Week 16

Canowindra

16 weeks, eh?

Almost four months. Why the fuck don’t we just have 13x4 week months, man. This shit is not good for my OCD tendencies. Anyway, whatever.

I’m feeling a little bit excited at the prospect of four months sober. Mainly because, to the best of my knowledge, four months is my previous best effort.

This was years ago though. Maybe… 9 years ago? I don’t remember exactly how long I was sober for that time. I am pretty confident though, that if I get to four months sober on the 18th of August, it will be the longest period of time I have remained sober since I was 16 years old.

Typing that just now spun me out a little, I have been drinking for more of my life than I haven’t been. Way to make myself feel old.

Not that any of that matters, on the 18th of this month I’ll still be sober and I’ll cross into uncharted territory where hopefully my brian magically fixes any and all of my issues the moment I wake up. Kinda like in Kevin and Perry Go Large where Kevin waits until midnight on his 13th birthday and instantly changes his entire personality. See below, it’s pretty funny…

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

That shit ain’t going to happen, but it's a lovely fuckin’ thought.

With that said, I’m feeling like this whole sobriety thing is becoming more and more like it’s just a thing I do now. There’s less stress and anxiety associated with it. It occupies a lot less time in my head than it used to. Obviously complacency remains a risk but overall I’m feeling positive about it all.

I had a stark reminder this week of the damage that alcohol can do to a person. Which I think is fitting because I noticed in recent weeks I have unintentionally drifted away from alcohol and/or substances as a theme or topic. 

I want to preface with this though, I am not anti-alcohol. Hopefully I’ve made that clear all along. I think it would be hypocritical of me to sit here and bag alcohol on its own. I said weeks ago, just because I can’t drink at the moment without replacing my head with a pumpkin, doesn’t mean others shouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

A friend of mine is going through some significant challenges with a family member who has been battling alcoholism for years. It’s now landed at THAT point. Years of turmoil, stress and anxiety. All building up, is now at the point where it’s a massive risk of boiling over and erupting. It’s just… really, really, fucking sad. It’s tragic. From what I have seen and what I understand, there were some traumatic events at some point that was a catalyst for this very gradual descent beginning in the first place. From that point until now, there’s a few key things I’ve taken away as someone who knows both of them.

Firstly, the person in question is a good person. A great person. To see what they’ve become is just heartbreaking. 

Secondly, the damage it has caused to those who care about this person. The stress they have experienced and continue to live through is so upsetting and frankly, not fucking fair. Life is hard enough. People have kids, mortgages, bills, stressful jobs, work emails all hours of the day in their fucking pockets. The last thing we need is the added stress of some heart breaking shit completely beyond our realm of control. Kinda like having a shitty prime minister who everyone wants to do one thing and they refuse. The best thing in this instance would be for this person to sort their shit out, but it’s so much more complex than that. And like a shitty power drunk prime minister, they’re too affected to think rationally or to be reasoned with.

But let's swing this shit back around to me, because this is all about me… I’m kidding… kinda. 

What I have taken away from this is that I don’t ever want to be that person. The person who negatively impacts the lives of the people who care for me the most whilst being completely oblivious to the fact that it’s been happening. I was never at the point this person is at. I was never even close, but this shit is not linear. You can be a high functioning member of society whilst abusing the shit outta all types of shit. It happens everywhere, all the time. Possibly more than you may realize. Then one day, your downward trajectory can increase in severity and once you build up too much momentum it might just be too fast for your handbrake to be effective.

I feel so fortunate and grateful that I managed to be conscious enough to realize the direction I was headed and the potential risks involved when I did. Although unlikely, you just don’t fucking know. You can’t see the tipping point out in front of you. I imagine sometimes you don’t even realize you’ve gone past the tipping point until you’re well past it.

I’m just fuckin’ terrified of doing that to others. Would I have done that had I not gotten sober? Who fucking knows. Seems unlikely that it would have ever ended up quite that far down the track, but we just don’t know and the fear of that happening is strong enough for me to just stay the course for now. Just revert back to that one day at a time shit. Won’t be drinking today etc.

