Nick is Now Drinking

First drink in 12 months. Champagne, obviously.

I was looking forward to a relaxing wind-down to the end of 2014. At 7.34am on New Year's Eve I got a text from BBC Radio 5 live. Could I come on the radio to talk about my Not Drinking in the context of the general hoo-hah about Dry January?

Of course I could.

We did it from my temporary "studio" in the kids playroom via Skype. It seemed to go okay. Here's an edit:

Shortly before I did the interview I received a £40 donation from a university friend.

Then a nice man from the BBC's General News Service called. He'd just seen I was in the 5live running order. Would I be interested in talking about the same subject to some BBC local radio stations as part of what they call a GNS offer? Of course I would.

Whilst waiting for this to happen a £36.50 donation came in from a couple of friends from Oxford, £20 arrived from a former BBC Three colleague and another £20 came in from a BBC colleague I only really know through twitter. A schoolfriend bunged me £50 and another university friend gave me £20.

A GNS offer involves offering a guest's availability to all the BBC local radio stations for 8 minutes at a time within a specified timeslot (in my case two hours between 3pm and 5pm). I have spoken to hundreds of GNS-produced interviewees since I started on BBC Surrey, but I have never been one before. It was fun.

At 3pm I dialled into Broadcasting House on Skype and over the next two hours I spoke to 15 different BBC local radio presenters about my Not Drinking. Some interviews were pre-recorded. Most were carried live.

One way of getting good at being interviewed is to do lots of them in short succession on the same subject. Here are three of them - interviews number three, seven and twelve of the day (I did a phono with my own station BBC Surrey at 1440). Feel free to dip in and out.

During this time the kids were looking after themselves next door whilst my wife was out doing some last minute present-shopping for our middle child, who has a birthday soon.

There were some noises off during one live interview, but the only time my son burst into the room was during a pre-record, so we were able to stop and pick it up again.

Whilst I was carrying out the interviews an anonymous donor put in £10 and just as I finished a friend from my student radio days kindly put in another tenner.

At 7.30pm we went to Byfleet Dave's house for new year. The children have four uncles, two of whom are called Dave. Abi once decided to differentiate them by location, so they are now known as Far Away Dave and Byfleet Dave.

Another friend from BBC Three donated a fiver.

We polished off a curry by 9pm and got our youngest to bed by 10pm.

Another schoolfriend put in £50.

Temporary studio. Or as it's usually known, children's playroom.

We played a board game, attempted a bit of Nintendo Wii and as the fireworks hove into view on BBC1 I was handed a glass of fizz. As the Big Ben bongs went at midnight I had my first sip of alcohol a year after I had my last.

It tasted funny. I had been up since 3.40am so I was quite tired anyway. I tried a beer, which didn't go down very well. At around 2.30am I had a nice glass of Sauvignon, which I did, finally, enjoy.

So that's it. I'm drinking again. I had three beers on New Year's Day at my in-laws, where I ceremoniously handed back my copy of Dr David Marjot's The Diseases of Alcohol to the priest who gave it to me.

Thereafter a neighbour gave me £20 and my best man, who already donated £20 at the start of 2014, gave me another £100.

On the evening of 1 Jan I was asked to go on the Mark Forrest Show across the BBC in England to talk about what giving up had done for me and tomorrow I'll be talking to Dan Chisholm on his regional BBC show about New Years Resolutions and how to get through them.

Over the course of three days (31 Dec to 2 Jan) my fundraising total had gone from £1530 to £1921.50, not including gift aid, which has taken it way beyond £2000.

This morning I was in the gym at 6am. Some habits acquired over the last year are going to take a while to shake off.

I'm going to write a couple more blog posts before winding everything up on here. If you have donated I am profoundly grateful. It made me happier than I thought it would every time someone felt moved enough to chuck a few quid in my direction. Thank you.

There is, of course, still time if you want to add to the final total.

Thanks for reading this blog. I hope you have a happy and prosperous 2015.

UPDATE: Total amount raised: £2130.00 ... including Gift Aid: £2501.26 - thank you all so much.

Laziness

Walton PureGym 7.30am, Boxing Day

I am a big fan of laziness. I champion it. I think time spent in idle contemplation, relaxing, reading, drinking and socialising is time well spent. It has to be balanced by work and productivity - I think you should earn your leisure time to make it more meaningful - but it seems too many of us have bought into the myth of hard graft making us all winners. For most of us, our labour is making someone else a winner. And that winner is usually a prick.

In the light of the last 12 months, I might have to reassess the above sentiment. It could well have been the booze talking. This year I was sending work emails on Christmas Eve and in the gym by 6.30am on Boxing Day, where for a full hour I was joined by no one. Which surprised me. I thought there'd be a few. When there isn't one other person doing what you're doing you start to wonder if what you're doing might be a little bit weird.

