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    #46
    Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

    Sunday, April 23rd 2017 (The Links Market)



    It's the London Marathon this morning. The top guys will be running this in just over two hours, which is pretty fucked up, as we have fourteen hours to cover twice this distance in six weeks or so. Yesterday I managed my sixteen miles no problems. I actually improved my speed quite a bit which was really what I've been aiming for. Normally I'm walking an average of just under four miles an hour but it's important to me that I increase this average and yesterday's walk saw me travelling at four point one four miles per hour over the course of the seventeen point one miles I walked.

    I can see why humans decided to move from Africa into Europe and America all those years ago. There's no doubt that part of their reasoning for this was greed but it's also pretty clear that much of their reasoning was nothing but boredom. Even on my little walks I have become bored with the limitations I've placed on myself through route choice. This weekend I move off a little further in another direction in a bid to find different scenery. I've managed to find the entrance to a coastal walk I wasn't aware existed. I didn't have time or distance to try it out yesterday but I'll be heading straight to it when I get moving again later on this afternoon. The only problem I have with coastal walks is that the are not covered on the apps or online resources I use and so I won't know the distance I've travelled. I can't even go by the time because the coastal routes are always a little slower than the four miles per hour I've been putting in recently. Where there's a will there's a way.

    I'll be turning thirty nine on Wednesday this coming week. The Twenty Sixth. I used to like birthdays (a wee bit anyway) but recently they have been something to fear. Too much time wasted has made me feel as though I wish I could go back to tell myself before taking that first alcoholic drink to not bother. Not gonna happen though. There is something that could come out of this latest birthday of mine though. I might get to see my mum. It's been a while. I saw her on Boxing Day when we had dinner at hers and then I saw her ever-so briefly at Oldest Niece's birthday back in early February. Not a cheep since though. I won't hold my breath but it'd be nice.

    I was talking about that at the ACA meeting yesterday actually. I was thinking on my walk at how chronic loss and abandonment has affected my life and how things might have been had I not sobered up and tried to work through these issues of mine. It's not all bad though I was also thinking about what I've been left with in my life now that I am approaching forty. My working history is one of the things that stand out. It's appalling. I don't have much of a working history outside of cleaning windows. All of these career people, those who called themselves ''functional drunks'' – it's difficult to communicate to these guys just how different it is and was for some of us. We often drank until we passed out at really unpredictable times of day and night. Often we'd wake up and go again, not stopping until that little spell was over. Then we returned to what we might call functional alcoholism briefly and we could almost have a normal life for a bit, maybe even clean up the house, and then we'd go back to passing out at unpredictable times. All of this with a reduced capacity for living life and with a mind that is more child-like than it is healthy adult. It would take a super human to have managed to create and continue with a career while having an addiction.

    Sandra (woman who runs the ACA meeting) approaches me at the end of the meeting and discusses my debts with me. She asks what the point is in me trying to pay them off over the next twenty or thirty years like I seem to want to. She explains about how this pertains to the Twelve Step fellowship's Step Nine amends and says that going bankrupt, but she called it something else, her having a background in law and all that, could be considered making an amend with myself. I wonder about this as we're not supposed to be too concerned with ourselves during this Step. We did enough of that while we were sick and this Step was all about repairing relationships with other people. She asks me if I want to have this reminder of my sickness for the next twenty to thirty years it would take to clear some of my larger debts. Of course I don't, but I have to be careful not to take the easy way out if it will come back and bite me further down the line. She asks me to think about it and give her a shout if I decide to go ahead with it. She'll help me fill out the forms. We'll see. I'll have to have a little think about what Step Nine actually means to me at the moment.

    But to go back to that point about my mum. I think the situation with her shows how child-like my thinking still is regarding abandonment and such like. She spends time with my brother as I can see on Lindsay's Facebook and the nieces were on some Easter egg hunt at their gran's the other weekend. I wonder if this is anything to do with it. Does she spend more time with my brother because he has children? I have children too but they have been out of the picture now for over eleven years. Then I realise that I am doing what little children do. I'm being very egocentric. What have I done to mum to make her so disinterested in being near her eldest son? That's a very child-like way of viewing it. She doesn't have an interest – deal with it!! Who really cares what her reasons for this might be!? It's not my concern. I've done my best in trying to build bridges and communicate with her since we had our Step Nine talks at the start of the summer last year. Perhaps it would be best if I spoke with Dr. Bacon about possible ways of accepting that I don't have any parents. My mother is effectively out of my life. She always has been really....

    So Lindsay and I were at the Links Market last night. We had waited until the evening to try to catch a little more of the festival atmosphere that the night offers. My brother and nieces had been earlier in the day and had said that it was really busy but I was actually surprised by how few people were there. Hundreds of people for sure, but we didn't have to wait in long queues to get onto the rides we fancied. I notice that Lindsay mentions the past quite a lot. Every now and then she'll tell me a little about how she used to do this and that with her mum and son. She did it over Christmas, she did it in Edinburgh, she's been doing it while we've been looking through online holiday brochures. This market was yet another place that they used to visit every year. With her losing her mum (and best friend by the sounds of it) to death (alcoholism and smoking while in her fifties) a couple of years ago and her subsequent drinking binges causing her to lose the right to have her son live with her there's little doubt that she's going to think about this stuff. I think she might have even been looking out for her boy with one eye while we were cruising around the streets. It was good fun though.

    Of course there is going to be a downfall to having something like this coming to town and the police are as busy as you might expect. The amount of underage drinking on show is alarming. Little girls looking around as young as perhaps fourteen (although it's hard to tell for sure these days since they're all waxing their faces with tons of that shit that makes them look orange and fake) puking all over the place and guys scrapping with other boys from different schools. Ten years from now and some of these young people will turn their lives around; others will do okay but act like this over the weekends way into their lives as adult children; but a large number of them will end up on the dole queue and spend their lives being looked after by the nanny state that is ''Great'' Britain, just like me. They don't bother us though so everything is fine.

    I have to say though – I'm perhaps getting a little too old for all of that upside down carry on that goes with sitting on most of those fairground rides!!

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    Stevie

    Hanging upside down.

    1559

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      #47
      Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

      Monday, April 24th 2017 (Lindsay's Sleeves)



      I'm on the way to college just now and I'm in a little trouble. We're supposed to be adding sounds and effects to that Pixar short I mentioned the other day (Lifted – the first two minutes) and I've recorded a bunch of sounds for it using Lindsay's voice recorder. The only thing is that I can't find the cable that connects it to a computer and so barring listening to them through a set of headphones plugged directly into the recorder itself there's no way of listening to any of the recordings. Useless for a Pro Tools session the likes of which we are required to work with. This means that I am effectively just beginning my project this morning. I'm way behind the schedule set down by my own plan from last week. The thing is – I'm confident I'll get it done. I don't know how I'll do it, I just have this feeling that I can trust myself to get into college today and tomorrow, the rest of the week, and that what I have submitted by the deadline on Thursday will be more than enough for the unit. I like having confidence in myself.

