The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, October 06th 2017 (Huelgas Ferroviarias)


It was super hot today, just as the forecast had said it would be. Imagine having those temperatures every day. Would be great stuff indeed. Wait a minute – many of you probably do!! It makes such a tremendous difference to a day when it isn't cold all the time and raining. I documented the weather quite closely in this journal over the summer and wrote about how in August we had only six days of the thirty one when there was no rainfall at all. We've never even been threatened with it this week although Lindsay was speaking to someone on the balcony last night who was telling her that they arrived on Saturday and it rained a little then and on Sunday and that it was really cloudy all day Monday. If this is the case then we got really lucky arriving when we did on Monday night. I should be, and am, grateful.

Lindsay and I should have woken up in Barcelona this morning as was the plan. We had booked a room a couple of months or so ago and were set to be getting the train from the station close to our resort and getting in there yesterday afternoon at some point. Just because it's not on the news anymore – or might still be actually as I haven't seen any in the time we've been here – doesn't mean that there isn't still some shit going down and there have been issues with the trains here since the rail strike on Wednesday. Sucks. There was one time I had tickets to see Manchester indie band The Stone Roses back in 2013 but got too wasted the night before, stayed up all night and then was too fucked to go in the morning, and so actually missed the gig. I still have my complete ticket which proves it was never used. Daft. I have also had tickets for Scottish summer festival T in the Park not once but twice yet have still never actually set foot in the grounds. Now I have been to the outskirts of Barcelona and have had a room booked for a night but have never actually set foot in the city. Oh well. I am still grateful for what we're having right now. It's been a good trip regardless.

I'm looking at the positive in things even if it's just until we get back on British shores. Last night there was a Glaswegian couple got steaming drunk in the resort while with their young child and there were one or two people complained, especially when the drunken mother tried to carry the infant down a set of stairs. Yikes! There are many Brits at this resort and we really are living up to our reputations as overweight heavy drinkers. We do come to Spain every year in droves though and always bring our wallets with us so I guess there's a price to pay for making all those Euros from us. Lindsay and I have been as quiet as two little mice though.

Lindsay was in Spain last year and then again two and three years before that. This isn't such a regular thing for me though. I would like it to be. Finally something worth working for!! I think Lindsay thinks it's amusing when in the evenings I am looking online at possible other places we might be able to save up to go to. Maybe next year plan something similar. The problem with Barcelona could turn into an advantage for us in the long run. Although we lose the ninety quid for the room for last night we won't be spending all that we would have been on the bus tour (fifty four Euros for the two of us); the train fares; food and anything else we might have needed and so rather than moan about it as I would have normally we have agreed to just put it aside for the next time. If we can't find a decent exchange rate then just keep the Euros and use them as spending money for the next trip. It's all exciting! Another trip away next year.

Robert from AA sent me a text message today saying that he is now a week without an AA meeting and was asking a little about advice on staying away. Just after I turned two years sober I decided to take a bit of time away from the rooms, ninety days to be exact, and I managed fine. Robert wants to know what I did to successfully manage this. The fact he's asking someone suggests that maybe he isn't ready for that yet but then the fact he's asking suggests strongly that he's feeling some of the negatives of attending frequent, even regular, meetings. I ask him what's up.

Robert – ''Its just that lots of them seem to have emotional problems and im trying to get better. Think iv sussed out a lot about some of them recently a lot of arseholes in the meetings''

Stevie – ''I agree, finding people you can trust in AA is very difficult.''

Robert – ''They all say it cant be done it cant be done even though it is possible to stay sober away from aa, my dad has done it for 12years the reason is he doesn't want to drink.''

Stevie – ''So what plans you got? Speak with him about it?''

Robert – ''I've got an audio course called conquer and cure 26 emotional enemies of the mind, straight from america over three hours long, costs £300 if you buy it new so im gonna try that.''

I wish him well but feel he'll be back. We all get these little resentments to some members of the fellowship but we all end up back there at some point. Actually that's not really true but that's a whole other post. I had planned on getting to a meeting out here, see what AA is like in another country, but I can't seem to be arsed. It would be nice but there are so many things I'd rather be doing here than making the effort to track down a meeting and then actually go and sit through one. I endure meetings these days rather than enjoy them.

I'm gonna get going now, this sun isn't gonna find me in a room sitting on a laptop like some sad and antisocial fuckwit, but there's one last thing – the Scotland game last night!! An own goal at the death has set it all up for Sunday evening and we've actually got a chance now. Things are within our own hands. I hadn't thought we'd be sitting where we are at the moment – with something to actually play for with one game to go – and I know I'm not the only one. No one I've spoken to gave us a hope in hell. We're such a negative bunch, us Scots. But we still have a chance. Beat Slovenia on Sunday evening and we are in the world cup playoffs.

There's a shit tonne of good stuff to happen between now and then though.

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Stevie

I'm not in Barcelona but there's good stuff happening by the shit tonne.

1229

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, October 07th 2017 (Cuatro Estrellas Gente)


Fuck! Now it feels as though this trip is closing in on its finale. We fly back to rainy, cold, dark (but still in with a world cup playoff shout) Scotland on Monday and so this is effectively now just a long weekend. That's still long enough to have some more fun and soak up some more sun. After taking the day off yesterday (although still waaaaaaayyy better than what we get back home even during the summer months) the sun is set to be back for these final three days and so we are going to make the most of it. Next week, rather than lying by the poolside, I'll be climbing ladders with Barry the Bullet but now I know what is possible I have the extra motivation of saving a little of my earnings and putting them into a holiday fund for the next time.

I guess it'll be good to get some discipline back into my life. I can get away from all the over-indulgence, the over-eating and the general laziness one can be guilty of while taking little trips like these. When I return to colder and less favourable, but more familiar climes (I'm trying my best not to refer to it as ''home'') I will have a few pounds to lose and some things to focus on that I guess could drive you mad were you to be out here by the poolside for too long (in saying that – I'm really struggling to feel any truth in it) and Lindsay will have her new placement to get on with as I will have college to think about. So there are positive things about returning to that freezing little island where there isn't much hope (unless you're talking about the national football team).

There are some interesting social points I could make about Spain though, based on the tiny little slice of it I have experienced. This resort is three star accommodation. The other night we went to see a band in a four star hotel. The differences are noticeable enough from the get-go. The place is more sophisticated and the punters have an air of self-importance about them so they look much more miserable than those at our resort who don't have that weight of trying to seem important and successful while trying desperately hard not to appear as though they are trying to seem important and successful and having it come across as genuine, which it never does when we're pretending. Much of it reminds me of Beverly Hills Cop and I feel a little like Eddie Murphy when he arrives in town and can't help but chuckle in amazement at how silly this all seems. Only the God of my Understanding knows how pretentious and wasteful a five star might be.

There are serious sides to this though. At our resort every single staff member (barring those on the front desk) are black. The bar staff are all black males and the cleaners all black women. It's an eighteenth century cliché. Depressingly, however, when we were at that four star hotel to watch the band on Wednesday night I noticed that every single member of staff was white. I'm not kidding. Not a black man or woman in sight. I'm deadly serious. It's not that there may have been one or two but I just didn't see one – I was actually surveying once I'd clocked on to it and sought out even one of slight colour but there were none to be found beyond an white man with a tan. That was as dark as it got. Here at the resort I haven't seen a white man or woman working in the main area, the dining area, by the pool, the bars, or house-keeping staff. I keep thinking of that movie Get Out and can't help but wonder if this is a representation of Spain as a whole or if they only do this at resorts because it's what we holiday-makers want. We of the three stars tend not to care who or what is at the other side of the counter when we are asking for a drink but there is a racist aspect to those of us who fancy ourselves as four star human beings. We want four star staff at our hotels and that means no black people? It's disturbing.

I'm not sure exactly what is on the cards for us for today. Lindsay is still sleeping (as is most of the hotel at this hour, probably most of Spain) but we'll all be up soon, starting with the sun, and slowly this place will be filled with all the sounds of life at the poolside. This'll replace the sounds of crickets which is another thing new to me. I've heard them in movies, even used them myself for my sound design piece on that alien clip for the sound production course earlier in the year, but they can be heard all over here until after the sun has lifted its head from its bed in the horizon. Yesterday wasn't the best in terms of good weather (although much, MUCH, better than what it will be like in Scotland at the moment), just as forecast, but the weekend is set to be scorchio again.

Even though it is pretty late in the year for thinking about taking a trip here there are new people arriving every day still. The bus pulls up and a half dozen, sometimes more, will get out and then retrieve their suitcases and make way for the reception area. I wonder when places like this stop getting holiday-makers. What time of year does that all stop? Surely they don't keep coming all year? What would some place like this look like on Christmas day? I would suspect they close for a few weeks at least but you never know.

One of those new guys asks Lindsay for a cigarette lighter last night and she rakes through her bag. ''Oh, you're British too.'' I would have thought that we looked sufficiently milk-bottle white not to be confused with being anything else but evidently not. Perhaps a slight tan is beginning to come through.

Stevie – over and out!!

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Stevie

Over and out.

1067

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, October 08th 2017 (Hola, Barcelona!)


