You hurt so bad and you try to stop and you fail. Repeat a few times. Lose friends, jobs, opportunities. Make an idiot out of yourself a hundred times. You’ve got no idea how to stop it.

But you do. You stop drinking for a couple of years. You decide you can drink sensibly now. And then you prove by experimental method that this is not the case. You keep drinking anyway. Back to square one. And one day – remorseful, sick, but with some kind of rational clarity – you decide to stop. And you just do. For some reason - for lots of reasons - it works.

And it is so goddamn beautiful and continues so beautiful to wake up every day without a hangover. And twelve years pass – easy, no drama, no battle. That’s all I’ve got for you really: I’ve no idea how to make it happen, but it can; and when it does, it doesn’t have to be a struggle.

Different people have different ways. I wouldn’t recommend my way to anyone. But it has worked for me. So this is not advice. Don’t do this. It’s mine.

You don’t make any big announcement. You’ve made big announcements before. You just stop. And if anyone presses you, you say you’re stopping for a month (which is absolutely true), and then you say you’re extending it to a year, and then at the end of the year they say: you’re just going to keep going with this aren’t you?

Why no big announcement? Because you don’t want people fussing around you as a Declared Alcoholic and wondering about the rum balls and whether to lock the liquor cabinet. You don’t want anyone owning your sobriety. You own it. It’s your most precious thing. Nobody made you do it. No one has any say in it but you. This, in particular, is bad advice. Don’t follow it. It worked for me.

I haven’t removed booze from my house; I haven’t gone out of my way to avoid parties or bars. I haven’t touched a drink for twelve years and I’m loving it.

Some people go to meetings. I never have. Some people need some comrades and need to retell old horror stories to remind them of how bad it was. Respect to them. But I don’t need the reminder.

I’m not religious and I think sobriety is totally compatible with hedonism and with having a good time all the time.

No throwaway because fuck it.