      We (Lindsay and I) did a little clearing out in the spare room yesterday (in between all the sporting action – there was the London Marathon from ten, the second FA Cup semi final between Arsenal and Manchester City at three, followed by Real Madrid against Barcelona in the evening) and Lindsay showed me her AA box. I have one of these too. Just a box where we keep all of the mumbo-jumbo handed to us in our time in AA. My box consists of dozens of things I received from Jenna within my first six months of entering the fellowship and a few other things that I got from others. Lindsay has been in the fellowship a lot longer than I and so she has accumulated more mumbo-jumbo.

      Inside her collection we have quite a bit of literature. Being a woman she had all of her books given to her and they come complete with little notes inside the front cover. Little notes written by the group or person who is giving the book away. My Big Book has nothing written inside. Fair enough - I'm not exactly an easy guy to get along with but I would perhaps have been hoping to have been shown the same love and acceptance that anyone else is when they join. Lindsay was clearly better looked after than I was when I arrived.

      Besides her literature and all manner of little trinket and laminated quotes and so on and so forth is a binder containing plastic sleeves filled with notes. It's from her ex-sponsor. Lindsay hands it to me and I take a look inside. Her ex-sponsor (not Leader – he would never do this, the one she had after that, Karen) has printed off worksheets for each Step and placed them in their own little sleeve. I glance through the early Steps and notice that she's added a bunch of little exercises for her sponsees to complete. There are quotes from the Big Book and I noticed that Lindsay's Book itself has many highlighted sections in yellow and purple and red. I'm assuming that each different colour represents some different kind of meaning. Maybe the purple refers to God sections while the red deals with Steps, and so on.

      I get to nearer the back of the sleeves and reach Step Nine. I'm going to have to look at this in more detail later as we're trying to declutter this room while the sporting action plays in the background and so for now a little glance is all I have time for but in the not too distant future I will be checking out this pack in much greater detail. I notice a little section she's printed off about Step Nine and our debts built up through drinking. I'll have to check this out. After Step Nine follows, quite obviously I think, Step Ten. This is the Step I never reached. /I could have, but many members seem to rush into Ten without ever finishing Nine and so they never complete their amends lists. I wanted to finish off my list before going onto Step Ten. I never got around to it.

      I ask Lindsay. She agrees to tale me through the final three Steps as she's been through them twice already. It'll be a good little bit of insight into different ways in which the program can be taught as she'll likely adopt, whether she knows it or not, the methods used by those who sponsored her. I know that this might seem like a silly idea from the outside but she won't be an official sponsor of mine. She'll just be taking me through the final three Steps so that I might finish this program once and for all. I have accepted that the spiritual awakening is false. There is no magic or witchcraft involved in AA or its program. It's just a lot of pressure to conform and see things their way, or more accurately, the way of the old-timers. I could never quite find ways to connect to people who came from childhoods much like my grandfather's. So there is no spiritual awakening. The equivalent of this will come when I work through defeating my Detached Protector and Bully and Attack schema modes with Dr. Bacon.

      It'll be nice to be able to say that I've managed to get through the program though. It'll be my experience that I can share. It took me three attempts and two different sponsors (well – one sponsor and one Lindsay) to get through it. I think it's important that I don't tell others in the meetings over the years to come that I got a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps like everyone else does. It's much more important I think that I tell the truth.

      The truth of why I want to get through the final three and one third Steps of this program is still unclear to me, I guess it's just that I feel a pull towards it that I don't think will stop until I have officially completed the final Step.

      Of course I know that it is an ongoing and lifelong process, working these last three Steps, and although I don't expect anything wonderful to happen at the end I have to say that there were times when I was going through this program over the last two years where my life was dramatically improved as a result of working them.

      Damn – the bus is here already.

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      Stevie

      Off to college.

      1143

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        #48
        Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

        Tuesday, April 25th 2017 (The Last SMART)



        I didn't go to Slimming World last night after my last ever SMART meeting but I know I weigh less than I did last time because I weighed myself at Lindsay's. I'm a pound down from what I was. I'll very soon be at my target weight which will mean that I can attend for free (providing that I make sure I pop in once in every month otherwise my membership becomes void and I have to pay fifteen bucks to rejoin). I can then attend any class I want to for the lovely price of sweet fuck all for as long as I remain at this weight. I'll have to start paying again if I go a couple of pounds above or below this weight. I'm not there yet though so I don't know why I'm mentioning it. This is for another post. But I'm nearly there, proving that it is the eating that puts on the weight when you quit smoking and not some biological event as a direct result of the act of quitting smoking itself.

        The last SMART meeting I'll likely (hopefully) ever be at was as poor as I've come to expect. We had no structure; someone walking out in the huff; someone lying about the length of time they've been sober for; someone trying to dominate the meeting by talking all the time; someone playing the victim to an absolute tee; you name it – SMART has it!! Apparently they are going to try to keep the meeting running even now that Lauren has left but it's off next week because it's the May holiday. The college is off too. Everything shuts down for a day with no reasonable explanation why. I still don't know if SMART works to help people of if it actually hinders them in many ways. I guess that it's different for everyone but I can't shake the feeling that some of these guys would possibly benefit from not having so many places to go each and every evening that drill into them that it's okay to relapse. That relapse is a part of recovery. I always cringe when I hear that. It's a dreadful message. My sickness used to love it when Margaret told me that – it meant I could drink that day without any feelings of guilt. If I just kept drinking then I am still in recovery.

        I was speaking with Gillon yesterday. He'd tried to contact me but my phone was on silent (English Sara has tried about eight times in since Saturday morning but hasn't managed to get through – I'll have to pay her a visit this week) and after that other week when we had booked out the studio at the college for a session he has been visiting with pals and (while probably drinking) mentioned this to others I know and used to drink and take drugs with. One or two appear to be interested in getting involved with some kind of musical project. I have to say that my guitar playing has seen better days. I don't know why I have played so little since sobering up. I played with that band for a few weeks eighteen months or so ago and we played one charity gig (on the eve of my first sober birthday no less – my one and only sober gig) and had a few meetings with some other guys around that time but nothing ever seemed to happen. Now I have this plus the DAPL guitar class looming somewhere in the background to get me in the mood.

        We're supposed to be getting sleet and snowy weather today and tomorrow. The cynical part of me would love to say that this is typical in Scotland but it really isn't. We are getting very close to May now and I used to always say back in my window cleaning days that the year began on the first of May. That was when we were sure to be over the snowy and chilly weather. This year my philosophy is being tested. When the sunny summer weather arrives I shall have to put some effort into trying to enjoy it as it won't stick around forever. It never does.

        In time for the summer I could really do with finding a regular and reliable way of communicating with Barry the Bullet but I've been saying that so much recently that I'm myself becoming bored with it. It's something that'll have to happen though.

        College is becoming a bit of a drag at times I have to admit. I think that Lindsay is feeling the opposite. She's for three years now (four actually after taking that year out to sober up) been studying and now she's into her second last week of university and facing life in the workplace – a fate that is eternal, so things are maybe a little different on her end. For me right now the thought of studying any more after this seems like a foolish idea and one that I'm not altogether certain I'll be doing, as things stand.