We decided early doors yesterday that just because we had missed the chance to go to Barcelona as planned during the week (there were train strikes recently among all the issues they've been having through here) doesn't mean that we have to come all this way and not go to the city and so we are at the train station near our resort at ten o'clock after spending a little time getting some breakfast and packing a bag and then at the Barcelona Sants railway station in the heart of the city around an hour later. The weather is beautiful and the city bustling. This is going to be good.

What an awesome place to visit. Barcelona is certainly different from any major city I've ever set foot in. It's hard to put into words actually. I would even go as far as to say that it left me thinking that human beings aren't all that bad really, but I won't quite go that far. Even on the way there the train had us passing through so many little seaside villages and resorts that it was making my mind hurt just looking through all the streets and alleyways and thinking about all of the stories that are unfolding right now. All the infinite adventures and thoughts and events occurring right now. It's made me think about how enormous this world really is (the internet can falsely make it feel as though it is so small and that we are all connected somehow) and as a result allow me to see just how small I really am.

From the train station we headed in the direction of the football team's stadium. This was the one thing that both of us were interested in seeing – Lindsay for the potential to get a gift for her son; me for the obvious reasons – and it is also one of the points along the route of the tourist bus tours. If we only have one day in this wondrous place then the bus tours are the only way we're going to manage to see much of it. We head in the direction of the Camp Nou but I notice something about Lindsay that makes us change our ideas about how best to proceed.

I think that this trip, but this one day in Barcelona specifically, has highlighted one of the ways in which she and I are completely different. Lindsay likes to feel safe all of the time. We all do, I guess, but I think that she needs to know that she's in control of her safety. To be fair to her I don't think that she comes from a place where being safe has ever been an option for a long time. Where I am different, I am learning, is that I want to push the boundaries of my safety a little. I want to not feel safe all the time. Lindsay wants to know exactly where she is in this new city at all times whereas I'm willing to take that chance and perhaps take a wrong turn and wind up off the beaten track for a moment or two. I am eager to see what this place has to offer on foot; Lindsay would prefer only to see it from the top level of a tourist bus.

So we jump aboard sooner than the football stadium and pass through the whole city before we get there, stopping off in the main shopping centre (which is when I thought if she was going to have an anxiety attack it was going to be then) and also at the chair lifts that took us high into the hills and offered panoramic views of the landscape. We had a couple of stops to change bus routes and ended up back at the train station around six o'clock. Seven hours doesn't seem like a long time to spend in a city the size of Barcelona but we were pretty exhausted by the time we got back to our resort and had munched on what will be our second last dinner here.

Had we had more time I can think of many places I'd liked to have got off and spent some time, hopping back onto the bus at the same point and continuing along the route is incredibly convenient, but we did okay in getting as much done as we did in the time we had. We didn't really stop for any time at all. It was all just keeping moving. Barcelona seems to demand that of you but I stand by my point about city life not being as fast and hectic as the media makes it out to be as again I find myself waiting around for traffic lights or people to move out of the way much more than I do when I'm at home and can move around much more quickly.

One thing I found quite interesting is when the recorded tour guide was talking about how the city now faces the challenges of facing globalisation while trying also to keep its heritage and identity and then pulls up to a stop in the centre of town where the only two places to eat in sight are a McDonald's and Hard Rock Cafe – the American Plague infecting what has been up until now a completely unique experience. Capitalism does this though. It's what will eventually result in not just European nations reverting to a single currency but also eventually making sure that all languages fade as well, besides English, which I am sure will one day be the only language spoken in Europe.

One of the things that has made this trip so unique is that it really does feel as though I am somewhere else. There aren't any of the same bakeries or high street stores as back home. Sure, Coke and so on is here as it is likely anywhere, but most of the shit I see in the high street back home I have had a very welcome and long overdue break from. Barcelona also doesn't seem to have this desperation in trying to ram advertising down your throat constantly in the way that London, Edinburgh, even Dundee, do, or perhaps it does but it has so many things to take your eye off it. I don't think so though. Not from what I could see and in the hours we spent hopping on and off the tour bus we covered a lot of ground.

Now I am left with a horrible feeling. It's one day at a time, I know, and I'm going to have to remind myself of this throughout the day. This morning is the beginning of our last full day here. We will be leaving and heading back to Scotland tomorrow night. It's a rather depressing thought. There are a few things I wanna do before our coach comes to take us to the airport.

My morning walk this morning will see me head along the stretch of beach I went along the first two mornings we were here. I don't have a decent phone and can't take pictures but Lindsay and I have gone photo-taking daft on this trip and so I have said that there are a couple of really cool potential photographs I could take of certain points along this stretch of beach at sunrise. This morning I will try to capture them with her iPad.

I would like still to head along the prom to the left tonight as we've only been to the right at nights and everything changes when the sun goes down. We want one of those street artists to draw a picture of Lindsay and I together, some of them are pretty good, and there are one or two things we said we'd get to take back as souvenirs and there are a couple of things we'd like to take back to the younger members of our families, including some things I saw that I would like to put in with the nieces' Christmas collection of presents. All this will be done this evening, our final evening.

Between this morning's walk and this evening shopping trip there will not be an awful lot happening. The weather is looking like it's going to be really good again today (up to 25 again this afternoon) and so we reckon that there will be a lot of lying around by the poolside getting done. Probably more that than anything else. I know it might seem silly but there's a supermarket not far from here and I'd like to go one last time there to buy a bottle of water, even though I can get drinks for free at the all-inclusive resort. It's not that it's amazing water. It's just that it's not like shopping at supermarkets back home. There's a different feel about it. Walking there in shorts and a t-shirt surrounded by palm trees. The feel of the air conditioning hitting me as I enter the building. It's all new to me and very different from back home. We have heaters on for when you enter shops.

It's been an experience all right. Yesterday in Barcelona was a real eye-opener. I'll give it a little time to settle in and give myself plenty of thought and time to reflect on this little trip we've had but my initial feeling is that this is something I'd very much like to do again if possible. I'd like to travel. I think everybody does.

Now I've got the taste for it.

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Stevie

Has a taste for travelling now.

1630

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, October 09th 2017 (Embalaje)


Damn it! It feels like we just got here and already it's time to start packing. We'll be checking out in a couple of hours and then at half past four our coach will be arriving. This means that although we will be out of our room we still have most of a day left here to laze around. There are still a couple of things I have to tick off my to-do list before I can fully relax though. One of them is a trip up the hill in front of the resort. It's a residential area but I have enjoyed my times trekking through the actual town areas as much as I have the tourist areas. The other thing I have to do is head down the promenade to collect cheap cigarettes for Lindsay.

Quite how many cigarettes you are allowed to take back from Spain to the UK is unclear but the general answer on Google seems to be around eight hundred. I have to be honest in saying that there have been one or two times at least when I've thought about it. When I've been sitting in the evening and had a little whiff of nicotine and wondered fleetingly if I should just have one. I could be a holiday smoker, only smoking when we leave to go on trips abroad. I'd be grumpy the whole time between now and the next one. I'd change the rules of the game soon enough and make it so that I smoke when we are on trips inside the UK as well. This would soon include trips to the local shop and trips to the toilet. I'd be smoking thirty a day in no time. It hasn't been something that's bothered me much, just a little thought that pops in there every once in a while. It'll be gone when we get home, I'm sure.

As far as getting to better know my girlfriend this trip has been a great experience. We are not perfect together, this I already knew but it has been drilled in now, but then I can see from watching other couples here that no two people are perfect for each other. This is okay. I am getting to the stage where I don't feel as though I need to be perfect. Dr. Bacon will be grilling me on this relationship in a session soon, I can feel it, and so I have had to think a little about where Lindsay and I might be heading, and I have to say that the outcome feels good. I don't think it's that my modes love that her modes can allow them to stay the same either. In fact there have been one or two times when the exact opposite has occurred.

Being dropped off in Barcelona city centre should have been enough for both of us to enter a mode of some kind and while it would seem as though Lindsay entered her Detached Protector (and has since described it as getting feelings all over of DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!) I seemed to handle things a little better. Had I gone into a defensive mode we would have faced a torrid time of it, probably had a huge argument at least, but I kept control, rescued the situation, and wanted to get to better know the city of Barcelona. Dr. Bacon is always asking me to stop and assess which modes I am in and what has caused them to be. Look at situations to try to learn the patterns of behaviour I am essentially stuck in. I don't know if this counts appreciating those rare moments when I am perhaps in Healthy Adult mode as well but this is definitely one such time. I seemed like a rabbit in the headlights when arriving at the resort whereas Lindsay seemed fine but then our roles completely reversed when we got to Barcelona. It's very strange.

If this holiday has done anything for us though it has deepened our bond together. I feel much more connected to Lindsay – her flaws as well as her assets and virtues. I feel as though she feels this connection too. I'm always a little cautious while writing about, or talking about, my relationship with Lindsay and I never know what to make of this. Is there a part of me feels as though it won't work out and doesn't want to have the flaws in us pointed out to me? Or is it simply that I feel what we have to be precious and am resistant to having anyone try to criticise it?

Last night was our last night and we did a little reflecting on things and thought about what we might do to get away next time. Where could we go, and when, and how would it all work out? There are endless questions. Suddenly the world seems so enormous and unexplored. I get the feeling that the television has been lying to me all this time in what it has been showing me. That's not fair really – it captures what it sees exactly as it is – but even through the largest lens in the world and the biggest television set in the universe I don't think anything can really be captured through this medium. It's like watching football on the television and thinking it's the same thing in real life.

