Tania Glyde - Cleaning Up

Sub-title: "How I Gave Up Drinking And Lived"

I was on one of my usual lengthy bookstore browsing moments the other day and this book caught my eye. My first reaction was SHIT - I should have written this, she beat me to it! Followed by a sinking feeling in my stomach of "I'm never ever going to be a writer because I am just not DOING enough of it". Followed by a text sent to Meg to tell her I was going to buy it and read it. And so I did...

I've not had a drop of alcohol since January 3rd 2009. The two years leading up to my decision to stop drinking will forever be embedded in my mind (even the nights I don't remember because I was completely blacked out), and I don't feel like going over them and reanalyzing them again and again. I got through it. I'm still here, I didn't lose a limb or my brain, or my job. I functioned very well, never missing a day of work or a deadline or a dinner with a friend or an important event. However, if I had continued on the same path I probably wouldn't be here anymore, and that's pretty clear to me now.
I probably will never have a drop of alcohol again. And that's not a problem for me. Yes, I miss the confidence I had when I was drunk, but I have actually learnt to be a lot more confident without alcohol now. Actually be myself.

Anyway - this isn't about me. I'll probably write more and more about this subject at some point (or you can just go back and read my posts from 2007 and 2008 to get some kind of idea). This is about Tania's book.

I usually don't like this type of book. I tried and tried to read Prozac Nation and just wanted to shake her and tell her to get up and stop being such a whiny bitch (this coming from someone who suffers from the same illness - I just can't stand boring self-centered woe-is-me crap). So I was a little wary about reading Tania Glyde's book, but it is actually very readable, personal experiences mixed with fact, and a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour. Very British in fact. We Brits don't like to whine about ourselves, we prefer to make fun of ourselves and move on.
And it really portrays the main reason why women tend to try to drink as much as men, and how having willpower doesn't really help when you get to drink number 3.
Suggested read to anyone who has ever had an alcohol problem. Or who has lived or been friends with someone with an alcohol problem.

Tania Glyde's Website

By the way - whenever I talk about being sober, it is only for myself and for my own personal reasons. I don't judge anyone's drinking or not drinking, unless it affects me personally. And even then I don't judge. I just get pissed off.