Thing is, much as it's nice to spend time clearing up after and sorting out arguments between the kids, I rather enjoyed being productive on Christmas Eve, and I rather enjoyed going to the gym this morning. Christmas Day itself was... well... calorific?

I've enjoyed working hard this year. Possibly far too much. But it has brought its rewards, and I'm enjoying those too.

I guess it's all about balance.

One week to go

So then we started this hip-hop outfit...

It's been an interesting year. I'll admit, not drinking has given me the capacity to work harder.

Or at least, I think it has. It might just be that I've had more work.

I've certainly had less fun, but I've become more determined and learned a lot.

I've got a sober Christmas to go, two days work at ITN and then we're off to my brother-in-law Dave's, for NYE.

Rather than post the traditional "Wahey!" video of me having my first drink in a year at midnight, I am tempted to collude with Dave and the other houseguests to recreate the scene below. For lolz.

But I have a feeling they'll all be too pissed.

This project has a sponsorship element. If you have been holding off donating to see whether or not I make it all the way, believe me, I've got this far - Christmas won't trip me up. If you can see your way to bunging the four worthy causes I'm supporting a few quid, I would be most grateful.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Home straight sighted

I've already chosen my first drink when this is all over. Some very nice people sent me a Christmas hamper the other day.

It contained three bottles of booze, including a bottle of Fortnum and Mason champagne. I felt it would be appropriate to put the champagne aside for midnight on New Year's Eve.

The last drink I had as the pre-bong Big Ben bells rang out on NYE 2013 eleven months ago was champagne so it seems like a neat ending to the project.

I suspect thereafter the pattern will follow a similar one to the last few New Years Eves - watching the fireworks on the telly, switching back to Jools Holland straight afterwards and falling asleep on the sofa at 1am before dragging ourselves to bed ready for the 6am onslaught.

As the home straight approaches I have been planning a bit of a cheeky January. There are some old friends I haven't seen for a while, and I'd like to fix a night out to say thank you to those who have kindly put some money in the kitty.

In the meantime, I have work to attend to. A couple of sponsors have asked questions:

1) Could I write something on the metabolism of alcohol in relation to other energy sources?
2) Have I finished Dr Marjot's second book Addiction: A kind of loving?
3) Having left thousands of avid blog readers on tenterhooks with This is Hardcore Pt 1, could I write up This is Hardcore Pt 2, so everyone knows what happened in the second experiment?

To which the answers are:

1) Yes I'd love to, it fascinates me, but I need to get research time which I currently don't have.
2) No, but I'd love to. I spent a bit of time with it recently and finally understood a key part of the reunion/attachment theory, which I'd also love to write up, if I had the time.
3) See answer 1).

I will try to get something on one of the three subjects together before the end of the month, but, y'know... work... Christmas...

One thing I will be writing about over the course of the next 31 days is sponsorship. I'm not a good hustler, and the world is full of people constantly asking other people for charitable donations.

But the joy of seeing the money come in, the response from the charities (heart-meltingly grateful and charming with it) and realising what a very generous bunch of people I am lucky enough to know has made me determined to try to prise a few more quid out of those around me.

To be honest, the charitable donation element to this project has served its purpose. Having bound myself in to several early sponsorship commitments, a dual sense of pride and parsimony (I committed to refunding double any donation out of my own pocket if I did have a drink this year) stopped me from falling off the wagon.

There was one moment in late March where I know I would have cracked if the prospect of a very public humiliation hadn't stopped me. Whilst cussed determination might have got me through the last eleven months, it was entirely fuelled by your generosity.

If you would care to join the merry throng of freewheeling debit card dilettantes, this is how to get on it. If you would rather wait until 1 Jan 2015, then my double donation cashback offer becomes redundant and you lose any possibility of ever seeing your donation again. But you will actually know I have done what I set out to do. Either way, I am keeping the fundraising page open for a few weeks into 2015 to hassle people some more.

Finally if you think this is all massively over-indulgent, faintly pathetic and have absolutely no intention of making a donation - I can't say I blame you. I haven't really done much. Your eyeballs on this blog are reward enough.

It’s a bit like being a vegetarian

Carrot on Steel - Nick Wallis (2014)

Being sober in a drinking world is like being a vegetarian. I don’t know why it’s taken me eleven months to realise this. 

The moral high ground, the generally feeling healthier, the creeping certainty other people are having more fun than you…

I respect vegetarians and vegetarianism.* I aspire to eat less meat. I could probably go quite happily without it.

Vegans are proper hardcore. I once tried a vegan diet and lasted two weeks. It’s a lifestyle which requires great bundles of morality and fibre.

Being teetotal is much the same. All these drunk people ruining the world, ruining themselves and me. Me. Me being a little bit special. Not just a better person, but also able to remind people of The Path I Have Chosen every time we go for a drink or a meal.

Richard Herring stopped being a vegetarian once he realised he probably liked slightly annoying people with his moral superiority more than he enjoyed not eating meat.**

I would hate Britain to become the sort of society where having a few sherberts after work is no longer considered okay. Where career, family and vegetariansim/environmentalism/charity/church/over-consumption of material goods become life’s be-all and end-all.