Which brings us to my final paragraph. We gave it a good shot but the Scottish national football team will not be going to Russia to compete in the world cup next year after drawing with Slovenia. One more goal would have ensured we at least got a play off spot but when you look at the teams going into the play offs it would have been a big ask to expect us to get past any of them. We put up some strong performances throughout the one year; ten match qualifying campaign but we've come up short once again and finished third. Time to start getting ready for the next one.

So in two hours we will be checking out of the resort and then spending our last afternoon on Spanish soil. It's been great fun and I'll no doubt spend a bit of time reflecting over the next couple of days (weeks, months??) once we get back to colder climes. For now it is time to head downstairs and grab my last breakfast of the trip.

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Stevie

Heading home soon.

1104

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, October 10th 2017 (The Back of the Bus is In the Huff)


I'm home. It's not really home though, is it? It's just where I happen to stay and have done since birth. I wouldn't have ever said it has felt like home though. Having stayed at Lindsay's last night after a long and painful flight, bus ride, and then car ride courtesy of Lindsay's dad, I am now sitting in my own cave. Back ''home'' others might say. I will get back to walking again soon (I only walked around thirty five miles – not including all the times I went out with Lindsay and walked to and from the pool or beach, I'm talking miles accumulated when out on my solo treks I like to go on, apparently no matter which country I happen to be in at any time – and so hope to get my totals back up in the next two weeks) but for today it was travelling by bus.

This bus journey from Lindsay's town to my town was depressing. There was a little kid sitting behind me with his mother and older brother. The two boys were, as children always are these days, peering into screens on their phones or iPads or whatever else. How I loved being away from all that for a week. It was always there to some extent but was much less noticeable. I learned that when I went to the shop for milk this morning and saw all around me annoying little signs telling me to ''buy this'' and ''buy that''. Closer to the resort everything had seemed much more local but here it is depressingly back to global companies jumping into my brain from all angles against my will and there's nothing I can do to get rid of it. Not completely. There is a council worker changing the posters in the bus shelters and on the walls along the sides of one of the buildings. It all seems so desperate and sad. Sure – on websites and in magazines, but surely the sides of buildings is just going too far.

But anyway – these kids on the bus from Lindsay's to my cave! One of them is listening to phone his quietly but the other turns his up. An episode of The Simpson's is coming on and he wants to hear it, and apparently for all of us to have to hear it too. It begins to grind through my brain. The music and all the silly voices. The toilet humour and every cliché in the American Television Manual. His mum tells him to turn it down a couple of times but he keeps turning it up. I have nothing against the kid or his mum but I have to get off this bus. This child has come into the world at total random, given to this random family in this random part of the world, and so can only make the best of what he has been given and what his little brain is soaking up. In this case it's American television. This wee guy will grow up thinking that he's making all these choices in his life but in reality he's just going through the motions, essentially he's already been moulded into a passive little consumer at the age of eight or nine, or whatever he is. He'll have choices in life, sure, but they will more or less be predetermined and totally limited, not real choices.

I get off the bus three miles from the town centre and walk from there. Anything is better than listening to that total drivel. Within minutes it is raining. In five minutes of leaving Lindsay's this morning I've seen more rain than I saw in the entire week away. It's cold and cloudy. I can't see a single bit sky. Just cloud. Being back here is just shit. Only a deluded man could call this place home.

Some were yearning for it though. On the bus from the resort to the airport last night there was a lot of complaining. Lindsay and I find ourselves surrounded by dozens of fellow Scots all on their way back to Edinburgh airport and the resort was not to everyone's liking it would seem. Two large families are chatting about their experiences to one and other in more volume than the little boy listening to the Simpson's ever could. They are super critical. One begins to mention the food and how they found it so disgusting on the first day that they didn't go back and went to McDonald's for dinner every night after that. Really? I mean – really!?!? That doesn't make any sense to me. That food would be so bad that it would make you want to go to the worst place to eat in the universe? I don't get that. I turn to Lindsay. ''I thought the food was good.'' She agrees.

The two families are joined by another family and the whole back of the bus is getting critical about the resort, and about the surrounding area in general. The hotel sucked. The pool sucked. The beach sucked. Everything seemed to suck. When they were in Salou and Tenerife it was all much better apparently. I thought that all of the things they were moaning about were good. I didn't have a single complaint about the whole week and am totally gutted that it is all over, it's memory already beginning to fade. But then I wonder how much these people saw of where we were. Lindsay and I went to Barcelona for the day on Saturday. I was out exploring in the mornings while out on my walks. I went into town, away from the safety of the resort. I went a few miles out on the coast in either direction. We spent time away from our immediate surroundings. I don't know if these families managed to get out too much from what they are moaning and complaining about.

There were times when I was wondering if maybe this was actually a shit resort in a shit part of Spain and that Lindsay had a terrible time too but just didn't want to hurt my feelings. This isn't the case though. We made the best of what we had and there was plenty to do. This morning we were talking about how much we both wish we had booked it for ten days. Next time we'll do it for ten days, Lindsay promises. Likely a sign enough that she had fun and that the three families on the bus are just moaning because they are Scottish and know no other way of destressing or coping with the end of their trip.

One interesting thing that the three families also agree on was how they miss ''the little things'' about being home and they start to talk about all of the things they missed while being away. I can perhaps see where many of the things they are talking about come from but I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that I did not think of Scotland the whole time we were out there. There was nothing I missed. Lindsay seems to agree with this too. I missed nothing and no one while we were in Spain.

Lindsay and I had a good talk on our last day of the trip to Spain about what our future might hold and where we might be heading. It was really interesting. I don't have time to talk about that now but next time I'll discuss things that we talked about.

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Hates being back in Scotland. The place he doesn't call home.

1303

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, October 11th 2017 (The Gas Safety Check)


Last night the override thing I had going on the boiler wouldn't work and so it was an uncomfortable night to say the least. As cold as I've been in many a month. The council worker will be out this morning to carry out the gas safety check but that didn't help me last night. From an open-topped bus tour around Barcelona on the Saturday afternoon to freezing my balls off, huddled within the covers of my bed with my clothes on all night with no gas and no heating by the Tuesday night. What a difference a few days can make. There is nothing I like about being back in Scotland at the moment. In a little over two weeks the clock change will be here and the country will be plunged into darkness for six months. Tomorrow I will be heading back out to work with Barry the Bullet. And I think it's bad now. . .

When we got back from our holiday on Monday Lindsay weighed herself. I was already getting ready for bed and was completely shattered. When I heard of Lindsay's weight though I have to admit that I was scared of what the scales would say. I'll be lighter in the morning. Maybe even only slightly, but lighter nonetheless. Lindsay weighs in with a six pound increase and isn't too happy about it. She's going straight back on the Slimming World diet. She'll knock those six pounds off in two or three weeks. Yesterday morning, when I get up out of bed at the latest time I've been up in months and months, I decide that I must do it. Just get it done. Find out how much I've put on.

There were times during the holiday when I could swear I was gaining. I felt fuller and looked bigger when I would see myself in the many mirrors there were within the resort. I had eaten well. For the first time I was getting used to having puddings with my dinner, and sometimes my lunch, and I didn't skip any meals the whole time we were out. Also I walked less than I have been recently by quite a distance. I was expecting to put on roughly the same as what Lindsay has, maybe even a pound or two more, and so to be kicking around the twelve stone mark. I step on. Eleven stone and eight pounds. A two pound gain. Wow. I wonder how this is possible. I'll be able to work that off in no time at all. It'd be easy to do what I did when I was drinking and just say ''Fuck it'', it's only two pounds, but I want it off.

If there's one thing that really amazed me about the holiday was how obese the Brits were. Ho. Ly. Fuck! Lindsay says that it is always like this and that nothing is different to any other time except that it is so hot there that everyone has their clothes off and so I can see what is normally right in front of me but concealed. Since coming back onto British soil (regrettably) I can see what she means (regrettably). I am imagining everyone with no clothes on and it is a truly terrifying sight. What has become of us? When did this start? Is this what becomes of every nation when they have more than they need? When they have too much of everything?

Lindsay will probably have the cat keeping her company by now but I've been at the cave while the gas safety check has been carried out this morning – the long overdue gas safety check. Now it is done. It's another thing ticked off the list of things to do before the big move to Lindsay's which is scheduled to happen this coming weekend. We have a van booked preliminarily from Friday morning until Monday morning and so we'll have all weekend to get things moved from mine to hers and to bin anything we don't think if of any value to anyone. It's plenty time, more than enough time actually, and it was designed this way. Her brother is having a birthday party on the Sunday and so we'll be able to go to that without having to worry about how we're going to get back and having to leave early. We'll also have a little bit of freedom that weekend. The free bus passes are all good and well but they are also very restrictive. The van rental will give us a weekend where we can play with our leashes off.

I mentioned yesterday that Lindsay and I had a chat on the final day of our holiday in Spain and have left myself with only a little bit of space in this post to talk about it so I had better get moving. Actually – I've gone on about other stuff for so long now that I think I'll just leave that conversation for tomorrow. It'll make for a more interesting post than me rambling on and on about how crap it feels being back out cleaning windows in the cold and rain and all of that shit I'd rather not even think about at the moment. I'm trying to think about positive things just now. I'm trying to recapture that feeling of....whatever it was that I was feeling when I was out of the country for seven days last week. I know that it can't be recaptured. I know that I should know better than this. As an alcoholic, addict of all things destructive, I should know better than to think I can chase a particular dragon to change the way I feel. Instead I should be trying to make the best of what is happening now, at this very moment.