        I wonder how many will be in college today. Yesterday there were only five of the class turned up and in the afternoon only three of us. It made for an interesting experience but one I'm not too keen to repeat too often. I'll find out in around twenty minutes.

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        Stevie

        Arriving at his stop.

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          #49
          Stevie!
          Quitting and staying quit isn't easy, its learning a whole new way of thinking. It's accepting a new way of life, and not just accepting it, embracing it...
          Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Just get through today. Tomorrow will look after itself when it becomes today, because today is all we have to think about.
          Friendship is not about how many friends you have or who you've known the longest. It's about who walked into your life, said "I'm here for you", and proved it.

          Comment


            #50
            Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

            Hmmmmm...

            Some missing posts.

            Luckily I can do this:

            Comment


              #51
              Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

              Wednesday, April 26th 2017 (Turning Thirty Nine)



              I'm not there yet. It's still only Monday, April twenty fourth, but I have a bit of time and so I thought that I could free up Wednesday by writing its post this afternoon. Shaun wasn't in college today so I am not able to get my usual lift back to Lindsay's town. Instead I am on the bus. I'll be meeting her at the hospital at six so that we can attend the SMART meeting. This'll be the last one. Lauren leaves for her new job after this and I have been told that no one will be taking over from her. It's strange because she's been talking about the training and trying to encourage us to do it for months yet we didn't bother. So now we have to face losing our meeting. This is more than okay for me as I had kinda stopped getting anything from SMART as it was but for many others in the group I feel it'll free up one evening of their weekly calender in a way they might not like. It was a good little group though.

              Turning thirty nine. At least I've given myself a little head start. By the time I reach my thirty ninth birthday on Wednesday I will have quit drinking for two years and (almost) three months. I'll have quit all drug taking of any kind completely for one full year plus (almost) three months. I'll also have quit smoking cigarettes for (almost) three months. These are obviously enormous changes and advantages I have made from when I began my online journal nearly three years ago. Things are looking up. They should be anyway. What else is there in the way of improvements since I'm thinking along those lines?

              Lindsay is a big plus in my life that wasn't there before. She's been one of the major changes that there has been since I sobered up. I met her while I was a new-to-AA member and we gradually became friends before starting to spend a lot of time together. Now it even looks as though she's going to take me through the final three Steps of AA's program, which should be interesting. I spend my weekends there now (as well as Monday nights and the odd Wednesday night) and although we've had a little spell where things started to look awkward I feel as though we have passed that quite well and have moved forward.

              My education has taken a little boost in the time I've been sober as well. It might only be a Level Six lowly National Certificate in sound production but anyone trying to get this qualification must commit to it and stick it out for the nine months it goes on for. During this time they have dozens of written and practical assignments to complete. They have to get used to things like blogging, web design, sound design, and studio recording techniques. There's a lot to it. Proof that I have done well is that I have never managed to take to a course of study and get this far without dropping out yet. Plus – there are only eight of us left in my group out of the eighteen or twenty that started. Somewhere along the line these guys have dropped out. It looks as though, a day at a time, I am going to get my qualification. It will likely be small and seemingly insignificant to some of you guys who have had successful careers for many years but to me it is quite a big slice of evidence that I can actually commit to something and see it through, that I can care enough about something, and myself, to make it to the end. This is the ninth last teaching week until the qualification is mine.

              It might also sound silly but I am but a couple of months away from keeping my house plant alive for a full year. This was a challenge set down by Narcotics Anonymous back when I used to go there every now and again. It's a challenge I failed last year when my plants both died over the winter period when I was a mess. That's another big change in itself – I survived a winter with very little fuss. This last winter was absolutely nothing when compared with the winters of previous years. It's actually probably the biggest change when I think about it. There hasn't been a suicidal thought enter my head in more than a year. There's nothing fundamentally depressive about me – I was just going through a really shitty time and with little support.

              That might not be true actually. When I think at things I have still to work on, things which do me no favours in my life, my mood is one that comes to mind straight away. I am very negative and depressive by nature. My default position is one of solitude and cynicism. I really don't like people. Human beings I feel to be incredibly selfish and capable of being so, so much more than we are. I feel that there is some good in us, of course, but humanity at its core is severely disturbing, borderline evil, nothing more than wild animals, and I have a tough time in handing this over to the God of my understanding. I have a hard time in forgetting some of the things that we do to each other and the creatures we share this planet with. We are truly scum. I have to find better ways of coping with my attitudes and thoughts towards my fellow scumbag.....I mean, my fellow man and woman. It's something that the Twelve Steps have been unable to help me much with. My faith lies in Dr. Bacon and the techniques we will work on from next Thursday afternoon onwards, and perhaps with the girls from ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) but I fear may be something I am cursed with to some degree indefinitely. I'll die with a large part of me hurting over this. It's in itself cynical but it's the way I see it as things stand.

              I also have problems in the workplace with my working history being appalling for a guy of my age. It's gonna take some time to try to right this, if there ever can truly be a way of righting it, and to start to recover from it. For me ambitions for the future have to be a little less than what they might be for my age group. I don't see my children and so I can't be looking forward to watching their lives blossom. They are both around school leaving age now so they could be up to anything over the next couple of years. I'll miss it all. It's another big difference between my late thirties and the late thirties of most men.

              My health should start improving with all of the exercise I've been doing in the build up to this enormous walk (is to me anyway) that is coming up in six weeks time or so. June 10th – fifty two miles. Two marathons one after the other. I've covered three hundred miles in the training and since I quit smoking. It's something else positive to end my thoughts on turning thirty nine.

              Things sometimes suck still. I don't mean it in the way that recovered people do when they say that sobriety isn't all one big bed of roses. That's obvious – that's life. I mean that I still don't feel as though I'm much closer to getting out of this hole I've been stuck in all my life. I've started climbing out at least but it's gonna take a lot more climbing before I can say that I'm that average human male of my age group. That's the best I can hope for but it is admittedly a tall order.

              Sometimes I rather enjoy trying to get out of the problems I've created for myself while at other times I feel as though it's taking too long still. At least I don't feel that hate I used to. That's one of the main things I notice different from turning thirty nine to when I turned thirty eight. That and the lack of suicidal thoughts and behaviour.

              So it's still Monday but I'll post this on Wednesday. It's cheating a little and isn't quit in fitting with my ''one post per day'' rule but everyone is entitled to a day off once in a while.

              Wednesday it's my turn.

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              Stevie

              Taking today off by writing this out on Monday.

              Still have to log onto the sites to post it today though.

              1470

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                #52
                Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                Thursday, April 27th 2017 (Being Alone)



                I'm a strange creature indeed. A creature that would have done anything today to have been alone on his birthday. I'm not supposed to be writing today, I'm supposed to have the day off. That's what I wrote that extra post on Monday for. I'm good though, I don't mind writing today. Like I said: I'd have done anything to have been alone today and I've managed to succeed with this. I have been out. I've been out quite a bit actually. I was at the Charity Shop Cafe for breakfast and was at the Credit Union to make yet another cash withdrawal. I then went to the shop round the corner from my brother's and paid into the paypoint system my fortnightly debts and bills for my gas and electricity. I would not venture round the corner to my brother's though. Not today, not on my birthday. Then I thought about my hair. I'm getting sick of it being long and so have to get this sorted. In the end it was not to be today though. But none of these people I have met on my travels would know that it is my birthday. I can't wait until it's over. Next week can't come quickly enough.

