Living With My Mistakes

It's funny how actual sentences sometimes play in your mind, as if they're being spoken aloud by a narrator. Usually, my brain hosts a shifting thought salad of feelings, ideas and concepts: neat from the source, undiluted. Thoughts don't naturally take the form of words, but colours, feelings, notions, and knowledge. My raw material needs to be fractioned into something else before it can be understood by any other interface. When I write about the messages from In Here, they've been pre-distilled and fashioned to form proper sentences for export.

I’ve written about it before, but on many, many occasions over the past several months, one sentence keeps appearing in my head, pre-refined and ready to ship:

I'm so glad I don't drink any more.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay7 July 2019alcohol free, sober livingComment

Tuned to a new frequency

When you stop drinking, you wonder how you'll ever have fun again. What in the world could possibly feel as incredible as the blissful release of glass two? What'll replace the intimacy of friends leaning in to share dreams like stolen kisses? Will you ever laugh again like you did at the memes of those magnesium-bright nights? And just how will you explain your behaviour if you don't have the convenient excuse of “Sorry, I was really drunk...”

What you don't realise is, in the words of the prophet David, you're always crashing in the same car.

And in the words of the prophet Fay, sooner or later it's going to steal you away, so please stop doing this to yourself, you beautiful, lost creature...

Alcohol-Free LivingFay6 January 2019alcohol free, sobeer, sober living Comment

A lot can happen in a year

A lot can happen in a year.

You can go from the shell of a person, a desiccated husk oiled with a steady diet of poison, to something entirely else instead. You can transform your body from a collection of inflamed tissue, dusky with sadness soot, to a beautiful, fluid machine that slips between the strata of the world – emerging unscathed from between the knives.

It can be done. A wrong can be made right. A lot can happen in a year.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay7 October 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

What do you want to drink? Alcohol-free drink recipes

Stopped drinking alcohol? Cutting down? Maybe just don't fancy it right now? Good stuff. The thing is, you'll still need a go-to drink when you're out in restaurants, clubs and bars, or cosying up at home, or sitting out on verandas under the stars. Here are some of my favourite recipes for beautiful times.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay23 September 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

How to lose friends (under-the-influence people)

It took a while, but when I stopped drinking alcohol, many of those fleeting, fearful imaginings I'd had about what life would be like – how nothing would ever be the same again – slowly came true. The too-bright nights unwinding over a drink or ten? Gone forever. Close friends taking the same liquid shortcut to a more communicative state of mind? No more.

Sounds terrible, right? Way back when, I thought the same. And now...I get that I didn't really get it before.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay18 September 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

Exercising self care: stuff to buy in the early stages of sobriety

If you’re newly not doing alcohol any more, and you can honestly say you’re saving money, then you’re probably setting yourself up for a fall. Now is not the time for austerity measures. Now is the time for all the cake. Now is the time to spend the same money you were previously shelling out to dull your emotions on making your life easier, prettier, brighter, and more beautiful. Consider it an investment in yourself and your quality of life. Later, once you’re on an even keel, you can think about saving money. For now, concentrate on saving yourself.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay19 July 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

Conversations in lifts about alcohol

Now that I don't drink alcohol, I find myself noticing things more. Things that would have slipped under the radar before. Things worth thinking about.

Somehow, conversations about alcohol keep happening in lifts. I have no idea why, but the lift seems to be the happening new venue for short conversations that exemplify sweeping societal attitudes to alcohol. There have been a fair few more than this, but I'll call out two lift conversations that gave me pause...

Alcohol-Free LivingFay1 July 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

Negotiating terms: Alcoholic

I no longer drink alcohol. After a long period of altogether excessive drinking (which really wasn't as Gatsby as you might imagine) I decided not to do it any more. It's great, the not drinking, but according to conventional wisdom it should also come with a side-order of name-calling.

Hi, my name's Fay, and I'm not an alcoholic.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay21 May 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

Regeneration, and a milestone of my own creation

Over recent months, a song has has rolled through my mind repeatedly. I've gone to sleep with it playing on my internal FM, and I've woken up other times to find it running loose in there like a cheeky streaker on an 80s football pitch. In a funny way it's been quite comforting; a wry inward smile at the good I know lies ahead, but that simply hasn't materialised so far. Let's talk about cell turnover...

Alcohol-Free LivingFay23 April 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

Will life just be kind of crap from now on?

Picture the scene: you've decided that drinking alcohol isn't for you any more... Well done, you brave, clever, magnificent human being. You might be wondering though, 'Will life just be kind of crap from now on?' Well, that all depends on you – and whose lies you're willing to swallow this time.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay10 March 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

I choose to stay

While I have my faculties in place, and the choice is mine to make, I choose to stay. I don't want to go. I don't want to die. I don't want to drink myself to death, or lose myself forever. I choose, instead, to stay.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay4 March 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment

Recovery Mixtape – An Act of Rebellion

After a recovery playlist that isn't about wallowing in addiction? Me too. But all I could find were depressing lists full of songs about drinking or taking drugs – which isn't what I want to be focusing on when utilising music to strengthen my resolve. So I made my own.

Alcohol-Free Living, MusicFay23 February 2018music, recovery, alcohol free, recovery playlist, recovery mixtape, recovery musicComment

Negotiating terms: Recovery

The really important stuff is always the hardest to write. It'll come soon enough, just not yet. For now, let's take it as read that I have some complex, thoroughly biased ideas about jargon, and that using the term 'recovery' doesn't mean I'm good with the other phrases that usually go alongside it. Recovery, however, is undoubtedly a good thing.

Alcohol-Free LivingFay22 February 2018recovery, alcohol freeComment