The Booze Cycle · The Lighthouse Project

The Booze Cycle

I want to talk about maybe the most destructive, legalised and normalised drug on the planet, ALCOHOL!

There's a photo of me somewhere with my Grandad. He is helping me pour a tiny glass of beer out a small keg. My father is the one taking the photograph and everyone seems so happy and proud of me and my first beer. I am 4 years old.

My Dad always liked a drink and I remember him coming home and making himself a dry Martini to “help him unwind after a long day at work.” Occasionally he'd have a glass of wine or two as well with dinner. As I only saw him once or twice a week for dinner as he usually arrived after I had gone to bed, God knows how much he really drank.

I never remember seeing him drunk until his 50th birthday when his uni mates came round and they all got wasted. I was 21 at the time and had a superhuman resitance to alcohol thanks to my own university experience which had trained me well. As a result I was a fairly sober bystander to the carnage that ensued that night.

I remember him enjoying a pint or 2 (max when he was driving) at the pub with lunch and he enjoyed a good single malt whiskey. Whiskey had been what put him in hospital with a split knee requiring over 50 stiches. He was 20 years old and had ridden his Lambretta from Cambridge to Loughborough to see his Dad. They drank a bottle of whiskey and probably some beers beforehand. After a rather shit night's sleep he rode back to uni. While merging onto the dual carriageway, he fell asleep on his bike, slamming into a truck nearly killing himself. By all accounts I am pretty lucky to even exist!!

My Grandad always enjoyed a drink as well even when he was at death's door (91 years old) and couldn't eat as his swallowing mechanism was failing him. He managed to get to my cousin's wedding for a few hours and had a feeding tube and a nurse with him. Instead of drying up the spittle in his mouth with the absorbant swabs he dipped them in his favourite single malt and pushed that around his mouth instead. I am guessing the love of booze didn't start with him and goes way back in our family line.

At Christmas and Easter and occasional “special events” my sister and I were allowed to have a small glass of wine with our food. We were still in California when this happened so I wasn't even 11. I think the idea was to make alcohol not so much of a big deal sort of like the French's approach by allowing kids to have a bit of wine with dinner.

Then we moved back to the UK and at a family-friend's BBQ we were allowed to have a bitter shandy (4% beer mixed with 7UP.) After enjoying the first one I asked if I could have seconds. “OK, sure help yourself."

I went into the barn where the drinks were and served myself. I created my own mixing ratio and within a second of taking my first sip the hostess, who knew us very well was on my case about how dark my drink looked. Abso-fuckin-lutley it was way stronger!! I was 13 and wanted to see what all the fuss was about! No sissy shandy for me I want a real beer like the men! So, as per her instructions, I gulped down half of it and added some more 7UP.

As we grew we continued to drink a small glass of wine on special occasions and when I turned 14 or 15 I was allowed to go London on the train with some friends. One mate had an emerging caterpillar on his top lip and “knew a place.” (a place where they turned a blind eye, basically). We pooled our money together and got a bottle of Baileys. The shop owner covering her tracks said “Make sure you get that home to your Dad.” (hahaha!! got to love the 90s.)

Apart from this, we had all prepared an “Under-the-radar cocktail” each to drink on the train as well. This is a special cocktail where you go into your parents' drinks cabinet and take a tiny bit of everything so they don't notice anything is missing. It all went into the same plastic Coke bottle and tasted horrible.

That mixed with the Baileys did the trick though. For the first time in my life I was pissed (the British “drunk” meaning, not the American “annoyed” one.) We were all going back to a friend's house and his mum was scary as fuck so we had to pretend to be sober. I, as always, was in the worst state. We got in and quickly went up to Alex's room while dinner was being cooked. I was a well-known fussy eater and we were having honey and mustard chicken. Alex's mum called for me to come and try it to see if I would eat it or not. I slipped on the first step and bounced down the stairs to the bottom on my bottom. For fuck's sake Ben, can't you be a bit more subtle?

Over the years, I would always focus my drinking efforts on getting as wasted as possible like it was some unconcious rule I had been given. There never seemed to be an off switch once I started. I have been kicked out of clubs, I have snuck back into clubs (once through the lady's toilet window because the men's toilet window had bars on it) I have fallen asleep in taxis, in people's living rooms and even once on a bar stool. I used to vomit when I was younger and then I learnt to keep that in, wouldn't want to waste any booze of course. I even fell down the gorge in Bristol and broke my leg, thanks to Exhibition cider (a very dangerous apple juice clocking in at 12%)

I soon learnt that I could still drink while on class As and in that sense I found some “balance” I was much more in control of my waking state and never blacked out. This went on for years until I moved to Spain where my consumption of class As subsided and I returned to pounding the beers, rum, whiskey and gin & tonics. The beer here is stronger and I would drink at the pace of an Englishman trying to get as “much in before last orders” disregarding that the night here is only starting at 11pm, not ending.

Once, I went to a Christmas lunch and got there a bit early so had a beer, then people arrived so I had another and another. We ended up having a lock in and we were smoking spliffs with our gin&tonics. My autopilot kicked in and I just got up and left. The next thing I remember is being stopped by the police 200m from my home. Apparently I had been bouncing off the early evening shoppers on my beeline home.

Spanish culture means that it is perfectly acceptable to go for breakfast at 7am and have a beer. Heck if you want a whiskey coffee, go for it!! The difference is there is no race against the clock as you can drink 24/7 if you want, and people are generally much better at pacing themselves. For example I am yet to see a Spanish girl lying in the gutter with her skirt up around her tits.

It wasn't until I decied to stop smoking tobacco that I had any real break from the boozing cycle. I decided that to stop my adicction to tobaco I needed to remove all my triggers for a month. I said to myself, no alcohol, coffee or tea for a month while I kicked the nicotine addiction.