Dr. Bacon has talked about my motivations for keeping this journal going even though I am well beyond the beginning stages of recovery and that he fears I might be using it as a way of intellectualising things – something I have had problems with in the past. I wondered about this while on holiday but in the end felt that I was using it as a good way of documenting the trip. I am aware, though, that if I use it this week to keep going on and on about how much I miss being in Spain and dislike being in Scotland that I will be guilty of doing exactly that: intellectualising. I'll not be living in the moment. I'll be living in Spain last week. Armed with this information I can use this journal as a way now, over the next few days, to think about where I'm going now, over the next few weeks. There are things happening all the time and decisions to be made, questions to be answered.

I'm to be moving in with Lindsay this weekend and then will have a week of working. Can I make this week count and get out as much as possible or will something get in the way, like Barry the Bullet, or rain, or something unexpected? The following week I'm back at college. What's going on there? Have I made the right choice in doing radio? Where might it lead? What did I miss this week while I was in Spain? Nine weeks later and we will be at Christmas but I know that preparations for that start usually about a month before.

I might not like being in Scotland just now but there's plenty going on for me to be thinking about.

How good it is to have heating is certainly one of them.

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Stevie

Has the heating back on.

1304

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, October 12th 2017 (Big Ideas)


Completely forgot that it was my brother's birthday today. The way things have been this year it is hard to often remember that I even have a brother. This has been, by a tremendous distance, the worst year in terms of lame contact with my family members, not just in the time I've been sober, but in my entire near forty years of being here. It's something I just can't explain. I refuse to believe that it's just a case of my brother not caring about me. Were this the case then why would he have asked me to be his Best Man at his wedding last year? Why would his profile picture on his Facebook account remain as himself, me and Rusty standing outside the castle prior to the wedding? I won't give anymore space to it in this journal for now (I can feel Dr. Bacon breathing down my neck and saying that I am intellectualising things again and so wasting my time here) and so I'll move on. It is interesting that family relationships could die off so quickly and so suddenly though – so much so that I could completely forget when my only sibling was born.

This does tie in with something that I had been thinking about and that Lindsay and I had spoken about on our last day in Spain on Monday. It was even more noticeable on the bus on the way to the airport when the obese families were complaining about their holiday and how much they missed the ''little things'' about being in Scotland, the place they call home, and how they were looking forward to getting back to being in their own beds. I really wasn't looking forward to getting back to Scotland at all. Even with the move in with Lindsay coming within a week of getting back and work to get back to with Barry the Bullet and college to get my head into once the October holidays come to a close and all of my ''family'', including the nieces, living in this country I am supposed to call home, even with all of that there was nothing I was looking forward to returning to.

I guess it comes down to what you have waiting for you when you return. Neither Lindsay nor I seem to have anything we truly desire waiting for us now that we are back here. Last night I went to see my pal Gillon and tonight I'm going to see English Sara and Dennis since this is my last week living in this town. Tomorrow morning I pick up the removal van. These friends of mine I have grown so distant from in the last year. I don't have anyone here. My brother and nieces? I have barely seen them at all this year and no one seems to be missing me. Not enough to pick up the phone anyway. Scotland feels the same way about me as I do about it. We could easily survive without each other. Maybe more than this – maybe it's got to the stage where we hate each other.

There was a guy on the old WQD forum I started writing this journal on more than three years ago now: BigMac. I can remember having a ''conversation'' with him one time about how I longed to be somewhere else and how little I feel as though I fit in with what Scotland stands for and has to offer. I've always been miserable here. He said to me that if this is the way I feel then I should get out. See the world while I'm still young enough and not tied down and then maybe one of two things could happen. Either I'd gain a new appreciation of where it is I come from; or I would find another country, somewhere that fit in more with my line of thinking, somewhere I could finally call home.

This idea seemed completely ridiculous to me at the time. I was trapped here in Scotland. How on earth was someone like me expected to get out there and start seeing the world? Then I ''spoke'' with StartingOver2013, another member of that forum, and she explained how she used to live in (I think it was) America but had recently moved to France. Again it seemed unlikely. She came from a successful place. A moderate drinker in comparison she had managed to accumulate funds and assets, both mentally as well as capitally, and so she could make that transition in ways I could not possibly. Lia was another. Going off on her voluntary missions across the world but she is, again, a moderate drinker by comparison and so has none of my handicaps and plenty money behind her to pay for such things. Once again I was trapped here, here as in this country but also here in terms of in my head, filled only with big ideas.

These suggestions still seem highly ridiculous but they don't seem impossible anymore. The very things that make my journey different from others (not much of a working past and so no capital, no money stashed away, few social skills and little experience of travelling) are actually assets in themselves. I've slept rough. I slept in a car over the worst winter we've had in Scotland in my lifetime. I have at times ''lived'' in squalor whilst in this cave of mine. I don't mind not being comfortable. I don't mind living without my home comforts – the same home comforts those people at the back of the bus on the way to the airport were clearly missing. These are assets I have for travelling. Hostels would be a heck of a lot cheaper than hotels and Bed & Breakfasts. I am used to eating little at times and eating shit as well. I could live on a tight food budget for a while. There are options of making money while on the road to sustain my trip too. I could get through that creative writing course and then blog about my travels, sell photographs I take along the way, sell stuff I find cheap in other countries on ebay, pick fruit and wait tables. The mind boggles with potential ideas and possibilities.

The thing is that I don't think Lindsay could. Having seen her in Barcelona I think that she would begin to miss her home comforts quite quickly. Maybe I would too and I'm just being delusional here. We had a chat at one of the tables on the balcony at the resort overlooking the pool and this was one of the things that came up. Another thing that came up was the pull that she gets. The pull of motherhood telling her that she maybe has one more shot. I have to admit that I have felt this way too at times but I'm not sure if it's just because of how badly I blew parenthood the first time around. Neither Lindsay or myself have access to our children. I haven't seen my son or daughter in years and for Lindsay it has now been months since she saw her fifteen year old son. I can walk away. She has reasons to stay.

What kind of parents would we make? I often feel as if I come across as being impulsive still, very much continuing to suffer from the spiritual malady in the way that AA talks about. In this way I have much farther to go in my personal development before I could deem myself worthy of parenthood, or travelling for that matter. I feel more comfortable with my flaws and don't ever feel suicidal anymore. I have no doubts that I'm getting better. When is better enough though? I often think back to Stu during times like these. What would he say? Then I fast-forward to Dr. Bacon. What would he say? Then I remember that it is none of these people, or indeed any people, that I am to answer to. If I reach within for my Higher Power then I will find my answer.

So I have some reaching to do from within. What do I see happening once this two-year diploma is done? Do I want to start another family with Lindsay? Do I want to get out there and see some of the world? Not just holiday destinations but really see the world and how it is? Is all or any of this even possible? Or do I want to stay here? In the rain. Cleaning windows on the rare day it isn't raining to support myself?

Nothing has to be decided now. I still feel as though I have a bit of calming down to do before I settle back into my routine of life as I know it. I still feel as though my mind is in Spain. I should spend a bit of time calming myself down.

Then I'll be better able to reach within for the answers I seek.

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Stevie

Life is starting to open up.

1530

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, October 13th 2017 (The Rent Problem)


This morning I pick up the removal van and then have all weekend before it has to be delivered back on Monday morning and so have plenty time to be getting this done. Am I doing the right thing in moving? Soon there will be no cave to escape to when things get rough as they inevitably will at some stage. There will be no place for me to even call a ''cave'' anymore. I'll be glad to see the back of this place I am sure but at the same time the closer we've been getting to the moving date the more I've been feeling uncertainty creep in. What will things be like not having a cave in this town? Am I making a mistake here? Does the fact that I even ask myself this suggest that I am?

I have a little more time here than I might have thought though as I have learned that you must give twenty eight days notice. It's kind of obvious that this would be the case actually, I feel rather silly. But the van has been booked and so it is this weekend the move will be happening. I was at the council office yesterday afternoon after Barry the Bullet failed to answer his phone in the morning and filled out the necessary paperwork. Sometimes I look at my debts and think of them as being a bigger problem than they are but these days I'm a little more chilled out when it comes to things and so hearing my current rent balance isn't as big a shock as it might have been. It's the second highest it's been though.

I have applied for housing benefit through the council for the period from when I failed my fitness for work health assessment in early July until I started the college in early September. I'll be paying five hundred pounds from my student loan into this debt later on this afternoon. This will take the debt (assuming the housing benefit is approved) to under five hundred bucks and from there I will be paying back three pounds forty per week as agreed at the meeting yesterday. In many respects the rent problem is now over. It'll still be there for around three years but I won't miss three pounds per week all that much I shouldn't think.

