My Alcoholic Credentials

Writing this book has been like when I first decided to stop drinking. I made many attempts over a long period of time before I finally got the drop on this disease, and it was the same with completing this book. From the outset, both challenges appeared to be rather daunting ones, but they were challenges that I felt needed to be met. In both cases, I truly believed that the end result would be worth the effort. And here it is.
I am well versed now in what works for me and what doesn’t when it comes to staying off the booze. I am just over 100 months dry. Not a drop, a sip, a light one, a nip, a shot, or a can in any way, shape, or form.
At various stages of my drinking career, I was ejected from every pub or club in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, with the exception of one. I didn’t realise until after I stopped drinking that the Clovelly Bowling Club was licensed to sell alcohol. One day, in my sobriety, I was surprised at the warm reception I received when I had to attend a function held there. Then I realised that, unlike at other pubs, these people didn’t know me.
I lost my driver’s license, lost jobs, had car accidents, lost lovers, suffered ill health. The severity of my disease has even amazed alcohol councillors.
Amongst the staunchest of the hardcore drinkers that I drank with, I was a standout. I had it, and I had it bad. The diagnosis was acute chronic alcoholic.
To give you an idea of my drinking lifestyle, I would come to consciousness after a standard night’s punishment on the drink. I would find myself fully clothed in bed, seeing then that I’d been too out of it to strip or had passed out several hours earlier. I would automatically check my pants pockets to see if there was any cash there, to ensure I could get up and get back on the drink, but even before any of this was happening, what I call the Grog Monster had already been waiting for my return to consciousness with his battle cry, “COME AND HAVE A SIP.” I swear to you, he was beckoning before I had even opened my eyelids.
Growing up in Australia during the 70s and 80s, we glorified our sporting heroes and saw them used in alcohol advertising. What chance did a young alcoholic have? The ads had catchy tunes and really cool imagery. The perception was that if you didn’t drink, there was something wrong with you; you weren’t a man. What trash! Thankfully, that perception has changed somewhat as we have moved toward healthier lifestyles in slightly more enlightened times.
It all started with an innocent sip I took from my uncle’s can of beer as an eight-year-old child. The alcoholic gene was then activated. I’m sure a flashing light and a siren were going off on my internal switchboards with a “DEFCON 4 Alert.”
Now I know why you don’t give alcohol to kids. I then moved across to my parents’ liquor cabinets, which was limiting because neither of them drank.
They ended up unwittingly serving their friends a lot of watered down scotch and bourbon over the years. Then to my friends’ parents’ liquor cabinets.
By the time I was fourteen, I was being served alcohol over the bar at the pub on a Friday night before a school dance. The dances occurred about once a month. DEFCON 3 had been reached. By the time I was sixteen, getting drunk was a weekly occurrence Hello DEFCON 2. By the time I was eighteen or nineteen, I would start on a payday Thursday night and go through until Sunday, when I’d usually run out of money. That was DEFCON 1. By the time I was twenty-one, getting drunk was a daily event. “LAUNCH ALL MISSILES.” This went on until I was about thirty.
I then managed to shake the demon for about fifteen months. Things began going really good. I had a great job as a commercial/industrial real estate agent, exciting holidays, cars, phones, clothes, a cool home overlooking the ocean, and a beautiful fiancé with whom I was going to buy a house. I was on top of the world. My life had never been better.
That’s when I made the incredibly insane and delusional decision to commence drinking again. My entire world fell apart in no time flat. I had convinced myself that the supermarket “soft drink beers” that have a 0.5% alcohol content level weren’t a “real” alcoholic drink and that I would be fine. In Australia, they don’t even rate 0.5% as an alcoholic beverage, so it can be bought in the shops. Drinking seven of these cans, I could consume the same amount of alcohol as in one fullstrength can of beer. I would have about a dozen of them to get that alcoholic euphoria. It looked like beer, it smelt like beer, and it was brewed like beer.
Drinking this stuff soon convinced me to switch to light beer, then mid-strength beer, then fullstrength beer, and finally on to wine and spirits.
Needless to say, the girl that was going to marry me packed her bags in a hurry and left. In hindsight, I can say that I admire the courage that it took for her to do that. I wish her well. I recall former US President Ronald Reagan talking about his father’s alcoholism. He said something along the lines that there is a misconception that an alcoholic will break when faced with great tragedy or hardship. This is not always not the case. The alcoholic is, in fact, most prone to break when he has succeeded in his life goals and aspirations or when things are going really well.
The prez was right. You’ve had a gutful of the chaos and degradation that is the lifestyle of the practising alcoholic.
It wouldn’t be so bad, you reckon, if it wasn’t messing with or having an impact on others around you, but it is. Maybe you’re already beyond that point and are now surrounded by isolation. Either way, it’s time for a change. The lunacy cannot go on. The only person that can give you permission to implement this change is yourself.
Give yourself that permission right now.
This is the beginning, for a lot of you, of a trip to meet your inner self for the first time. It has to be done in order for you to come out on top. You’ve kept your head in the sand for way too long. Now is a good time to do what must be done.
Although I hope there is a lot here that you will be able to relate to, this book is based on personal beliefs and experiences. Hence the phrasing in the title, “One Man’s Take”. We are all, to a degree, products of our experiences.
Sometimes, in order to know what you wish to be, you have to experience being what you don’t wish to be. So if you are reading this from an emotional place that you don’t wish to be in, know that we are now in the process of changing that situation as you read this. So those of you with your backside hanging out of your pants, with no money, and with things looking pretty messed up, just give thanks that things are not worse. I mean that big time.
