Right now, there's a global pandemic, and many folk are in lockdown or are self-isolating. Given we're all staying inside for the foreseeable, we might want some neat ideas for stuff to do…so here's a totally inexhaustive list of cool activities, wholesome media I recommend, and stuff that you've probably forgotten is fun!
Read MoreRemember how last year I was looking for a Recovery Playlist that wasn’t about wallowing in drug addiction, couldn’t find one, and ended up making my own? Well, since then I’ve been setting aside songs that would fit another mixtape, and it’s up now on my YouTube Channel.
It’s a really, really good mixtape.
Read MoreI'm not really the day-counting type. I don't have (or desire) any numbered chips. I won't be following 12 steps, no matter how passionately Russell Brand tells me the AA equivalent of drawing Disney princesses as serial killers (yawn) is the new hotness. If you're waiting for an apology...it's not coming.
Read MoreIt'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.
Read MoreIt's been a while, hasn't it? I've not forgotten you. I just had some enormous life events to live. Buckle up, because this is a good half hour of my brain on the page.
For now, I write this from the seat of a BA flight, with sunshine streaming through the window onto my tray-table. I'm heading back to Germany, the country I've lived in for the past ten years, for what could be the last time...
Read MoreWe spend our lives too young, until suddenly we're too old. Just as a single coin must constitute the tipping point from poor to rich, one breath transmutes the dreams of, "One day I'll..." into, "When did I miss my chance?"
I think I may have taken that breath recently, because somewhere along the way I became old, and I'm not sure how it happened.
On the throwaway side of things, I was brought to muse on such dark matters because I watched some thought-provoking television. On the horrendously real side, I found out that a girl I've known since I was very young is, sadly, terminally ill.
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...
Read MoreNobody gives a damn about you. Nobody's interested in your journey. Nobody cares what you're doing.
Especially not if you're on a constant and unwavering quest to change yourself for the better. Especially not if you live by solutions. Or maybe it's just me? Am I drinking somebody else’s pain again? (Spoilers, nah. Dont worry, we keep the lamps lit around here these days, and when shadows are cast on the wall, we turn around to see what's casting them.)
Herein I examine some revelations from the past year about negativity, agency, technicolour disinterest, and doing it all anyway.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreStopped 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.
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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.
Read MoreIf 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.
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...
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreOver 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...
Read MorePicture 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.
Read MoreWhile 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.
Read MoreAfter 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreSince you're in my safe space, let me start by saying that my metaphorical heart will be on my sleeve, splattered on your shirt, and all over the floor. Repeatedly. You've been warned. Now that's out of the way, let's get down to the business of subjects.
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