Aside from this I have further debts but they can wait until I am settled at Lindsay's before I worry too much about them. One can almost be paid off outright while the other, that God (of my Understanding) damn ongoing gas bill, will have to be chipped away at more slowly. After that it will be onto the government fines for unpaid taxes from the window cleaning business but since this is money that doesn't really exist (it's just a figure they've arrived at and comes as no loss to anyone – no one suffers as a result of this not being paid) I am simply trying to run down the clock with them. It's been three years now since I declared the business insolvent and so I only have a few years left. One day these debts will cease to exist. After that it will only be the student loans I have and those I am currently taking out. Money, money, money. It's always money.

If we are to be getting the same van that is advertised (and we should be but I know how these things can sometimes disappoint us) then this move won't be nearly the stress that it might have otherwise been. Normally I would be driving using the work van and so everything would have to be lumbered into the back of it but this van we are to be getting for the weekend is much larger and so I am expecting to be able to do this in just a couple of trips. One to the tip and one to Lindsay's. Two to hers at a push. We then shall work on taking things from her spare room to the tip. After that it will almost be done. I'll be ready to wave goodbye to the worst property I've ever lived in, and there have been a few.

I will still have the keys (and will be continuing to build a rent balance unfortunately) until the hand-in date of November 08th and so I will leave a few things here so that I can pop in for a coffee or whatever when I'm in the area. Maybe Barry the Bullet and me can stop by for lunch when we're working up here later in the month. I also have someone from the council coming out to visit me at some point between now and this date of November 08th, likely just to check up on the property before I leave. I'll be fined for anything that is damaged or broken after I'm gone, or if anything needs to be rigorously cleaned, so I had better tidy up the garden a bit just in case. There's still a few things to do then before I am gone from here but I can feel the day approaching. Once things start going into the back of this van (please, God of my Understanding, allow everything to go well when we get to the rental store in a couple of hours) I am sure that I will feel that sense that I am doing the right thing. I feel it now, from time to time, but still get a little scared. The doubt, the fear of the unknown.

I've struggled with living spaces since leaving my partner and children back in January of 2006. In that time I've done two years of couch-surfing; two years of room renting and in and out of homeless accommodation; a month of sleeping in a car; and had a few scatter flats and so on and ended up here just over four years ago, a few months before I started this journal. This was supposed to be my big chance at making a life for myself but it has ended with me being grateful to see the back of it. I've ended up, as things stand, in thousands of pounds of debt and haven't even managed to decorate it in all this time.

It's been a true cave indeed.

Today I start the evacuation process.

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Stevie

About to bring an end to his cave-dwelling days.

1095

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, October 14th 2017 (Money Does Matter)


I am going to try to sell the Metallica tickets we've got for the gig in Glasgow in two weeks. I've already seen them and Kung Fu Pandis and his girlfriend have backed out on account of her being almost ready to give birth. Pandis about to tie himself down. I'll be heading back to the cave in our rental van in a little while and then will take a drive up to collect the tickets. I'll ask how much they got for theirs and where they sold them. I've already seen Metallica, ticket them off my bucket list, and so I asked Lindsay what she'd rather have – the tickets or the money back – and she answered that she was not too fussed. That means the money back. One hundred bucks per ticket we were charged at face value. Two hundred and fifty pays for the tickets and the hotel room. That's what I'll ask for. If we can't sell them then we'll go.

I have to say that this would be a good opportunity for some bonding time with my brother as I haven't seen him in months but I have to also admit that this would be a good way of testing where we're at. When will our next contact be if Lindsay and I sell our tickets? While our tickets are seated and Gary and Scottish Sarah's are standing we do have rooms at the same hotel for afterwards and so there would be a chance for us to get to know each other again for a little while. It's not worth it though, he's onto other things now. His brother is the furthest thing from his mind right now. He won't even miss me being there. I shall pray that my tickets find a buyer.

Paige from the college contacted me the other day to tell me that the tickets for Lindsay's Christmas present arrived at hers and so she'll bring them into college when we are next in on the 23rd of the month. I got her tickets to see Wicked at the Edinburgh Playhouse for next year – her favourite theatre performance, she'll appreciate it I'm sure, but needed someone who had a card able to take an online payment to help me. We did this a couple of weeks before I left for Spain so it is good that they have arrived so soon. This way Lindsay can open them on Christmas morning. According to one of the college lecturers I'll love it. It's the best musical he's seen and he's not normally into things like that.

I was speaking with Gillon on Thursday before I headed to the AA meeting (it was okay but it's at the stage now where I find it hard to believe that I relied on the fellowship as much as I did in that first year) and we talked about where each of us thinks we're headed in life. We seem to want different things, he and I. Gillon wants what most people want: stability and security. A boring life but one where there are as few hiccups as possible. One he feels he is in full control of. I seem to want something else. I have a sense of adventure that may make me seem reckless and immature by comparison. I'm too young I feel to want to be tied down in this way. Working for the man. Making sure that I have what everyone else has. It's just not me. At least not yet. I'm still looking for something else. Still searching. I'm looking to make up for lost time.

Stevie – ''I do wonder if I should just chuck the idea of studying and go in another direction.''

Gillon – ''Look – I don't know if I even want to continue with engineering but I'm just plodding along with it. It's all about just getting the degree and then trying to do something with it.''

He begins listing jobs that just having a degree can get you into. He's always thinking about earning potential.

Stevie – ''Of all the people I know studying right now I have to wonder. . .''

It's true. Gillon's engineering will come in handy anywhere in the world he might be. It's the same all over the globe. My brother is doing horticulture. That's the same no matter where on earth you happen to be as well. It's useful anywhere. Lindsay the nurse? People bleed the same in all countries for sure. It's a valuable degree. They all are. Then there's me. I'm studying in the creative industries. Radio and broadcast media. What the fuck? Is it really as useful as what these other guys are doing?

Gillon – ''You'd be surprised I think. All the social media stuff you'll be doing on that course will come in handy too. And technology is the same in every country.''

He could be right. I get the feeling, at least momentarily while I am sitting in his car at the car park down the town watching the sun disappear behind the row of houses in front of us, not to be seen again until tomorrow morning even though it is not yet quarter past seven, that I should just calm down, put all my thoughts to bed and just put my all into this degree program. Try to get the best qualifications from this course as I possibly can. It has started a little slow for my liking but things will surely pick up and accelerate from here on in. Keep up, not with the Joneses, but to date with whatever workload I am faced with.

One thing Gillon did mention was about the Money Does Matter scheme that the college offers. Apparently this helps out with rent payments and even though I receive the full student loan amount I would still be able to claim for this. He reckons keeping my cave is totally doable.

Keeping the cave? With just under four weeks to go until I have to hand in the keys for this place it's perhaps a little late in the day for thinking about that.

Isn't it?

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Stevie

Is there a way of keeping the cave?

1059

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, October 15th 2017 (The Three Sides of AA)


It's been great having transport for a few days now. We rented the van on Monday morning (was supposed to be from nine o'clock but problems with my identification and driving licence delayed this until half past ten – dealing with alcoholics is a little more awkward than your average high street punter it would seem) and don't have to have it back until tomorrow morning and so all weekend we've had the sort of freedom that drivers often take for granted. Fair enough – most of this time has been taken up by moving lots of stuff from either my cave to Lindsay's flat; my cave to the local tip/recycling centre; Lindsay's flat to the recycling centre, and so on, but we've still had time to get out on the road and have some fun. To take in the last of the lighter nights.

My old pal Kung Fu Pandis had been asking on Friday morning when I'd be heading to pick up our booked and paid for Metallica tickets and so we drove up for them on Friday. I asked what he was up to and turns out that he was available to help us with the move. This turned out to be invaluable and I don't know how I'd actually manage to have got as far as we have had he not assisted. Some of the heavier stuff would have been really difficult to have carried up Lindsay's two flights of stairs by myself. Not impossible, very little is these days, but extremely tough and asking for injury.

Besides the help it was also great to catch up with who used to be one of my very best pals. His girlfriend is soon to be delivering their second child and so he has largely cleaned up his act as well although he still drinks. Someone from an alcohol agency told me a few years ago that it is often the case with drinkers and addicts: they don't quit through any type of help really – it's life changes (a new job, new partner, new family member) that ultimately create the necessary change. This is overwhelmingly NOT my experience but there are no doubt examples all over where this is indeed the case. On Pandis's table in his sitting room is an open tin of beer and a closed one. He got up that morning and had a sip and I think that if we had not turned up to pick up the tickets then he likely would have had a few. His family were out bowling and he had the house to himself.

Kung Fu Pandis – ''Maybe I should think about heading back to AA sometime.''

Stevie – ''We have a saying: ''The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.'' If you don't plan on stopping completely then there are other places you can get help.''

Kung Fu Pandis – ''I think I'm at that stage. I wouldn't mind stopping altogether. I find that on my days off I can't help but drink. Starts on the way home from work when I'll pick up some beers.''

Maybe he has reached that point but given what AA was like last night I don't know what to make of it anymore. If visiting a meeting at the weekend interests me then normally I would go to the meeting in this town but back when I started going to meetings there was one a few towns away I would go to. The local one hadn't started up yet and so there was only one option on a Saturday night. Since we had wheels Lindsay and I figured we'd make our way through there. We are there for it starting but extra seats need to be brought out for us to sit. It is mobbed. Saturday night seems to be a busy night for alcoholics to need a meeting.