                So – I am writing tomorrow's post today again, a day ahead, or today's post yesterday, depending on how you perceive things. Assuming that you perceive today as being Thursday then I'll be heading to college today for the last class of the ninth last week of study, but I haven't been yet so I won't know what happens when I get there as this is still today, or yesterday I should say. If you are keeping up with today being still Wednesday then we'll call today today, just to make things a little easier. You follow?

                I don't know why my birthday always sucks so much. I think that it's because I am expected to show emotions that I just cannot (or will not) fake and pretend to enjoy being the man of the day. I hate Christmas for this as well but since everyone is involved I am more able to get into the mood and can fake it rather well, actually don't have to fake it as much since for some reason I seem capable of enjoying parts of it. This will likely be more difficult as the nieces grow older and become less and less interested in the social aspects of family Christmas. Birthdays though – they are different. I'll see everyone when I see them and I won't have to feel as though I must fake anything and everything. The day will be over. I'll be accepting cards that represent old news, yesterday's events, and so less of a deal will be made over it. This way I can fake my way through the joy at being a year older a little more easily.

                It's Lindsay I feel for on this day. I was supposed to be staying with her last night so that I was there this morning to open my present. It had been arranged this way. I even got my midweek walk in by hoofing it from college yesterday (two days ago – you know what I mean!?) all the way to hers (a total of ten miles taking me over the three hundred mark by a few miles now). I even bumped into an AA member on my travels – Leader!! We chat for around twenty minutes and I have to say I feel a little drawn to the fellowship. I don't really know how necessary this ninety day abstinence plan has been but:

                Leader – ''How you been doing? I haven't seen you for donkeys!''

                Stevie – ''I was getting a little restless with it all for a while there so decided to take ninety days away, just to see how I go. It's been okay.''

                Leader – ''I've done that too. I don't mean I've stayed away altogether but there have been times when this meeting has been the only meeting I've gone to for a while.''

                We are standing right outside the Tuesday night Step meeting. One might say that I was drawn there and they may be right, but this is too early for the meeting to be opening, Leader arriving early to set up because he's nipping to the Fife Intergroup meeting later on in my town. It was a chance meeting. I was walking past the door as he drove up. Twenty seconds later for either one of us and this meeting doesn't happen.

                I didn't stay at Lindsay's though. We had had a little disagreement on Monday night and I decided (really selfishly and probably immaturely as well) to cling onto this a little and use it as an excuse to say that I was going to stay at mine for the week. Lindsay made it quite hard and wanted to talk about it and I had mentioned that I'd be leaving while the bus still had forty minutes until it left so I had to wind down the clock and it was quite slow in ticking. She brings up many good points about my poor communication when it comes down to it but the truth is that I really wanted to be on my own for a while, a few days, which wasn't possible, but tonight and tomorrow – that's possible!! We can pick up wherever we left off at the weekend if she wants to and I'll be more responsive. I won't have one eye on the clock and the bus leaving. I'm selfish though – not working this Twelve Step program at all. But that's been obvious now for a long, long time.

                Now that I have my wish for my birthday and I have been out and done the things I had to do I am alone as I wanted to be. How has this made me feel? To be honest it's a bit of a mixture. There's a definite sadness about the day but it is countered quite nicely by a feeling of there being no acting to do. The exhausting acting of enjoying this day won't have to happen after all.

                Tomorrow will be a new day. My birthday will be all over, in the rear-view mirror.

                Today, I mean.....

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                'Stevie

                Thirty nine and alone.

                1077

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                  #53
                  Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                  Friday, April 28th 2017 (Isolating)



                  Back to writing in the day. My birthday is now well into the distance, something not to be concerned with for another great many days, but next year will be a bigger worry than usual. I'll be forty. Let's not get into the habit of thinking about that too often anytime soon.

                  I've just finished my shift at the Charity Shop Cafe for the morning and am loving it. I think it's one of the very few times during the course of a week where I get to be out of my head for a three hour period. I certainly can't do that when I'm at the college. The projects demand that I get into my head to look for inspiration and creativity and I struggle to just roll with it and forget myself – probably my biggest problem at the moment, at all times, since forever. Due to the deadline for the latest project being so tight I decided to stay back after class yesterday and work on what I have to do. This meant sitting in with the other group of students in my year. I am grateful that I was placed in the group I currently am as this group seems to have a very poor work ethic. They are quite vocal with one and other about the shortcuts they are taking with this project and how little effort they have put into it. That if it were a four week project then we might be able to make something out of it. This is what I'm up against. This is the future competition. I agree – four weeks would have left time to create a special project but I plan on getting the absolute best out of the two weeks that I can. Even if we had four weeks then most of these guys would just bang on about how good a project it would be if the had SIX weeks.

                  One of these students in this other class I recognise from photographs as the son of Marshall, the guy I'm supposed to be starting up the guitar class with in due course. He's thirty but much the same as the younger guys in the class. He'll piss around and play guitar when he's supposed to be getting on with his project (and the playing of the guitar does very little to aid the concentration of our peers who do actually want to work on this) and then get on with it when there's an hour to go until the end of class time, moaning about how much better his effort would be if he had four weeks to do this instead of two. I think this attitude is why his guitar playing skills are suffering so much. He's not that good. I can only hope that his dad is a lot better. It was hard work handing over to the God of my understanding all afternoon the petulance of the group I was sitting with but I am grateful that I put the time and effort in. I'll upload it on Tuesday once it's done.

                  I'm not going to Lindsay's town this weekend. I'm having serious problems with many things at the moment. Dr. Bacon has asked me to pay close attention to try to notice when I use any of my Schema Modes as defences and I'm noticing them popping up all the time. My Detached Protector Mode and the Bully and Attack Mode. Pretty much every time I open my mouth and say something I notice something wrong or something stupid or something that is likely to cause offence or or or or or...... It's got to the stage now where it's causing me to isolate terribly. Yesterday I was going to go visit English Sara and Dennis as it's been a while. I isolated instead and stayed in, switching the phone onto silent and putting it out of sight, and didn't leave the cave after I got back at five. Today I have finished my volunteering shift and have opted not to go to Restoration. This'll be the third week on the spin that I've missed – the longest I've been away from the service since I started going again at the beginning of last year.

                  My next appointment with Dr. Bacon is on Thursday afternoon and I am eager to see how we should work on this stuff. One session every three weeks is proving to be difficult. At times it doesn't feel like it's enough. I've had the phone on silent since Wednesday but I have been out and done the things I'm supposed to be doing. The isolating is a worry though. It's all stemming from this belief that everything I say causes chaos to anyone who might hear it. I don't know if that includes you guys, dear reader, whoever may still be reading this mess I call a journal, a blog, a whatever it is. I suppose it doesn't as you guys make the choice to click on here and read – others in the real world often have no option but to hear, and then we're getting down to the whole thing where ''they have a choice on how they respond to what I say'' which is true but a much more difficult thing to do and way too complicated for me to be getting into right now.

