Thinking about Drinking (Sept 2016)
Originally posted Wednesday 26th September 2016
Day 39.Not thinking (much) about not drinking.
This week I’ve been busy doing other things.
By that I mean things other than my new “soberology” hobby.
Starting to stop drinking, even for someone with a relatively HIGH BOTTOM takes quite a lot of mind-space, mental energy, deep thought. I found that I was ignoring my other interests, hobbies etc. I’ve spent my free time reading Sober Blogs, surfing the internet looking for inspirational TeeTotalers (I’ve found a few, more on this topic later, perhaps). Reading news paper articles online about becoming sober. etc….etc….
“Thinking About Not Drinking” seems to have replaced “Drinking, and Thinking About Drinking“.
A couple of weeks ago we had a large thunderstorm. Lightning striking within a few hundred metres of the house, electricity flicking off and on and off and on and off….. and then it just stayed off……. for 10 hours….. Power was eventually restored at around 6pm. Oh good. The internet router, phone line etc. have all survived (thanks to my quick action to unplug them at the start of the fireworks). I can get back online to read blogs. Write blog posts. Surf the Soberverse.
One of my real hobbies is tinkering with shortwave radio. I have a radio “shack”/workshop, out in a garden shed. The shed has power, heat, light, internet, computers, radios, test equipment, tools, soldering irons etc. One of the computers is used to run a niche, geeky website. Contributors around the globe feed in data, in real time. It’s stored in a database, and then made available via a web-site. It all runs on a PC in a shed. It uses a lot of code that I wrote, from scratch. I was a massive investment in time and my limited brain power to create. I wrote a lot of the code with a laptop on my knee and a bottle of Rioja by my side. Alcohol helps the creative juices, dontcha know.
My recent distraction from my other hobbies was so complete that it took me 7 days to notice that this PC hadn’t survived the lightning! It was Dead as a Dead Thing. Bang (literally) went my geeky web-site. And it took me 7 days to even notice. And another several days to even care enough to tell any of the guys who contribute their data.
I was engrossed so deeply in Soberology that I couldn’t spare the mental effort to think about anything else. Can this go on much longer? Can I get back to just being me, but without the booze?
Yesterday I had a day at home, not working.
I’d promised Mrs MIT to repeat my Grizzly Fanny[^1] heroics in the kitchen, and to make her a Bakewell Tart. Plenty of Gold Stars in the pipeline, I think!
The Tart was baked and out of the oven, a jam and frangipane confection cooling on the rack and I turned my attention to my Radio hobby. I spent some time sorting out a few things in my shed/shack/workshop trying to work around the loss of my main PC. Got one thing (not the web-site, though) running okay
Then it was off to the swimming pool. Yes, swimming!
I’ve always been quite active. After I turned 30. Before that, well, no. Not too active in my younger days.
After 30 I started running. Worked up to half marathons, 10Ks, and even a full marathon. I spent a happy year, in my 40s, doing Triathlons and all the training that this entails. Open water sea swimming (in a wet suit, it’s bloody cold up here, even in summer), cycling and of course running.
I’ve cut back a bit over recent years, I got out of the habit (and into the comfortable post-work wine drinking instead). In 2013 I did do some more running though, and trained up for, and ran, the Edinburgh Half Marathon. Enjoyed it. Kept my training to a minimum. Enough to be fit and healthy and able to complete the race, but without risk of picking up a training injury.
Two weeks after the race my back went (almost literally) BANG! Prolapsed Disc. Agony for the first few weeks. Shooting pains in legs, groins. Muscle weakness. Pain…. lots of Pain….
After a couple of years, including an MRI scan, Steroid Epidural injection, physiotherapy, acupuncture, more physiotherapy, it’s largely settled down into “always aching, occasionally flares up, but I’ll have to live with it”. I hadn’t done any real exercise for over 2 years though.
And I’ve been drinking more and more.
The consultant doctor who’d diagnosed the problem when it first happened (who is a friend, too, by the way) had prescribed Solpadol pain killers for those first few weeks of house rest and agony.
I asked “Can I drink wine with these?”
He replied “Dear boy, as much as you can bear”
Wine On Doctor’s Orders. Thanks!
In February this year, after a relatively easy time with the back pain, I decided to start running again. Very Gently at first. One mile, a few times a week. Then gradually over the weeks, into March, April, May, up to 3 miles at a time. No back problems. All good. I was even moderating the drinking in the early part of the year. Trying to get myself back on an even keel. Balance, health, moderation.
I came down with a chest infection/cough in May. Lasted weeks, and weeks. I even got a Salbutamol inhaler from the doc to help with the shortness of breath. No running! Wine intake back up to normal levels in June & July. Then I decided enough was enough.
After deciding to quit the booze I also decided I should get back to running. If I’m not drinking I might as well get fit again, at the same time. Strike while the iron is hot, and all that.
On “Day 3” I ran a mile. No problems. Won’t take me long to get back up to 3 miles.
The next day, “Day 4”, I ran again, only a mile, slowly. Within 10 minutes of finishing I was crippled. Back pain, leg pain, groin pain. The full works. Oh bollocks. Not this again! At least now I have a few physiotherapy tricks to help, when it flares up. And fortunately this time it subsided much quicker, and although it’s still sore, a month later, at Day 39, it’s not debilitating.
Back to the story…
That’s why The Swimming. If I can’t run, then I can swim. No impact. No weight bearing. Safe for the back. And the knees. So I’ve taken out a monthly payment plan for the local leisure centres. I can swim as often as I like, and I pay by Direct Debit each month. £20 a month for unlimited swimming. I swam yesterday. I swam again today. I’ll swim tomorrow. Of course “Swimming is mind-numbingly boring“. But it’s so much safer than running. And Winter is approaching, here in the far north. Soon there won’t be enough daylight to venture out to run on the unlit rural roads before or after work. The warmth of a swimming pool is so much more appealing.
And yesterday after I swam…
… In the evening I settled down to restore the defunct web-site, using backups of the
The main point of this post is the realization that I didn’t really think about not drinking.
It just sort of happened.
And I got absorbed in other things instead.