At the top table we hear all about one man's trip through the Twelve Steps program, from Step One all the way through. Great stuff. This is the AA message I need to hear. What do people do to get better? That's what I like. There are only so many times I can go to a meeting filled with old timers too selfish to not see the mix of people in attendance and treat the place as though it were a social club for their benefit and talk about old times together. Here we are getting a real AA meeting. We're hearing about what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. All of the things we are advised to do, all of the things our founders did.

Then we go round the table in the second half and responses are split. There are there sides to the fellowship it would seem. There are those who come to say what they want to say and it has nothing to do with what has been shared. Usually they are newcomers, people with less than six months of sobriety who just want their achievement to be noted and appreciated, and thankfully it always it. Then you have the people who will openly give feedback as to how we are not here to talk about the AA program and how this is personal to everyone and so should not be spoken about, especially from a top table. Then you have those who love hearing stories about our beloved (although certainly not perfect and more than a tad outdated) program of recovery.

Tempers escalate and there are occasions when things are brought up that were not mentioned in the meeting as ways to have a pop at one and other. Mentioning things like the AA convention, which the sharer at the top table helps run, and two old timers telling each other in front of the group that they are glad that they do not have the ''sobriety'' that the other has. It's all getting a little petty if I'm honest.

Then it carries on outside. The two members most caught up in the controversy shake hands. This is good. Stu would have approved this. They were both arguing like children in a meeting when there were newcomers in attendance. They should be apologising and looking at their own parts in the bickering. This is exactly the type of thing Stu would want them to do. It takes only a few seconds to realise that they are not shaking hands for this at all though – they are trying to get close so that they can continue the debate. There is shouting and cursing and ''Fuck you!!'' and ''Fuck you too!'' and it is all very reminiscent of my own days standing in the pubs and bickering with someone I'd fallen out with that I was trying to goad into fighting.

Main Man is thirty seven years sober now; the guy at the top table twenty four. More than sixty years of sobriety between them yet acting like morons in a meeting. All because someone wanted to share about their experience of the Twelve Step program. I notice throughout the feedback in the second half that around half a dozen or so mention something that suggests they belong to one side or the other when it comes to sharing about this program of ours whereas most stayed neutral and mention nothing of it.

I also notice that the people who do decide to mention something of it tend to be those I've always thought to have the biggest egos. These are the people Stu would warn me about. I worry a little now that I mentioned a little about how I feel it important to share our experiences with the Twelve Steps and how I don't like the feeling it gives me when a meeting puts across a vibe that tells newcomers that it is not acceptable to talk about our program. Why could I not stay neutral? Why did I feel the need to get my little opinion out there in amongst the things I had to offer? I wonder about my future. In the same way I would look upon the obesity on display in Spain from British holiday-makers and wonder and fear that it might one day be me I now feel the same way about my future in AA. Will I one day turn into one of these people? Bickering and arguing among themselves without a moment's regard for the others in attendance?

We have a free day with the van now before it must be taken back tomorrow morning first thing. We're going to make the best of it. Lindsay's brother's birthday is today and so we'll be going to the dinner tonight without having to worry about bus times and getting a lift back and all that shit. We'll just jump aboard the van rental and be on our merry way.

Our merry way back home. I still have until the 08th November before I officially live here but it's starting to feel like home already.

The cave will soon be a distant memory.

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Stevie

Should be neutral.

1542

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, October 16th 2017 (Cousin at the Window)


One of the things that Kung Fu Pandis and me had to take to the recycling centre were empties. I was going through my kitchen cupboards and discovered stashes of empty booze cans, neatly placed back inside the crates they had been bought in, and a few crushed up bottles of cider. All in there were over thirty crates (I haven't used my kitchen much since moving in here four years ago) which equates to over three hundred empty cans looking for a new home. These must have been accumulated during my last winter of drinking. The sitting room was likely their original home and then I've gone on a cleaning mission but ran out of space in the outdoors bins and so resorted to stashing them in cupboards just to get them out of sight. I've since forgotten about them. Now they are safely in the can recycling bin at the local centre and it is starting already to feel as though drinking is more buried than it has been up until now. It's fully in the past now.

One of the local beggars is getting ready for the day as we head down town this morning for some much needed breakfast. This involves first hiding his bike. You don't want the public knowing that you have a £250 mountain bike in good condition when you go looking to score money for smack. Then he makes himself a roll up, takes out his little cup and throws a few pennies in it to con us into thinking that people have already contributed. Cheeky little gits that they are.

Lindsay and I had a good time with the rental van over the weekend. While much of Friday and Saturday were taken up with the moving itself we did manage to get out and about a bit. On Friday night we went for a bit of shopping at the supermarket. This isn't very exciting, I know, but when without transport for so long and having to get everything on foot and in buses it was great to be able to shop and stock up on heavier things. On the way back Lindsay mentioned something as we were driving along close to her old haunts and so we turned into the scheme and she showed me round some of her old haunts, places she grew up and used to play as a child.

On Saturday we made good use of the wheels and took a trip a few towns away for the AA meeting (which turned out to be a bit of a fuck about with two old timers at each others' throats just about as they argue over whether AA is indeed the place to discuss things like the Twelve Step program) which despite its problems was a good trip. I learned how no matter where we go Lindsay seems to be well loved by members in AA. She says that it's because she's always been the AA Baby. Joining when she was only twenty four and sticking around until now she has been in the fellowship for nearly ten years. I am just a normal punter in the rooms. I go in, some people say hi and some people don't. I am used to it. Lindsay is different though. They all seem to know her. There have been other young members come into the rooms in the years she has been involved in the fellowship, she tells me afterwards, but they tend not to stick around for too long. She usually is the youngest in any AA room at thirty three years old.

Then yesterday we had a day in St. Andrews followed by dinner at a nearby restaurant for her brother's birthday. I have had a strange relationship with St. Andrews, the town in which I was raised, this year. Over the summer I was attacked by a month or so of overwhelming nostalgia and fondness for the past and while this has died down a great deal since it has stuck around for the most part, likely being reduced in recent weeks as a result of the trip to Spain and the moving in with Lindsay that has occupied most of my thinking time in the last three weeks to month. Now that we have made a drive through there I am finding new thoughts on this town arising.

One of the reasons for this was seeing my cousin stubbing his cigarette and then closing his bedroom window as we were walking past. We used to have a decent relationship, him and I, but the breakdown of our family after the death of my last remaining grandparent in 2009 sort of ended that. Three years later I did chap the door and while I did get a coffee out of it I felt most unwelcome for reasons I still struggle to understand. My mother and brother haven't seen any of them since the funeral. I had hoped to knock on the door at some point again but Dr. Bacon had thought this unwise. He reckons that we have to be sure that it is with a strong Healthy Adult that we do such things and at the moment it is largely other modes leading the way for me. I should wait. Wait I shall.

I only saw my cousin for the briefest moment. He looked much older, his hair receding a little and shorter than I remember it. A great big beard covered his face. Then the window was closed and the curtain shut, keeping out the day. I wonder what state the house is in. When I was last there it was pretty bad, not that I'm one to talk. You just have to hope that they are doing well, him and his mother, my auntie, my father's sister. I can't see how my cousin can have broken the cycle of drinking and smoking weed. After his inheritance he will have been given access to drink and drugs for a few years if he's watched what he's been doing.

Thinking about him, and about Kung Fu Pandis who helped with the move over the weekend, and how they used to live and how similarly I used to: it's kinda strange that I miss it in some ways. Not enough to want to go back to it, but I miss the . . . comfort of it. Somehow there was comfort in it. I suppose it's the comfort of having no responsibilities. No one ever expects much of you when you're like that: living in a shit-hole and drinking all the time. It's no real kind of life but there were definitely short-term payoffs to that type of behaviour. That is, after all, what psychologists say. We don't get caught up in behaviours that don't work for no reason. There are always short-term payoffs for destructive behaviours. I guess I miss some of those short-term payoffs at times.

We finished up at the meal rather more quickly than I anticipated last night and so there was a small window where I could make a decision and I went for taking the initiative. This would be the first chance in a long time that I'd been able to visit my old home group one town away in the opposite direction and with the van going back to the rental store tomorrow I drove off in the direction of my old home group and sponsor. I was there ten minutes before it started.

I'll discuss that tomorrow.

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Stevie

Paying his old AA friends a visit.

1283

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, October 17th 2017 (Back Home)


I used to attend my home group every single Sunday evening back when I had my own transport. I would still find ways to get there once the transport was gone and my brother would pick me up afterwards and drop me off at the cave at night. Since last September I have not been to this meeting at all. Thirteen months and no home group. I decided that I needed to change things up again last year around this time and so resigned from the group, stopped going to the meeting altogether, and cancelled my sponsorship arrangement with Stu. It worked. Things started to feel a little better and my life took on a new and different direction with Lindsay and the college. AA became second in my life. After life itself.

Stu is now a father. His child is seven months old. He's in a different job too and now works as a counsellor of children. More than this he actually seems happy. At least happier. He always used to seem like the end of the world was approaching. He was calm, yes, and this gave off the impression that his Twelve Step program was super strong and that he was in full control of his emotions. It gave off the idea that he had established a strong connection, a good conscious contact with the God of his own Understanding. I was later to discover that underneath this calm persona was an angry man with some issues of his own to sort out even though well into his second decade of sobriety but this evening (or should I say – Sunday evening) he is joking a little more than I've seen him do in the past. He's smiling more. You kind of get the feeling that life is dealing him some good cards at this moment in time, which is the only moment that ever matters.