                  Isolating. Being alone. They have been the themes of the last couple of posts. It's not as big an issue as Alcoholics Anonymous might make it out to be as there is no threat of me drinking. That's not why I'm isolating. I can actually say that I have had little memories of the drinking and what it was like, little triggers and reminders of things I'd forgotten about in the two years since I last drank alcohol in this very room. They are pretty horrible little reminders to be honest. There's no chance of me going back there. Not as things stand.

                  It's been a difficult week but I have to remember that most of what is happening and what I'm thinking isn't real. It's all just in my head. I'm making all this shit up.

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                  Stevie

                  Making things up!!!

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                    #54
                    Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                    Saturday, April 29th 2017 (Fighting Isolation)



                    I wasn't supposed to be heading through to see Lindsay today – I was supposed to be isolating and hating it all weekend – but it's a different day and I wake in a different mood, a little more motivated than I have been for the last few days. I was supposed to be walking to English Sara's last night to see her and Dennis – actually did walk there, but turned around when I got close, turned around and walked straight back in the direction of the cave again, where I could isolate some more. This really isn't cool and not what I had planned. I really had wanted to visit with my friends but I was overcome by my own negative thinking once again.

                    Dr. Bacon (my clinical psychologist) has asked me in the three weeks between our last session and our next to look out for when I try to use my defences. I have two main coping modes that I've mentioned in the journals so far. I have the Bully and Attack – this mode does exactly what it says on the tin and so gets me into bother with people; and I have the Detached Protector – this is the mode which is active at this very moment and is causing me to go through this week of isolating and seeking solitude. I have been doing this homework as asked of me and have made the quite startling discovery that almost every single time I open my mouth to speak, or even have a thought , that one of these modes is active and in control. It's made me quite tired of thinking and I've sought solitude as a way of avoiding having to look at these modes and their control over me. It's amusing how Dr Bacon had said to me during one of our first sessions that oftentimes we over-think and intellectualise things because we are trying to avoid being emotionally connected to them when indeed now I am avoiding thinking about things so that I can avoid being emotionally present.

                    So what have I been doing all week? If I'm isolating then what exactly do I do in a cave such as mine which has no television, no internet connection, and is still in relative disarray? Well – it's hard to explain. Either that or it's difficult to admit. For a lot of the time I've lain on y bed with the headphones on and the laptop next to me and played a movie through. Only I've often had to rewind some of it as I lose track of what's going on and supposed to be happening. I'm stuck in my head the whole time. I'm thinking of the past. Looking back over what I can remember of the last thirty nine years. I am doing this quite slowly, trying to piece everything together and timeline it all accurately. Then I speed up as I get a little closer to the present. This seems to be a little more raw, a little more painful, and so I speed up and gloss quickly over the present and near future. Then I allow myself to slow down again. Now we're in the further future and so I can use what happened in the past, that which I have just dissected for only the God of my understanding knows how long, to try to predict what might happen a little further down the line. I allow myself to go all the way, as far as my thoughts might dare to go. I have quite a furtive and creative imagination and can predict a quite rich fantasy world for myself and all who know me. I even have possible futures of the nieces involved. Then I freeze. What the fuck is happening in this movie again??? I'd better rewind it a half hour or so. Then the process repeats itself until I wake to a new day.

                    This particular new day sees me get up earlier than I might have wanted to and arrange to meet with Lindsay before the ACA meeting this afternoon. The Adult Children of Alcoholics. Now I am at Lindsay's flat and am to be staying here for the long weekend. It's allowed me to feel a little less isolated but then somehow I felt less isolated from the moment I woke up this morning. The ACA meeting has quietened down a little since it started up on the first day of this month. There were around seven of us that first week but it has reduced now to just four. It'll pick up. I quite like the Big Red Book. I've only read through the sections we're read out at the two Book Study meetings we've had (they are to be once a fortnight – next week being the next time) but it feels as though it'll be an interesting book. I've hunted online for it, trying to steal a freebie PDF file, but cannot find the full book and so may just continue to attend the meetings and read it through with the group. I hope it survives.

                    Lindsay bumped into AA Gangster and his wife this morning on her way to meet me. He's having a go at her for not being at the Saturday evening meeting for weeks now. Although Lindsay has been to a couple of AA meetings (might just be the one actually – that Wednesday one a few weeks ago) since I have last been to a meeting, she hasn't actually been to that Saturday evening one since the week before I was last there. AA Gangster (who runs that particular group – a group in which Lindsay and I were regulars) won't have seen me there now for eleven weeks and Lindsay for twelve. It's a long time in the AA world. I can't be sure about Lindsay but I'll be back in that Saturday evening meeting a fortnight from now, my ninety days of AA abstinence will be over a week on Friday. It'll be my first meeting back.

                    Tomorrow I face a quite daunting task and one that will not be too great for getting me out of my head for a while. The training walks for the Walk the Walk charity event are getting pretty large and consistent now and tomorrow I have a route planned out at just over twenty miles. It takes me from Lindsay's front door, all the way through my town to the village beyond, and then out the back road towards this county's highest point. I'll then be scaling that (as I used to every other weekend when I first got sober) and then I'll be heading back to the village to get a bus back here. It feels like an insane thing to be doing. I did a thirty two mile walk not too many weeks ago but the terrain was a lot easier than tomorrow's will be. Then, the very next day, I have a sixteen mile walk to complete. This'll be on more sensible roads though.

                    For the next three weeks the walks remain long and relatively arduous but then decrease after that as we get closer to the event. Six weeks today is when it all happens. It starts off in the evening and runs all night and into the next morning. Fourteen hours is the deadline. It's more than two and a half times the distance I'll be covering in tomorrow's walk. Holy fuck!! It's not happening today though so I won't be thinking about it now. I have to remind myself to take things a day at a time. I could really have done with reminding myself about that at times during this week.

                    I did learn yesterday at the Charity Shop Cafe that Barry the Bullet had been cleaning the windows of the woman I work with. She hasn't seen him for a few weeks but on Tuesday he came round and did them. So he's still alive!?!? At least now I know that there's something of the business left. I might actually be able to get some shifts working over the coming summer. We have eight teaching weeks left at the college now and I'm good to get working as soon as that is over and done with.

                    Assuming I don't go back to the isolation mode I've been in for the bulk of this week.

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                    Stevie

                    Not isolating today.......

                    Thanks for the birthday wishes, Abcowboy

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                      #55
                      Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                      Sunday, April 30th 2017 (Hitting Target)



                      I don't know how on earth I'm going to handle the fifty mile walk when it comes around on the tenth of June. Back-to-back marathons. It's a pretty daunting thought. Today the training plan asked of me a twenty mile walk. I got myself ready and was out the door by ten. Lindsay has her last ever week of university this coming week (unless she goes back to do her Masters in a couple of years) and she has a couple of exams coming up. Best I leave her to it and be at one with nature. My route was already planned out in advance and so I make myself scarce.