I’d like to think there is a place for hedonism, rueful recovery and the occasional opportunity to put aside our worries and celebrate being alive. So long as most of the time we’re all eating carrots.

***************

* Though my friend Natt (a comedian and journalist currently pulling up trees at usvsth3m) points out vegetarians must not like animals as they clearly want to see far less of them around. Natt only eats animals who have lived well. If the restaurant doesn’t know the provenance of its meat, he’ll take  a vegetarian option.

** The person Richard told this to (Sara Pascoe, in another excellent RHLSTP) eloquently argued he should have remained vegetarian notwithstanding - if you believe in the idea of vegetarianism voting with your wallet makes a real difference.

Alcohol Awareness Week

I am making a start to alcohol awareness week wired up on coffee.

I am also reading on the front page of today's Times that more and more professional women are presenting with liver problems due to excessive drinking.

Better stop committing crimes whilst drinking

I am reading on twitter this morning (via Jeremy Hopkins) about a report which points out alcohol's role in protecting against heart disease only works for 15% of the population and a Guardian piece about older drinkers becoming more of a problem as younger people foreswear booze.

I am not even going looking for this stuff. It's everywhere. I consume the daily drip of news articles on alcohol (whilst bearing in mind most journalism on science is misleading and most medical studies have gaping flaws) and I look at our behaviour and I wonder. I really wonder.

Search the hashtag #alcoholawarenessweek and you get a barrage of frightening stats, advice and very well-meaning people desperately trying to stop you opening that extra beer or bottle of wine this weekend.

It is perhaps denialist and irresponsible to suggest an apparent level of hysteria. Health professionals and the emergency services see what alcohol is doing to too many people, daily.

Unless the reason WHY is Because You Enjoy It

If I've learned one thing this year it is that everyone who drinks is playing with fire. Alcohol is a seductive drug - once in our system it will make our brains demand more until we are well beyond safe limits. It then embeds itself in our neural pathways to ensure going back to unsafe limits becomes habitual. Even tiny amounts can permanently alter our behaviour, so that even when it is not coursing round our bodies, it directs us back towards a reunion. The more you drink and the more you have drunk, the more likely and often this happens until:

a) you stop drinking
b) you die

Is it a risk worth taking? Well that's the million dollar question. When I think about the happiest times of my life, alcohol has been involved. Would they still be the happiest times of my life without alcohol? No. They wouldn't have happened.

Important, richer and more fulfilling experiences like watching your child being born and getting married don't make you happy in the way alcohol can - these are far more profound episodes that make you a better person and give you a deeper understanding of life. Booze is irrelevant to that.

Still seems like a good deal

Alcohol is a useful short cut, a quick release and, handled properly, a way of shrugging off the stresses and responsibilities life throws at you. I contend (once it has left your system and only once it has left your system) it can put you in a better frame of mind to deal with those stresses and responsibilities when they return. Others vehemently disagree.

This year has taught me many things about my relationship with alcohol and the nature of the drug itself. I haven't been afforded any particular insight into my own spiritual well being. There is no clarity. But it has allowed me to stop and see what a teetotal life entails: hard work, fewer smiles, with death lurking at the end of it. I would certainly be a wiser and better person, but I'm not sure I would be happy.

It's premature to come to any firm conclusions right now.  It's what I take forward into next year, when I start drinking again, which will really measure how useful this exercise has been. Until then, happy Alcohol Awareness Week. Mine's a latte.

The Joys of Drinking

Target reached!

Wahey!

Thanks to an extraordinarily generous donation to each of the four charities this blog is supporting (see picture above) I have now reached and exceeded my fundraising target of £1000.

I am very grateful to Kirstie and the Spence Family Trust who have donated the £400 those cheques represent. Writing one cheque is a physically and emotionally exhausting process nowadays, writing four is dedication above and beyond the call of duty.

I am, of course, most grateful to everyone who has put some money this blog's way. From Stephen the Crawley Town fan who chucked in a fiver the moment my Virgin Giving page went live to the stranger in Dubai who read an article in the Times of India written about alcohol by a man called Nick, managed to confuse him with me, but donated anyway in memory of his alcoholic father. Every time I get an email notification of a donation of any size it puts me in a proper happy mood. Which is helpful when you are not drinking.

I have a choice now. My totaliser stands at £1305. I could try doubling my target to £2000 and then spend the next couple of months hassling you to give me money. But why risk failure?

That said, I am sure the four causes I am supporting would appreciate it if you did have any spare cash, target or no - so please don't let my inherent lack of ambition stop you from clicking on the Virgin Money Giving button on the right hand side of this page.

Thank you - thank you for reading, thank you for donating and thank you for all the kind words you've said about this blog. Next post - how to get brain damage from drinking! Yay!

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