He's also moving house. I take a mental note of the street he mentions and Google it when I get back to my new home at Lindsay's flat. It's a nice area. He'll still be very local to this area but it's a bigger property, a modern bungalow. He's been in his current house for twenty years and was in his flat for fifteen before that. Thirty five years with two addresses since leaving home. That to me seems like a very secure and healthy living arrangement, a very ''normal'' address history. I can't imagine what it might be like to live in the same place for fifteen years, let alone twenty, and certainly not while drinking. It's a completely different experience from mine. I find it interesting that he would be willing to settle down in the same town he's always stayed. Why is it some people choose to live out their entire lives in one tiny little spot? Is it natural? It seems to be for him.

I, on the other hand, have never really been able to settle down in any one spot at all. I've always been on the move. I've never had the money to move around all that much so I've always stayed in the same county (Fife is 512 miles squared, approx.). I am hoping to change this in the future. Broaden my horizons a little. I still feel as though I am waaayyy too young to dig roots into the earth and settle down somewhere for the rest of my days. I think that an unsettled and uncertain living environment suits me, always has, and feels normal to me.

The meeting is okay. It doesn't take a genius to tell that it struggles for numbers still. There are five of us this evening and two of us, myself included, only decided to come along at the last minute. I imagine that this is quite a busy night here. Stu just can't do without there being a meeting in his home town. I remember this place fondly. I was given my first real taste of AA in this room. As a member I was involved in the set up of the meeting each week and was able to voice an opinion on decisions needing made. I felt there to be some unity during my time as a member of this group. I was encouraged into Intergroup meetings as a result of being a part of this group. It seemed to do things properly. Now it seems a little lame. Almost a little pathetic. Like it's just surviving for the sake of it when in reality it serves little use to anyone.

Two of the other members are also recently back from holidays but both attended meetings. I wanted to go to a meeting while out in Spain. I wanted to experience a foreign meeting, see what it was all about. I wanted to taste a little of how much bigger the fellowship is compared with what I know it to be. I wanted to see that it was not just two hundred people in the middle of Scotland sitting around in the evenings telling each other the same old stories they've heard a million times before. When we got to the resort and checked out where the local meetings were it seemed like a bit of a hassle but still I was keen. Then we settled into the holiday and the thing furthest from my mind was going to an AA meeting. The others seem to have it down as one of the essential things to do when travelling. I don't know what to make of that.

I won't be in any rush to get back there but visiting my old home group was a rewarding and valuable experience. I guess I still struggle with what motivates some people in the fellowship. I'm also interested in how my enthusiasm for AA comes and goes all the time. I think that this is why I am always trying to change it up and get around if I can. I'm always still trying to find out where my place in the rooms might be. While this meeting was my home group I still always felt on the periphery, like I didn't quite fully belong. Like I was mainly going because Stu, as my sponsor, demanded it as a part of his sponsorship conditions. You attend your home group every week without fail. So I did.

Now I don't and there are times when I wonder how well I am doing, or not. I find it quite hard to gauge these days. No one ever comments in my journal on either forum I use so I don't get feedback on how my words come across but then I would rarely pay any attention to responses when I did get them. Paulmh has warned me recently on the Ryver WQD site of the dangers of being too judgemental but then when it came to the obesity on display on holiday (the frame of reference for his analysis) I don't know if I was so much being judgemental as I was using them as a way of drilling into me what I absolutely do not want to end up like. No way can I end up with everything hanging out like that. It terrifies me and makes me more eager than ever to get started on my refined sugar quit when I hit my three year sober anniversary.

It's good to know that people from that neck of the woods are getting on well in their lives, or at least giving off this impression, and so I am glad I went to the meeting when I had the chance to.

I'm getting better at that I think, taking chances when they come my way.

I wonder what chances will come up for me today.

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Stevie

Taking chances.

1324

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, October 18th 2017 (People Changing)


I should really head back to the cave at some point soon. It needs a good hoovering and some cleaning up. The garden needs gutted too. This all needs to be done before the council come out for the home visit before I hand my keys in. They don't have to be handed in for another three weeks still – November 08th is my last day – but there's little need for me to hold onto them for any longer than I have to. I should be trying my best to get into the new routine, the new way of life I have found myself to have.

This would include changing my address with various folks and registering with things like local GP surgeries and dentists. The dentist thing happened pretty easily but now we can't just go selecting our doctor's. We have to let the government know about our change of address and then they fix us up with a surgery. Now I am just to play the waiting game but in the meantime I am still registered in my own town. I will notify the college when I go back on Monday (we're on a two week break at the moment even though we've just started really) and the Credit Union at some point through the week. What else? I'll make sure I catch everyone else in due course. I've already cut my driving license in two (literally) as asked and posted it away to be updated after all the hassle we had with the hire van. A lot harder dealing with a couple of alcoholics than it is the average couple.

I've had a little time to think so far this week since I've not been working. Monday morning was pouring with rain and we've had the tail end of some storm that has really put a spanner in the works of what I was hoping would be a productive working week. There's been a lot of money spent over the last two weeks and not much brought in. I was hopeful that this week would be the start of that changing a little but not so far. It looks a little better this morning though. Since nothing new has been happening I have been thinking about the trip to my home group last Sunday and the day in St. Andrews that Lindsay and I had earlier in the day.

If my cousin is still living in the same old address then there's a good chance that my old pal Greame is too. He's the one main amend I still have to make in person and had I still been working with Stu I would long since have done it. Now that I have replaced AA sponsorship with clinical psychology there is no rush to be making that journey and knocking on that door. We're waiting until I have built up some experience in dealing with people and making sure that I have the ability to approach these scenarios with a Healthy Adult mode leading the way as opposed to the child like desperation that us alcoholics in AA tend to complete this Step with. Seems a little late in the day since I spoke with so many people during my amends process last year and for the most part things went fine. It will be good practice for dealing with people in the future though. How do I approach tough situations as an adult? We'll find out.

There have been times, as there were with Stu, where I've felt that this hasn't been working but I am definitely going to be sticking with this until the end. Dr. Bacon seems qualified enough to deal with me and my problems (which Stu never was – more acting on good will than anything else) and I'm interested to see if doing this work will yield any noticeable changes. I don't know about you, whoever you may be and if you even attend AA, but I struggle to see any change in people at all. The argument between two of the fellowship's big guns at the end of the meeting on Saturday night sums up those two for me. They'll never change. I've accepted that.

Going to my old home group the following night allowed me to see something else though. Stu seemed a little different. He's the only person in the whole of AA that I can think of that has changed in any way whatsoever in the two and a half years I've been involved. He seemed happier. Like he was less serious, less intense. There used to be this uncomfortable intensity would seep from his pores and when people would say to me that they didn't like him I often wondered if they were meaning that they were made to feel uncomfortable by this intensity but didn't know it. Like it's the same intensity that I can often give off that makes me a little less than approachable. There still seemed to be a little of that in him but most of it had gone. He seemed naturally relaxed now whereas before I often got the impression that he was trying very hard to come across that way. I think it's the only change I've noticed in a member since I joined.

This is really interesting as it is obvious that it is nothing to do with AA that this has happened. It is that life is happening for him now. It's not the Twelve Steps that's done this – it's marrying, qualifying for his job, and becoming a father for the first time in his fifties. These are the reasons for his changing. I suppose that he would say that it is AA that has made all of that possible in the first place, and he'd probably be right although there will be a gazillion other factors as well, but it is not in sitting around in meetings and doing Step work where this change in him has occurred.

Makes me wonder again about myself. Am I changing? If I am is it for the better? If it's not then what could and should I be doing to turn things around? Am I in need of a radical new approach or should I just continue as I am and have been doing? Are the changes I'm going through in my private life rubbing off on me in the same ways that Stu's are for him? I've managed to complete a year of study and get onto the next one. I've got myself a passport and gone on my first adult holiday. I've moved in with my girlfriend. These should be generating positive changes from within me.

I guess that we only get to see a small part of people when we see and hear them in the rooms of AA. My absence in recent times is probably one of the ways in which I can tell that I am changing for the better (sometimes, if only even a little) and my plan is to be free from AA altogether before too long. Not needing to go while in Spain was a really good thing. Drinking never came up at all the whole week. We are planning a longer trip next time and so there may be more stress and a foreign meeting may be needed but we'll see. I don't want to commit either way.

Do people change? What changes them? Is it a case of positive experiences changing us for the better and negative ones for the worse? My cousin didn't look as though he was doing much different when I saw him close his curtain on Sunday afternoon. The members of AA all talk about the same stuff they always have.

Hopefully working with Dr. Bacon through the schema therapy process can bring about the changes I think I need to have in my life.

Our next session is tomorrow afternoon.

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Stevie

Seeking that elusive change.

1345

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, October 19th 2017 (The Gift That Keeps On Giving)


On Saturday Lindsay and I are going to take a trip through to Dundee so that we can check out where the office is she needs to be next week to have her university review and work out her sign off placement. She still has some weeks to go before she's a qualified nurse and can get out there working and so we'll find out this weekend where it is she's to go next week and have a little look around the shops of the city I lived closest to when I resided in St. Andrews. It's a little strange at times there being two of us living together who share over seventy years of life between the two of us but who are both students. Sometimes I feel as though I want to throw out the alcoholism thing so that people know that we're not students just because we're fucking around, like I feel the need to excuse us being this way, we're alkies so give us a chance, but it's no one's business about the drinking and so people will just have to think about us what they want, which is probably very little to be honest.

