a village hall. There weren’t many of these, probably four or five a year.
There was definitely pressure among my friends to drink a couple of cans of beer or cider before going to these village hall discos. It was good to have an older and/or taller friend who could get served in an off-licence. We all knew the three or four shops that would sell us cigarettes and beer.
Once the cans of beer were acquired from the shop, they were normally consumed in secret, in a park, somewhere where no one could see. This drinking gave me a slight ‘high’ and normally ended in me being sick. Nothing like it was portrayed on TV!
By my teenage years, I was starting to build a belief that alcohol was cool, that drinking it was a normal thing to do. Everybody did it. It was a rite of passage. Grown-ups drank. Everyone else drank, well, most people. It was everywhere. It was hard to avoid. If you did not drink it would be unusual. Suspect. Wrong.
Putting pen to paper and writing my alcohol life story was an enlightening experience. This story of my relationship with alcohol revealed three main things:
The difficulty of getting hooked. You really have to work hard at it. I remember others saying to me at the start of my drinking career, ‘You should try Guinness, it’s an acquired taste. You won’t like it initially but it will grow on you’. What a load of codswallop.
Are there any other things in my life that I have taken up for 35 years that initially tasted disgusting and made me sick? The only one I can think of is alcohol.
What seems to be going on here is some form of gigantic conspiracy. Alcohol has weaved its way into almost every aspect of our lives, from celebrating births and marriages, to raising a glass to the lives of those we have lost. If we’re happy, we’ll drink to celebrate. If we’re sad, we’ll drink to commiserate. If we’re angry, we’ll drink to calm down. If we’re calm, we’ll drink to get calmer. If we’re depressed, we’ll drink to anaesthetise.
I am lucky. I also discovered that I am one of the lucky ones. I am still breathing. I am here now. I have one life and I am going to make the most of what is left of it, whether it’s one day or 40 years. I’m going to do it right now.
I can change my beliefs. One of the most important, if not THE most important thing anyone who drinks could learn is this: believing you can never stop drinking is just a belief. That’s all it is. A false and limiting belief. And like all beliefs, they can be learned and unlearned. That’s what I did. I changed my belief about alcohol. My book will show you how I did it.
