Dan Daiquiri

After unloading my current mindset, I’ve decided to unpack some mental baggage, starting with my relationship to alcohol over the years.

It started way back when I would hang around with the older kids that hung around the town. They offered me a swig of Buckfast, and I still remember the sweet yet bitter taste- I was disgusted by the taste but continued to swig. It was in them moments of social interaction I felt comfortable, after being the outcast in my final years of primary school and bullied in my first year of high school I felt out of place even when surrounded by friends. Alcohol over the years became my antidote to everything, my antidote to fear, my antidote to social anxiety and an antidote to my eventual depression.

There’s something warming about getting this off my chest, infinitely warmer than a whisky on a cold winters evening.

I’ve opened up before about my drinking habits before but never truly divulged and never truly dug down into my own mind to find the reason behind my self-sabotage. Well here it is. As I had said this all began years ago but how it manifested is the real meat. Back then it was a social tool, to try and elevate my status within an adolescent setting- it turned me from the little gamer/skater geek into one of the “cool kids”. From then, it developed and grew stronger with my later teens providing some very challenging situations- I fell into various social circles and I do remember when I was sixteen I was also offered ecstasy which I graciously accepted- although I had the fear of death in me, I had flashes of the very abstract and unlikely scenarios in which would occur due to me swallowing these little pills with imprinted Mitsubishi logos on them.

Now I’m very well aware this is a typical story, however where mines and others may differ or not is that my life was then, and very much remained focused around alcohol and drugs. This persisted over the years, when I say persisted I drank pretty much every single day between 2009-2013. It’s actually heartbreaking writing this as I feel I’d lost out on any real sense of normality and ran myself down a path of despair. I remember when I was kicked out of my family home for getting caught in possession of class A and B drugs, the shame and the guilt were strong but I had no willpower and no real desire to change.

Going through the homeless system in Dundee wasn’t easy, throw being on the dole on top of that with no life skills or connections to gain employment. I often found myself shoplifting to feed myself, or water myself and scratch that itch which followed me everywhere. My entire life revolved around either getting drunk, or finding a way to get drunk. There was no passive mode where I spent my time doing other things. Over this period I also found myself getting pretty heavy into hard drugs, mainly of the powdered variety. Sitting in someone’s kitchen at 6am with no booze in the house counting down until we could either buy more booze from the shop or get tick from a dealer. These were the trials and tribulations of younger me, the silly choices made haunted me for years. I do remember a few very silly experiences, one of which was when I was at a point of no return and had been taking drugs for days. I found a tin of purple paint in a friends cupboard, carried it to a nearby car park and poured it over the roof of a brand new Mazda. Or the other time I managed to set fire to a building site whilst drunk and had to jump off a roof to get out, lets not even touch on the times where legal highs were involved. There’s too many stories, many of which include mindless vandalism or criminal damage- these used to be a story to tell to others. Now they are merely a hidden story, one of which eventually will have added to my moral compass now- something I never possessed back then.

Anyway the year it really changed (or so I thought) was 2013 with the passing of my father. That year I was nearly sent to jail for breaching my ASBO on multiple occasions, the only reason I’d managed to escape becoming another figure in the criminal justice system was infact that I’d enrolled in college to study hospitality, and the judge had seen evidence of positive change enough to not lock me up. I think about this often, where would I be if this never happened? Really gets the mind working.

On reflection I truly thought that December 2013 was when this had ended but I infact have been in denial since, denial of my own addiction and how it controlled my life. Like a totalitarian dictatorship, always controlling and censoring any blink of freedom. I’ve been brainwashed to my own bullshit for years and it’s only now I’ve seen past it, better now than never. The friendships and relationships I’d thrown away to the side of the road for a bottle of Bucky, the opportunities and possibilities crushed like a can of warm Stella that’s been used as an ashtray by wee Davie.

Over the years, way up until my recent decision of abstinence, I’d continued to drink so much, because I never wanted it to end. Once I started I couldn’t stop, whether that was one pint of IPA or if it was an entire bottle of whisky- the result was always the same. Forever striving to cure that itch at the back of my mind, to fuel the fire as it slipped down my throat and into my bloodstream. As soon as I’d had one sip of alcohol an unstoppable force always appeared, a demon enshrouded in false promise. The feeling that at one point during that binge I would arrive at a point where everything I felt I lacked would become present. Where all that was lost would return, that all I’d fucked up on would resolve. Unfortunately it never played out like that, there is no magic cure and instead I fell down spiral after spiral, forever tumbling down a pit of insatiability, unable to quench that thirst.

Since then working in hospitality I’d merely put my addiction to alcohol and how it controlled my life down to being an “industry norm” rather than actually figuring out that it was still very much a part of my mental anatomy. The penny dropped slowly over the course of this year, moving closer to the floor every time I got blackout drunk. Moving faster every time I bought a bag, and then hitting home when I’d get on a more powerful health kick in the aftermath.

Now being an avid student of my own mind and constructive critic of my own actions, I’ve come to realise a few things, I’ve wasted a large portion of my life to the bottle. But I’ve also gained a lot of life experience through it. I have come to realise I also used it as a placebo cure to my deep loneliness in life that I used to feel needed changed, the honest truth is as an introvert there’s nothing I love more than my own company and can’t really be bothered with others dramas in life. Never again will I be hoodwinked by my addiction, as I explore my future possibilities from here I realise that I could have been whoever I wanted all along. Instead I chose to encourage people to hold a judgement on me, only for me to one up them and play to the character created for me.

This life is yours to create, you are the creator not the spectator.