Since the holiday in Spain we had been busy with preparing for my move in but this week things have settled down a bit. Next week I'll be back to college but Lindsay won't have much going on. I think it'll be a good thing for all involved when she gets back to having something constructive to focus on, something to talk about when (and if) people ask her what she's been up to. Wherever she ends up it will carry on until after Christmas now and so we will remain a couple of students until 2018 but that's fine. We're both heading somewhere, individually as well as together, and so things are all good.

I am still thinking back the way though. 2017 could be seen for me as being the year of looking backwards. At least since the summer I have been living half in the real world and half in the past. It's a bit more recent now though. Over summer I was thinking a lot about my upbringing and tales from my childhood but now it is more about the time after fatherhood, my drinking times but before I became a lonely drunk. The days before I moved into the cave I've just left. Having Kung Fu Pandis of all people available to help me move my things over the weekend got us talking about old times, people and events, lifestyles long gone.

Again, as with the childhood thoughts I had over summer, these are not dark thoughts I am having. Kung Fu Pandis had me thinking about the good parts of the drinking game. While it is true that this lifestyle has left me with a very poor working history and a serious lack of experience in how to connect with people on a healthy basis I am beginning to see the best of these times. I think that having no regrets is a big part of getting sober and perhaps this thinking back and trying to appreciate the good times there were is a way of stamping out any regrets. I can always learn things I need to know now that I am sober and not going back to that lifestyle of old any time soon.

I've had four big drinking partners over my life. There was John whom I drank with from around 1999 to 2002; Mitch from 2002 to 2006; Kung Fu Pandis from 2006 to 2011; and then Mikey from 2011 to 2013. Something like that anyway. There were others in between and here and there but those four were the ones I stuck with. The ones I won't forget in a hurry. I suppose if you could say that I have had any sort of connections with people in my life, excluding family and women, then these four are the ones I managed to connect with, even if we both had to be drunk and on drugs most of the time to do so. My cousin, the one I saw at the weekend in St. Andrews for the shortest time as he stubbed a cigarette and hid back in his den, oblivious to me standing at the end of the path, was there the whole way through all of these drinking partners and so I guess you could include him too. Gillon, Fuzzy, Chris, there were many others but none so memorable as to come into my thoughts this week. Maybe next. . .

I don't think that this is anything I should be worrying about, all this thinking about the days gone by. I ''spoke'' yesterday about changes and how people never seem to do so, at least internally, but we are always making external changes and this year has been one of those years in which external change has been rather large. Even the month of October. Moving home is a big thing. I never used to think it was but I do now. Things feel very different. I still don't fully feel as though I am living here (I still refer to the cave as my ''home'' and this place as Lindsay's flat; and I still talk of this town as being hers and the one I'll be busing it through to hopefully work in a short while as my town) but in time this will happen. I'll relax a little and settle into it.

Later on this afternoon I will be sitting opposite Dr. Bacon, my clinical psychologist, and he'll be asking how I've been getting on. I'll be selective about what I tell him, especially after that awkward last session we had, but I do want to get better and so am hoping that I can challenge myself to not be in Detached Protector mode the whole time I'm in there. He mentioned last time that there are studies which suggest it takes around a year of therapy to get around this most horrible and defensive of modes and while there are no easy fixes, nor would I expect or wish there to be, fighting it when it is there can only be a good thing in helping to bring along this therapy process. Every moment spent not in one of my coping modes is a moment we can work on the Healthy Adult part of me. As small as it may be.

With only seventy five days to go until this year becomes next year I have to admit that sobriety has brought about some interesting challenges throughout this year. I also guess I could honestly say some of the cliches are starting to become realised. Things like ''Sobriety is a gift that keeps on giving!'' or that feeling I get where I believe that ''The best is yet to come!'' and all that.

2016 was infinitely better than the year before. The years in sobriety are getting better.

I think in a couple of months I'll be able to say the same thing about 2017.

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Stevie

Loving this year so far.

1215

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, October 20th 2017 (A Bunch of Programs Installed)


I've been looking at other potential ways to make some cash after a week where I wish Barry the Bullet and I had been out working more than we were. Every week a disappointment. Kung Fu Pandis mentioned that his work is looking for temporary staff over the Christmas period and so I'd be interested in finding out more about what the hours would be. I know it won't pay as well as working on the window cleaning will where Barry and me can earn one hundred pounds per day on occasion (makes you think he'd be more eager to answer his phone in the mornings and get out there, doesn't it?) but it would be regular money. I have also offered to help out at a local cafe on Saturday mornings but will have to wait and see. If the work with Kung Fu Pandis, which I will repeat is just temporary over the festive season, allows it I could always try to squeeze in a shift or two on the window cleaning as well as. If I want to go travelling then I'm going to have to save up a hell of a lot of money and so getting used to working long hours is perhaps what I need to be getting used to. Finding ways of making money and going out and making it.

This month so far has been a case of spending money, and lots of it too, without really bringing much in. Since Lindsay and I returned from Spain we have spent around two hundred quit getting me moved from the cave into this flat with her. Worth it, and necessary, but it's still around two hundred bucks in the van rental and fuel. I also paid the agreed five hundred pounds into my rent arrears from the cave to bring my balance down to a reasonable amount. It's all a part of my AA amends I guess. The former Stevie, if left in this position, would have found it too tempting to get in the things he needed to help him feel secure before paying what was the right thing to pay and help clear off a little of his rent balance. Things like making sure he had enough booze and cigarettes to keep him going for a while, maybe even stock up for the coming Christmas period where work is often quite difficult. Possibly even book and pay for another trip away. The rent is the pressing issue though and so five hundred bucks has been paid onto it.

On top of all that (and shopping we did on Tuesday) I paid two hundred pounds on the software package we are advised to get for our college course. Adobe Creative Cloud. The way these companies ensure they stay rich is by renting their programs out to you now and the package costs me £193 for one full year and that's with a sixty five per cent student discount. It does give me all of their programs though. On top of Premiere Pro and Audition, which are the main ones we've been using in class up until now, we also get Photoshop, Illustrator. InDesign, Experience Design, After Effects, Lighroom, Portfolio, Spark, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Muse, Anime, Character Animator, Bridge, Media Encoder, InCopy, Prelude, Fuse and Camera Raw. It's a lot of installation but well worth it. The lecturers advised not just getting this product (it's what the student loans and that are for anyway) but to familiarise ourselves with them all, becoming proficient if possible.

I remember what Bill was saying to me the other week. He was saying that leaving sound production to do radio is a good thing in improving my skill set and thus my employability in the field. I already know how to use the Ableton and Pro Tools programs from last year and my own home recording experience (and I must say that both of these programs are waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy superior to these Adobe products, and I mean WAY better!!!) and so it makes sense in getting to know these too. Getting myself up to scratch using every program used in the creative industries is never going to hurt. It's fun too although for getting myself back into home recording – something I had really hoped I might be able to do at some point soon – Adobe Audition is perhaps just not going to cut it.

If I want to make the best of having these programs on my laptop then I'll have to get the spare room sorted, turned into a studio of sorts where I can work on my college projects. At the moment the place is still pretty cluttered. Lindsay has found many things (mainly shoes she has never worn and forgot she even bought) and she's working her way through them and putting them into either the KEEP pile or the SELL ON EBAY pile, the latter already adding a couple of hundred quid onto her Paypal account since we came back from Spain. I don't know if I have anything of value. It won't be long before it's a tidy little room though and I'll be able to work through there. If we could get those Metallica tickets sold we'd have another two hundred quid (and that would be selling them at face value too) and so we are still hopeful but there doesn't seem to be too much interest so far with the gig being this coming Thursday.

I haven't time now to talk about my session with Dr. Bacon yesterday and so will now leave it until tomorrow morning. Yesterday was a good day though. After the session I went back to the cave and hoovered is and cleaned it up a bit. I don't mind other people seeing it now. I then took the walk to English Sara's and nipped across to the AA meeting at the church just opposite her bungalow. It was okay, I may mention that in tomorrow's post when I've got a little more time too.

Then I text Lindsay to let her know I'd be staying in the cave for the night. I explained that I was going to do a bit of tidying in the garden at first light since it needs done before I move and we won't have time over the weekend but the reality was that the cave still pulls me in. I still like to escape to it. After November 08th I won't have this as an option. It's not as if anything exciting happens in there, all I did was watch the IT remake on my laptop while on my own with a couple of cups of hot chocolate (a complete and utter pile of dog shit of a movie, a total waste of time and money, an Adobe Audition movie rather than a Pro Tools one) and for the most part I wished I'd just gone back through to Lindsay, back home.

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Stevie

Now on his computer has Premiere Pro, Audition, Photoshop, Illustrator. InDesign, Experience Design, After Effects, Lighroom, Portfolio, Spark, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Muse, Anime, Character Animator, Bridge, Media Encoder, InCopy, Prelude, Fuse and Camera Raw. Nice!!

1219