What happens when you stop drinking is that you stop drinking. The immediate consequences - memory blanks, embarrassment, wasted money - stop but you don't change into a new person. I'd partly hoped that I would.
At times I think that all I'm doing is not doing something - that I am doing nothing. At my core is an absence, I am defined by a lack. But if there isn't anything there why does it hurt so much?
It has been hard but not quite in the way I imagined. I am not having to pull myself away from off licence doors: it is more the devilish thoughts that flicker; that my life is over and I'll never have fun again, that if I'm not going to amount to anything I might as well drink.
I've been applying for jobs and have had a couple of interviews but am still on the dole. Unfortunately, what is probably the biggest achievement in my life looks like a gap in my CV.
As a present for reaching six months sober, my brother gave me a voucher with which I bought a new hat. I wore the hat on the day of my Grandad's funeral, holding my four-month-old nephew who has never seen me drunk.