Time is all that is standing between you in the here and now and that ideal image that you have of yourself in your mind’s eye. That’s how you “pull it through” to yourself. You do it over time and through focus, one day at a time. Heard that one before? “One day at a time?” Take my word for it, my friend, that saying has power. That’s what we are really dealing with here. Don’t bother thinking about yesterday or tomorrow too much, particularly those of you that are just getting off the grog. Focus on today.
And today we ain’t drinking! You’ve done it before a day off the grog now you are going to link a whole stack of those days together. It’s time to get back on the merry-go-round of life.
I cannot praise the Alcoholic’s Anonymous programme enough. When I was first looking to get off the grog, going to their meetings was invaluable to me. Those meetings gave me insight into the disease and into humanity as well. The first time I went to a meeting was in Mackay, a beautiful coastal town in Northern Queensland, Australia. I was there working as a construction labourer. That was the only job I could manage to get, as I had lost everything in Sydney, including my driver’s licence. Not that I am taking anything away from labouring. It is hard work for strong people. I have always and will always hold labourers in high regard. I grew up around construction sites, as my Dad was a developer, so I knew my way around one.
Anyway, I was at that time living and working with a houseful of full-blown alcoholics. The amount of alcohol that household consumed on a weekly basis blew the garbage-removal men away.
The weekly pile of empty beer cans, cartons and bottles was like a psychedelic work of art sitting out on the front lawn. No wonder the neighbours never talked to us. There were physical fights most nights, and I’ve still got a scar from one over my left eye. At that point, I thought that I had really hit rock bottom. No money, no hope and no one to turn to. So I picked up the telephone book, found the listing for Alcohol Assistance, and gave them a call. I finally realised I needed help. I could not stand the insane lifestyle anymore, and even though I couldn’t see a way out, I knew there just had to be one.
At first, the councillor wanted me admitted immediately to hospital for detoxification. I told her my weekly drinking schedule consisted of (something in the order of about one hundred cans of full-strength beer a week and a couple bottles of bourbon). When she worked out that I was not going to be admitting myself to hospital, she directed me to two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings being held in town that night. One was relatively close by, but it was non-smoking; the other was about ten km away, and it allowed smoking. I would walk the extra distance just to smoke my ciggies; I figured I’d need them. The lady on the phone told me that the meeting was behind the church at 7:30, so I left at about 5:30, just to make sure I got there early.
I was hanging out behind the church, and at about 7:20, all these cars started pulling into the car park. My first thought was, “All these alkies have wheels… Then they got out of their cars and headed into a hall behind the church. I noticed that there were all these grey heads among them.
They were all about sixty or seventy years of age. My next thought was, “Why are all these alkies older— decades older than me?” There was not a youngster or a middle-aged person amongst the fifty or so people. Being about 28 years of age, I was understandably worried.
As the last lady was going into the hall, I ran up behind her and said, “Excuse me, Madam. Is this where they are having the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting this evening?”
She smiled, touched me gently on the forearm, looked me kindly in the eyes and said, “No darling, this is the bingo hall. The Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is underneath the church at the rear.”
Good one, Tyrone.
Anyway, I cruised across to the spot she had mentioned, and sure enough, there was a small group of people going into the rectory under the church. To my surprise, they greeted me a bit like a long-lost family member. There were about eight of us. The first person stood up and said, “Hello, my name is Denise, and I’m an alcoholic, and it’s been six years since I’ve had a drink.” Everyone present replied with genuine enthusiasm, “Hello, Denise.”
Denise went on from there and told her story about losing her husband and kids to the drink. She told about how the courts had just granted her limited access to see her children. And even though her life was not altogether brilliant, it was a far cry from the days when she was being carted off by the police every other night.
A few others got up to tell their stories, and after a while, I started to realise I was not alone. I felt like I belonged with this mismatched crew of individuals collectively drawn together by a burning desire to stay sober, recover from this disease, and make the most of their lives. Then another fellow got up, calling himself Patrick. Patrick was a multimillionaire, who had lost the lot through drinking.
He was now seven years sober, had made a million again and was on target to make many more. My turn came around, and I told them what had happened at the bingo hall. I tell you, most of them fell off their chairs laughing in hysterics. I mean they were roaring. They were either bent over in their chairs laughing and holding their ribs or rolling on the carpet. They laughed for what must have been a solid fifteen minutes amongst intermittent cries of, “He went to the bingo hall!” I stopped and looked at it from their perspective and joined the laughter. My nerves were a lot more relaxed. I was among my own.
After attending many meetings, I began to notice that you witness the whole spectrum of the human condition in those rooms, from inconsolable tragedy, unbearable loss, lunacy on an unprecedented level and agonising degradation, to humility and awe-inspiring courage, to the out and out funniest stories of all time. In one way or another, I related to many of the stories. It was therapy, no doubt.
Alcoholics Anonymous is the most successfully acknowledged programme for the recovery of alcoholism in the world. Why?
Because it asks you to surrender yourself over to a higher power.
Some call it “God,” but whatever you personally feel comfortable calling it, it is the key. Now for all you atheists reading this, don’t dismiss me just yet, as you may be cheating yourself out of a grand opportunity to beat the drink. Just roll along with me for now. All I ask is for you to be open to the prospect that there may be a higher power. You may wish to call it “mother nature,” Personally; I like “the universe.”
To arrest this burdensome disease, we must kill that old drinking lifestyle and start anew. I picture the Grog Monster as a devil in red tights with a pony tail and a pitchfork in his hand. He has drool dripping out the side of his mouth and an oh so slight grin. Now let’s go and sort him out.
But please, before we go any further, stop and take a moment to get a highlighter or a pen. Any section, phrase, or quote that you feel is noteworthy, highlight or underline it.

Thanks.