                      At the eleven mile mark I am out of the main towns and mulling around little villages. This is what I've been doing wrong in my walks up until now – I've been sticking to walking in towns. I should be getting the hell away from those horrible places with those disgusting human things and out into the wild, nature, the great outdoors. Even here we have issues though as humans drive a little more recklessly when out of larger towns and don't expect (even though we are always taught on the road to expect the unexpected) walkers to be out this far and they often embarrass themselves by having to slam on the breaks or do a little swerve because they were looking at their phones instead of the country road and at what might be around the next corner – namely me – and then act aggressively as if I am responsible for their lack of driving care and judgement. Again, as always, the patterns are obvious: men tend to be worse than women, older people tend to overreact, and those driving more expensive cars tend to be bigger dicks. This happens with amazing consistency. Even walking all this distance out into the country and humans still come to try and spoil it.

                      I had planned to climb the counties' highest point and then head back into town and catch a bus. The problem was that the buses only operate every two hours out here on a Sunday. The next one passes through in just over an hour. This won't be enough time for me to walk to the foot of the hill, climb it, and make it back here again. I'll have to get the next one, two hours after that! As I'm climbing the steep roads (some of them very steep) I think to myself that if I just keep walking past the car park which leads to the hill and continue on to the next village then I can get a bus from there back to Lindsay's. They'll be more regular. It means avoiding the hill and leaving it for another day but as long as I clear the twenty miles that the training program asks of me then I'm doing what I set out to do. Then, when I finally make it to that village, I decide to just walk back to Lindsay's after all.

                      There were many times towards the end of this walk where I figured it'd be much easier to just use my concession bus pass and board a StageCoach for the final few miles. If I cheated though then it would fester, like it would were I to smoke a cigarettes, even a cheeky one that only I new about, and I keep thinking that if I give up now then how the heck will I manage on event day!? The last couple of miles truly suck. I develop a limp, start to get cramp, and then feel a blister on one of my feet. I get back to Lindsay's flat seven and a half hours after I left.

                      So I look at the route and the distance covered. Thirty miles. Still more than twenty two miles short of the fifty two point four miles that the event consists of. The first marathon is easy, the first twenty six miles, I've done it many times now and my markers show that I'm walking it at around four and a quarter miles per hour – a good wee pace. Easily fast enough to complete the challenge in the allocated time and the event itself will not have any punishing hills like the section I did today out in the wild. It also won't have cars trying not to run me down. But it's the second marathon.

                      It took me less than sixty five minutes to walk my first five miles but almost ninety to walk the last five, and it was the exact same route only backwards. The cramps and limping. The last two miles were very slow. So as soon as the first marathon is over the hassle begins. How am I supposed to get my body into the mood for this with such long training sessions? I can go back out tomorrow. I'm supposed to actually and have sixteen miles to do. I may try the coastal walk I discovered a couple of weeks ago.

                      I did complete a longer walk than this one back in March, I noticed my Endomondo account says. This was when I was walking only as a smoking distraction and before I had decided to enter the double marathon to raise money for breast cancer charities. This walk was thirty two miles. I don't remember having the same problems after that one. I don't remember blisters or limping. My time was the same as today's time yet I managed two miles further and this was at a time when I'd had less practice. I also weighed slightly more. I don't get it. I'm assuming it was those hills. From miles thirteen to eighteen today there were some pretty steep inclines and the Scottish wind was doing what it does best. I'd say that this was the most challenging walk I've done so far. I've a long way to go before I reach the level where fifty miles seems achievable. Less than six weeks it is now.

                      I weight myself afterwards. I've lost two pounds from when I woke up this morning. I find it amusing how our bodies work. This weight will slowly come back and I'll get to what I was before I set out. The thing is: at this moment in time, standing on these scales having just completed my thirty miles of hell, I am less than my Slimming World target of eleven and a half stone (around seventy three kilograms, or one hundred and sixty one pounds) by a full two pounds, meaning that I have lost nearly three pounds from this morning before I set out. Slimming World charge you every week until you reach your target weight. Then you can remain a member for free providing you show up for class once in every calender month. I notice that my available funds could do with this saving of a fiver per week (I wasn't at Slimming World last week and so will have to pay ten bucks when I go tomorrow – that makes it feel more expensive) and so the key is to go on a thirty mile walk every week before class???

                      I don't think so. But there's a good feeling in seeing my weight sitting at target. It's another goal I am getting closer to reaching. They seem to be happening all the time, these goals. In six weeks there will be the big one – more than fifty miles of charity event walked through Edinburgh city centre with the other one hundred double marathon challengers. My weight is getting close to being at target.

                      My house plant will reach ten months of age assuming it lives to the end of today, which it will, and so in sixty one days time I will have reached that goal in keeping it alive for a year. Around this same time the college will finish completing yet another goal.

                      I have also reached seventy eight full days away from the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

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                      Stevie

                      Setting goals and reaching them.

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                        #56
                        Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                        Monday, May 01st 2017 (Uplifted)


                        For some reason Lindsay is at university today yet we are off from the college due to it being the first of May and therefore a public holiday. So Lindsay's out the door early this morning and I'm sitting twiddling my thumbs and wondering what to get up to. My mind glosses over what I would likely be doing were it not for this stupid and most unwelcome holiday. I'd be concentrating on my latest project. In fact – had I the software myself, either bought legally or pirated from online resources, then I'd be able to continue working on this stuff while I'm off. I'd be able to put a lot more effort into all of my projects. But there are still college related things I could be doing, like the paperwork side of things – the parts that most students hate but that I, in all my weirdness, rather enjoy.

                        So I'm sitting reflecting on what has been a two week project instead of the usual four weeks. I head through to the kitchen to make a coffee and while waiting on the kettle to boil (and my eggs – good free foods for breakfast in accordance with the Slimming World healthy eating plan) I step onto the scales. Eleven stone and six pounds. I'm currently just below my target weight and so am happy. The thing is – as the day progresses I will gain slightly here and there, I reckon we all must do, and although it's very gradual whether or not I eat well today I will still weight more tonight when I step on the Slimming World scales for my check in. This morning I am under my target weight but when it matters I will be over it. I'll have to pay. So my target weight is actually much lower than the target weight Slimming World has me down for. In order for me to weigh eleven and a half stone by the evening I reckon I'll have to get my first-thing-in-the-morning weight down to around eleven stone and three pounds, maybe even eleven and two. I think that this is a little light for me to be honest. It's not unhealthy – it's just a little on the light side. Have I found another little malevolent capitalist tactic? Does Slimming World do this deliberately to keep me paying? It's not as if our scales are out either. I test them against the Slimming World scales by attending class, weighing myself when I get in and finding the sweet-spot in Lindsay's flat so that the scales in here match what those at class said. The sweet-spot is in the hallway where the kitchen door is. Shit – I'd better check those eggs!!