It worked! At the end of the month I felt so good I decided to not drink for another month. I ended up going 4 months unitl my ex-father-in-law offered my a beer after we'd done some work in the garden. I wasn't very keen but he pressured me a bit and I caved. The second I smelt the beer my stomach turned. I took a sip and say no way.

2 months later a similar thing happened and the beer smell had the same effect on me so I left it. Over the next 2 years I had less than a bottle of wine ( a glass at Christmas and another few at various birthdays) I honestly thought I was done with it.

During some work at the house the English builders would have beers and cider after work and one Friday I asked for a cider. It went down quite well, so I had another. I was pretty drunk after that as my tolerance was that of a prepubescent teenager.

Bit by bit, I ended up drinking fairly regularly but considerably less than before. I did go and get quite drunk a few times. One of the most stupid ones was at a local bar (where I had met Andrew Lynn for the first time a year earlier) where the guy I was with convinced my to get on the Morgan Spice and cokes.

We had a few and I definitely shouldn't have driven but did anyway. In our inhebriated state we decided it would be a brilliant idea to go around to the house where a friend had been squatting and pick up his stuff which he'd asked us to do at some point. Obviously, 1:30am was the ideal time!

It was only 5 minutes from the bar and we arrived with no problem. We walked up to the door and to our surprise the place was occupied. We were met by a family of Gypsies, the man was holding a machette which my friend quickly siezed from him and the 14-year-old daughter kicked off big time. Shouting that she was a minor and we were invading in their space. I tried to explain that we were friend's of the previous occupant and that we'd only come for his stuff. We were really sorry but we didn't know anyone was staying there. The mother was on the phone immediately to the police and they were soon on their way. My mate dissappeared and I was left to deal with the situation alone.

When they arrived they asked me what I was doing, asked for my driving licence for inspection. I had to concentrate quite hard, without closing one eye, to get it out of my wallet. They then asked me if I had been drinking. I told them the truth and I said “Yes.” Then they asked me “Do we need ot breathalyse you?” I said “No.” They seemed happy with the answer and agreed that I didn't need to do the test.

I couldn't really fathom what was happening, was this for real? I would have surely had my car impounded and a hefty fine for the state I was in but no. They probably couldn't be arsed with the paperwork or maybe I had managed to tap into some Jedi-mind trickery. They then proceeded to help me load the car with my mate's bicycle and other possessions and asked me where my other friend had gone. I said I had no idea and they sent me on my way.

As I was reversing the car out they said “Drive carefully.” I said ok and left them to it. I drove off and looped back to find my friend. He jumped out of a bush 200m from the house and we drove home the “back way” at exactly the speed limit.

When I review a night like this I think what the fuck was I doing? I could have had my arm chopped off by a machetting wiedling gypsy. I could have crashed and killed someone, I could have been arrested, fined and lost my licence which is essential to get around where I live. And all of it for a few rum and cokes which gave me a horrendous 2-day hangover.

Since that experience, I have continued to drink but rarely to extreme. It has still happened though but I will save those stories for another time. What I have noticed though as I abstain more often and drink for shorter periods of time is that I usually justify a beer to myself because it is summer and I am on holiday or I played really good at golf or really bad and I want a beer. In that moment I do really want the beer, however, it seems to trigger a sequence of events that leads me to drinking a load of beers that I don't really want that much.

I have 1, 2 and then on my home I think “well I haven't drunk for ages and as I have started I might as well make the most of it and have a few more and that way I won't have any the next day.” Yeah right.

I get home and I get the urge to smoke. I don't smoke tobaco anymore so I make a pure joint and have a few tokes on that and now I am nicely fucked. I go to bed, sleep like shit and need coffee in the morning. Usually when I am not drinking alcohol I hardly drink coffee and if I do I only have one during the day.

When I am hungover I can have 3 or 4. This makes me edgy and much more likely to “need” a beer to calm my nerves. This inevitably returns me to the cycle. These cycles have lasted years at a time, however, I have noticed more recently that they are spiralling inwards. I am spending less time drinking before stopping again.

This year I convinced myself that August, which leaked into September, was the month of summer drinking as I was in “holiday mode.” October I didn't drink much or at all and November was basically dry but then the Christmas break came along and all the old programming started running and I gave in and had a few sessions because it was the holidays!

I stopped again at New Year and then 3 Sundays ago I had a couple of beers after golf saying to myself that I wouldn't have any more but I caved and had one on Monday and before I knew it I had opened a bottle of red wine that I was given and I had a glass a day until it was gone. There was a subtle difference between really wanting the drink and feeling like I needed it in some way.

I stopped again. This cycle only lasted a week. I felt like I was getting to the point of not wanting booze ever again. On Saturday though after performing well in a golf comp and sat with a load of people I had just met through playing with some of them I had 2 beers. I ended up buying a couple on the way home and managed to not smoke that evening. The next day I had a stronger-than-usual need for coffee and I caught myself. I pushed through the next day avoiding the temptation to have a beer in the afternoon and on Monday I was “back to normal”

It feels like the final death throes of a beast that has been growing inside of me since I was a kid. Even though I have so much more control than I used to I feel like my time with alcohol is truly over. I am not going to say I will NEVER drink again as these sort of bold statements never really work out for me. I will ask myself each time “Do I really want this drink, knowing that it may lead to days or weeks of dependancy on both alcohol and caffiene as a result?” I am guessing that the answer will be as resounding “No!” everytime.

What is your relationship with “The Booze?” Are you in control or does it control you? Where have you put things you value at risk for the sake of an extra drink or 2?

Stay strong brothers. Peace.

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