Breaking Through

It’s April 2025. The lightbulb hasn’t come on yet; that’s still 7 months away.

In 6 months, I’ll be 60. I’m weighing in at a pound shy of 15 stone, 209 lbs. NHS obesity guidance suggests I should be between 9 ½ and 10 ½ stone, 133 to 147 lbs.

I know the alcohol consumption has been massively contributing towards this.

I’ve not been close to 13 stone, 182 lbs, for over a decade, and that’s still 28 to 42 lbs over the ideal.

I don’t want to enter my seventh decade this heavy, steps need to be taken.

I cut right down on the alcohol, sleep becomes difficult. At the same time, I start walking the dogs 3 miles daily. It helps with the sleep a little.

According to the app on my smartwatch and phone these walks are burning close to 400 calories a time.

I manage to keep the daily walks going from May through to early August thanks to some great weather through those spring and early summer months.

Not drinking is less successful and it’s creeping up again.

There’s 2 nights out, one with some former work colleagues, one at a current work event. Both result in blackouts.

After the work event I find a quarter bottle of vodka, unopened, in my hotel room. I check my phone and see I left the hotel at about 1am, walked to an all-night mini-market and back to the hotel. My payment app confirms that’s when I made the purchase.

I passed out in my room before I could drink it, which is fortunate. If I had drank it I would have missed breakfast and the meeting I was supposed to be attending that morning.

I struggle through both anyway.

4 weeks later, I’m back to daily drinking and back on a bottle of wine and ½ bottle of vodka.

I take a long hard look over the last 5 years, the last 11 months, the last 7 months. I’m 60 now and I’m not a happy camper.

I finally acceptI have no control over the alcohol consumption; it’s controlling me.

I’m think about how this is likely to play out and see only misery and early death from some alcohol related disease or mishap. I don’t want this, I want to live, for my wife, for the dogs, for myself.

I Google search for local addiction services and find the local NHS has a self-referral form.

I fill it in. I’ve finally admitted to myself and accepted that I have an alcohol dependency. I’m a high functioning alcoholic.

Just accepting this lifts me. Filling in the form and being honest about the number of units I’ve drank in the last week, 186 units, takes even more weight off.

186 units. In a week, regularly.

The NHS recommendation is no more than 14 units per week for both men and women. Various studies, UK based and international, are clear that no amount of alcohol is safe. I knew this, I know this. But it didn’t stop me drinking 186 units a week, over 13 times the recommended maximum.

I marvel, a little, even now, that I’m still alive.

About 2 hours after filling in the referral form, I get a call from the addiction unit. I’m impressed and relieved in equal measure.

Can I get into their office on Thursday week?

Do bears do things in woodland? Oh yes.

In the meantime, please don’t stop drinking. (What? But that’s the whole point of this exercise, I want to stop!)

I don’t question this, why would I? It’s a green light I don’t have to stop drinking yet, there’s 10 more days drinking left, whoo-hoo.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, lords and ladies, is how alcohol works, it twists the brain and screws up your ability to reason, even when sober.

So, I carry on drinking.

There’s solid and very real reason’s I was given the advice not to stop.

Going cold turkey from a heavy drinking habit has profound effects on the body.

Alcohol is a depressant, not just emotionally, but also physiologically. It depresses important chemical transmitters in the brain that don’t just regulate our emotions but also things in the autonomous nervous system, and that impacts the circadian rhythms, digestion, breathing and the heart.

Suddenly stopping can lead to the shakes, something I’d already experienced. It can also trigger hallucinations as the brain is pumping stimulants out to counter a depressant that’s no longer present. That flood of stimulants can trigger seizures, increased heart rate, increaseed blood pressure and, worst-case scenario, death.

Going cold turkey can kill you, literally push you from this world to non-existence. In a blink of an eye.

That’s why alcohol is so dangerous, it is a physically as well as psychologically addictive substances with real and dangerous consequences beyond those more usually recognised as the drinker being a bit of a dick when pissed. Coming off alcohol can be fatal if it’s not managed appropriately.