                        So I'm writing away on my college reflective reports. I notice that they've (the college lecturers) changed the deadline date from this Monday to Friday. They've given us extra time. This is a little annoying to be fair as it encourages us to muck around with this – and having sat with the other group on Thursday afternoon I can safely say that there are many of us who do fuck around. This is the eighth last teaching week until the course is over so I predict perhaps another two projects after this, plus the radio broadcasting project which takes up the Thursday class, and so we're not done yet. There's still work to be done. For this project we were to create a sound design for the Pixar short movie ''Lifted'' – or rather the first two minutes of it.

                        The last thing I wanted to do before getting started on this was to check out the actual original audio. I thought that if I did this I would always be working towards covering it, even if subconsciously, rather than coming up with something that was original and that I could call my own. By ''sound design'' all I mean is that we are given the video and have to come up with all of the sounds and music for it. Although in our projects page online on the Student Portal we were given the clip with no audio it would be easy to go onto Youtube and get the clip with audio. I decided not to do this and just work on my own ideas, as I think most people in our class did. Now that I have completed the task I figured I'd get onto Youtube this morning and check out the Pixar version.

                        I have to say that I was quite disappointed but what I noticed on Youtube was a bunch of students had posted their own versions of the video complete with original sound design. I took a half hour looking through all of these I could find as well as reading through the comments sections on each version. Seems like these projects come from all levels of sound production. One guy had done his as part of a third year university project. I was expecting more from him to be honest. What was interesting was how each and every one of us has highlighted different parts of the clip as being important. Most people, including myself, have gone with chirping crickets in the background at the beginning to set the scene. Inside the house a couple of guys have even added snoring to the human. Each and every one of us has a tractor beam sound that is totally different from the next. I guess I'm starting to get a little worried about the future of sound production though – how can it be that they all sound so similar if there are three or four years of study apart with some of them? Don't we get any better at doing this stuff as the years go by and we practice?

                        Well, it's kicking on and I weigh only slightly more than my target weight. It's a nightmare but there's nothing else I can do to shed the pound that I am currently over the seven and a half stone. Come class time this evening I will weight even more still but it's getting very close to me reaching another goal of mine and getting to that target. It'll happen next week. The super-long walks all but ensure it.

                        When at college tomorrow I'll be making sure that I finish off every little extra part of the project that needs done. I'll post my finished version here as well, just for the hell of it. Then I'll only have Wednesday to get through before I have my next session with my clinical psychologist Dr. Bacon. I'm looking forward to that session as I really have to find a way of getting out of this mindset where I hate everything and everyone, even if it comes more sporadically nowadays than it is constant as it used to be when I was an actively performing alcoholic. That's all for later in the week though.

                        For now I'm gonna chuck on some Opeth and get some house work done.

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                        Stevie

                        Heading towards target......

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                          #57
                          Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                          Tuesday, May 02nd 2017 (No So Busy)



                          I'm on the bus on the way to college, loving this laptop battery meaning I can write while on the move again, but I'll probably finish off this post back in the cave this evening and worry about sticking it up here tomorrow at some point.

                          I step onto the Slimming World scales and weigh in at eleven stone, seven and a half pounds. I'm a whole half pound above my target. This is okay though. It means that I only have half a pound to lose before I reach target and so get my future classes at no charge. That's quite good going though – losing five and a half pounds since I was last here twelve days ago. Only half a pound to go. This I will manage for next week I'm sure. The really interesting thing about next Monday night is that it will be the ninetieth day off the cigarettes, a day at a time, and so I feel it fitting that this be the day I reach my Slimming World target. I'll have lost ten pounds in the three months since giving up the cigarettes totally blowing out of the water this idea that we put on weight when we stop smoking. I realise now that this is just a denial tactic we use, born out of self-pity, to let the world know how much we do not want to stop smoking. I guess the difference was that I not only accepted that I wanted to quit and pretty much had to quit but also that I wanted to come out of the other end feeling better off. To reach my Slimming World target of shedding ten pounds in the ninety days since giving up smoking should definitely be something that I feel better off for.

                          Looking ahead a little bit now. Today I have the final day of working on my college project but I won't get into that just now. The rest of the month is looking quite busy. It's not a case of there being shit loads to do every minute of every day, it's just that there are a few interesting and important dates for the diary coming up. This Thursday sees Lindsay take on her final practical exam before the end of the university year – her final year of training. Today is actually her last day of university ever (unless she goes back to study again at a later date, the option of speacialising comes after working in the field for a couple of years and she could go back and do the Masters some point down the line) but when I left her an hour ago she was still in bed. This same day I will have my next session with Dr. Bacon and I'm hoping it'll be a big one. I'll be mentioning the isolation I put myself through over my birthday week and how difficult I am finding it when I notice every day that almost everything I think, say or do, is really not me at all but merely one of my two defensive modes in the Detached Protector and the Bully and Attack. My hatred for all things in this world at times can come on quite strongly and I struggle to focus while stuck in this way of thinking and being. I am eager to get it all out in the open.

                          Tomorrow Lindsay will be attending another children's hearing relating to her son. I'll talk about that once it's happened. On Friday she has her job interview. This'll be something she can slot straight into the second she graduates. Say what you like about the National Health Service but it saves a lot of money in this way. There isn't this whole thing whereby people go out and get their degree and then go home and do nothing about it because there are no jobs. Lindsay will be working almost as soon as she's qualified. By this time the month of May will be well underway. The following weekend will be my return to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not really all that excited about this to be honest. I think that I'll get back in there and see it for what it really is: a bunch of sick people talking about the past and doing anything to continue living in the problem while all of the people who arrive and get well disappear and are never seen again. I hope not. I feel I have some place there. I just can't bear the thought of listening to some people saying the exact same things they were saying the day I left three months ago. The thought that they might have been saying, sometimes word for word, the exact same thing for ten or twenty years really does make my heart go out to them.

                          The week after that sees Lindsay face her final theory exam and this is followed by what I am sure will be the weekend of the AA Fife Convention – the same weekend that signifies the end of the current football season. Later on in the month we have the wedding of one of Lindsay's friends and I, of course, have literally hundreds of miles to walk as part of my training for the double marathon for breast cancer charity. It's a whole lot of busy, but like I said there will be plenty of moments where I'm sitting doing nothing in between. They like to make us believe that we are super-busy, don't they!? The Gods – our television sets. They are always telling us that we lead such busy lives and that we're always on the move and all that shit. This is not quite true though. How is it that we are so busy yet have so much time to sit on forums such as this? Some people (the Facebook crew) seem to spend most of their lives on their phones and computers. It's hardly being busy now, is it? I think it's important for me to avoid things like this that attempt to feed my self-importance. Avoid them at all costs. This month will be busy, but not really..….....

                          Lindsay saw Bain when she was out and about yesterday. Bain joined AA exactly a week after I did and we were good friends for a while. Then, as they all did – those who came in around the same time as I, he went ''back out there'' after picking up and drink and a drug and vanished from the rooms. I saw him less and less and then eventually not at all. He's had a whole lot longer than three months away from the fellowship and Lindsay wasn't sure if he was being genuine when he said that he was thinking about getting himself back to the rooms. I guess time will tell.

                          It always does....

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                          Knowing that time will tell all.