One weird thing that has been happening a bit lately is dreaming about drinking. I don’t often have vivid memories of any dreams that I have, these though, are usually pretty easy to remember, sometimes in fairly fine detail. I have this somewhat recurring dream. The physical environment changes within the dream, but the theme stays the same. I am somewhere and I am drinking. It’s strange though, it’s like I have a snap of reality in my dream where I am like “holy shit, I am drinking! Wait, I’m fuckin’ drunk”. Almost as though I had been drinking up to a point without being conscious of what the fuck I was doing before hand, then it surprises me. In the dreams, I panic straight away, Stop drinking, then get upset at myself for drinking. Usually I wake up soon after.

I’ve been thinking about what this could mean. Could it mean I’m still a long way from being over the mental hump and my brain still thinks about alcohol? Or is it a metaphor. Is the drinking in my dream representative of the last 18 years and the bit where I snap out of it and realize the error in my ways representative of the last 16 weeks of my life? Or, does it mean fuck all and that I’m just a bit of special fucker?

I don’t fucking know. Was hoping one of you lot would.

All I know is that life isn’t fair. You’re an idiot if you expect it to be. Should it be? Yeah, probably. But it isn’t. So shut up.

Some people seem cruise through life, with no dramas at all. Things just happen for them. Never any stress. Others seem to have the complete inverse. That’s what a scroll through their social media pages suggest, anyway. This is why it’s important to maintain a realistic approach when forming a summary of someone based solely on what they share. We need to remember, people only show us the parts of them they want us to see.

I wanted to sneak this quote in this week purely because I love it. I trying to be clever about it but I’m tired. So here is a short story about it’s origin.

When I was 19 years old I moved to the coast to work in road construction with my cousin. The second youngest bloke at work was my cousin. He was 29 at the time. I went from living with mum and dad to living in country motels 200 nights a year with a bunch of middle aged blokes, mostly form the country. It was a massive eye opener for me, but for the most part, I loved it.

I’ve stayed in a lot of small towns, been drunk in a lot of small pubs, eaten pies from a lot of different bakeries, poo’d in a lot of small town public toilets and nearly as many paddocks. Had mates in nightclubs in Croatia while I was betting on greyhounds in Canowindra. I wasn’t vegan then… It was a fucking great time in my life and I’m real fuckin’ glad I did it. I wouldn’t do it now, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

I met a bloke called Billy. He would have been probably 55 at the time. He quickly became a very good friend. Billy was from Captains Flat, NSW. Born and raised. You could tell Billy was from Captains Flat, or a town similar. For those who don’t know, (a small country town with fuck all in it). Billy was the best, funniest, yet kindest old bastard I ever met. I started travelling with him, all over NSW. Sadly, Billy passed almost four years ago. I wanted to cry when he died, but I could hear him saying “don’t be a fuckin’ girl, Samuel.”

There was something Billy once said to me that at the time, I thought it was just funny. But only recently did I finally understand what he meant. I was sitting in the truck one day, most likely being a privileged asshole whinging about something someone had that I didn’t have. He put his paper down on the steering wheel, turned to me, took a drag of his cigarette with about 30mm of ash hanging off the end of it and says, “Samuel… you can only piss outta the cock ya born with…”

Crass? Maybe. I guess it’s open to interpretation. I think though there’s a bit of a beautiful little nugget in there. You only have what you have. Some have more than you, you have more than some. It’s not your fault, it’s not their fault, it just is what it is. Life, is not fair. The thing is though, we all have our own cock and we all have to piss out of it, photoelectrically speaking for some, of course.

Stop worrying about other peoples cocks and piss out of your own.

On that note, I think I might leave it there, haha.

RIP ya mad old bastard.

If you want Sobering Thoughts sent to you via email each week hit subscribe.

If you think anything I talk about could help others hit share.

Have a good week, gang.

Cheers Wankers.

X