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                            #58
                            Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                            Wednesday, May 03rd 2017 (Lifted Feedback)




                            I'm on the Loser's Bus on the way to Lindsay's town. It's the long route to her part of that town but it gets off nearest to her block of flats and so when you factor in the walking time I save it actually works out around the same time door to door. I'm not being lazy though and taking this bus to avoid walking. I actually usually walk the ten miles every Wednesday as my midweek walk for my training plan but this morning I was early at the charity shop for breakfast and managed a few miles this morning/early afternoon. By the end of this coming weekend I'll have topped the three hundred and fifty miles total since I quit smoking back on my second sober anniversary in February. I'm taking it easy with the walking this week in preparation for another absolute monster this weekend. The training plan asks of me a twenty mile walk on Saturday followed by eighteen miles on Sunday. One walk is fine. Anyone can manage twenty miles I'm sure. It's the back to back walks that hurt.

                            I'll arrive at Lindsay's before she gets back from her children's hearing about her son. She'll get back around five and then I'll hear what the latest is. Then it'll be evening and another day almost at a close. My how they are flying by so it feels. Tomorrow I am meeting mum for lunch for my birthday. She asked what I wanted and I've said lunch will be enough (although I will be taking my sponsorship form with me expecting a donation for this monster walk next month). She's picking me up at the college car park at half past twelve. I have a three hour window between finishing college for the day and my session with Dr. Bacon in the afternoon at half past three.

                            Yesterday we received some feedback on our latest college projects. The tutor took his headphones around the class one at a time and listened to our efforts, starting with me. This project threw us off guard. Both our group and the other had issues with what had to be done in the two weeks we were given. I am slightly ashamed to say that I took on some of the negativity of the others and considered just giving up and/or handing in something less than satisfactory, something rushed, something I felt to be good enough. In the end I had the confidence in myself that I would somehow manage to get something done that I was happy with and yesterday during feedback I was so extremely glad that I had put the extra work in last week by going to classes out-with my timetable and putting the extra hours in.

                            Neil – ''That's good, Stevie – I'm loving that.''

                            He moves on to Shaun. Lindsay and I have three main friends in Alcoholics Anonymous. Three women. Ann, Lisa, and Rhona. I haven't seen any of them for weeks but Lindsay has been in regular contact with all three throughout the last three months I've been away from the rooms.

                            Neil – ''What you've got there is okay, Shaun, but we need to be finishing this off this week and you've still got a few sounds to add in there.''

                            He moves on to our only female student in both NC sound production groups. Just before I get to talking about what I wanted to mention with Ann, Lisa and Rhona I'll just say that I find it really interesting the conversation that a teenage boy is having with an elder peer in this Loser's Bus I am currently travelling. By the sounds of things he is doing well in his studies and this elder peer of his (too friendly with him to be his mother, perhaps an auntie or something?) is advising him on how to get the best out of his life. I find it interesting that all of the advice that she's giving him and he's soaking up, contributing wherever he can in that naïve way teenaged boys do, is related to personal success, financial success, playing the game, if you like. It's the same stuff we all get told I suppose. I observe that not one thing she is advising he does relates to actually being a good person. There is nothing in there about trying to be the best person, the best young man, the best human being, he can be. This is all left out. It's all about being the richest this and the most successful that and the most egocentric the next thing. It's nothing surprising but it still stings me a little.

                            Neil – ''You've maybe got around ten per cent done there. What's happened to the rest of it?''

                            Our female student and the lecturer get into the whole thing about the project not being long enough, that the deadline came around too quickly, and so on. He doesn't miss her and hit the wall. Our female student will have to be thick skinned to make it to the end of the year now. He moves on to our young gay student. I head out for a coffee.

                            Ann is currently in the local psychiatric hospital. She gets out on Friday. Lindsay visited her last night. She's okay, she just had one of her moments when she's threatening suicide to her GP and so she's been referred. This is not Ann's first time in this hospital and so the drama has been knocked out of it a little for me. It's just her doing the rounds now. When people in AA tell you that they were in and out of psychiatric hospitals you think instantly of Stonehearst Asylum and suchlike and that they must surely have been fucked up royally at one point. The truth is that this is what they were really doing. They got sick of being on the outside and so played the game to their GP and their responsibilities are taken from them for a week and they are treated in hospital instead. I think that for Ann it's now going to be very difficult for her to get and stay sober. With each and every time something like this happens it undermines the situation she's in. Things will have to perhaps get for her like they did for me if she wants to be sober. Going in and out of psychiatric wards was something I was referred to once back in December 2015 but I opted to buy drugs with my bus money instead and not attend my referral.

                            I arrive back from getting my coffee. Neil is telling another student that they have to get a move on if they want to tick this project off, that they maybe have sixty per cent done. That they need to get a shift on. He moves onto Rory – the sixth and final student we have left. The young gay guy is upset as well as while I was out getting coffee he was told that what he currently has is nowhere near the desired standard and that he still has much to do. Rory's work is fine. Neil is loving it too. Both Rory and I seem to have finished this one at the first time of asking and our work continues to be at a reasonable enough standard. I find this very interesting.

                            I turned thirty nine last Wednesday. Rory turned thirty nine in December. The rest of the class are much younger. Shaun is nineteen; the female student sixteen; the gay guy eighteen; and the fifth guy twenty three. So the class is made up of three teenagers, a guy in his early twenties.......and two guys pushing forty!!! On a course such as this where IT skills and knowledge of modern technology key components to creating music and website design and all of the other software and hardware elements that make up the majority of our projects I find it interesting that the two students in the class who are sufficiently old to not have had computing classes in school would have the consistently highest standards of work. On this particular project we are the only two students to have actually completed it on time. What does this say?

                            I can understand my own motivation. It's the same thing inside me that makes me just know that (barring injury or something similar that makes it impossible) I'll somehow complete all fifty of those tremendously long and arduous miles in next month's challenge. That part of me that is motivated to do things now that it sets itself to doing. It's a motivation that comes from knowing that I'm playing catch up to my peers, to those my age who did not make the decision to waste so much of their lives doing so very little. It also comes as a defence to drinking and drug taking. To fighting against those parts of me. To erasing some aspects of the past. Rory is not an addict but perhaps his motivation is similar. Perhaps when we get a little older our desires are shaped differently. Do the younger students really appreciate what they have been given with this course? Or does the fact that they have a million tomorrow's that neither Rory or I have take from them some of their responsibilities to themselves and this part of their lives? Do Rory and I have no option but to want this more? Or does personal life experience come into this in some way? Do the more ''mature'' students have more in the way of self-expression and a need to get it out there? What is it that makes Rory and I, the two oldest students now in both groups, the best students?

                            Who knows? I'll upload both Rory's and my own version of our sound designs for the Pixar short ''Lifted'' after this. It was good fun to do. The next project is a remix. We only have seven weeks to go on this course now. I should get thinking about exactly what it is I want to be doing when these seven weeks are over.

                            I'd upload some of the other guys' versions, but they haven't finished them yet!

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                            Stevie

                            At age thirty nine one of the best students.

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                              #59
                              Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                              Stevie's Lifted Project


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                                #60
                                Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

                                Rory's Lifted Project


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