IT CAN BE DONE.

Let’s start 2009 on a positive note. I’m going to make what will, to some be an outrageous statement and a contradiction in terms. Christmas and the New Year celebrations can be enjoyed without the inclusion of alcohol! Yes you did read it right.

Some years ago, after the death of my husband, I took to drink in a big way. My intention was simple – Drink enough and I’ll forget the misery of being unexpectedly and unpredictably alone – Drink more than enough and hopefully I’d join him. I kept this up for some considerable time until I realised that not only am I a tough little individual who is resilient and constitutionally quite strong but that the procedure didn’t work! I didn’t forget and haven’t died yet! All I had for my troubles was a headache which felt as if a band had set up their equipment inside my skull and I was the poorer both financially and spiritually and was on the way to doing serious damage to my liver and other organs. I didn’t have a moment of supreme enlightment on the way to the road to my personal Damascus and neither did I “get religion” though I have read the Bible from cover to cover. I just got fed up with the dry mouth, continual thirst and headaches and the fact that I needed more of the stuff to achieve the same very transient effect. Then I found that my epilepsy had worsened to the point where I was hospitalised and needed life-long medication which doesn’t go well with alcohol. So I kicked the habit, with only one or two relapses at Christmas time when the pressure to drink is at its strongest.

I had to sit down and analyse the reasons why I drank and knew only too well that it was to do with my deep and painful unhappiness. It was because I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I was on my own when I didn’t want to be and resented the rejection of me by many sighted people who either don’t get to know me or keep making promises they don’t keep or conduct any sort of relationship on their terms and I wanted a short cut to the oblivion which death brings to us all. At aged thirty-five I had three massive epileptic fits but still refused to die. I wasn’t drunk at the time but instead had just come home from switchboard work at the U.K’s well known charity for those with sight loss. I lost several hours of time and woke up in hospital with a canular in my arm, which dripped anti convulsant medication into my body. I wondered then why I was still here and realised that, though not lucky because of all I have suffered, at least I was still around which is more than could be said for the man I fell in love with and married. I thought too of the terrible distress my very elderly grandmother would suffer had I died or if I destroyed myself by abusing alcohol. Though the epilepsy is definitely the result of the oxygen damage which blinded me, and which began in early adolescence, I can’t deny the fact that what I was doing to myself must have affected its progress just as surely as my having to cope alone without help both of a practical or emotional support.

So conditioned are we to think that every and any celebration must include alcohol that even after I’d made the decision to stop, my Christmas relapses were always due to the fact that I thought I couldn’t enjoy them without it. As it is Christmas is not my favourite time of year so anything which would oil the wheels seemed to me a must. What about the Christmas just gone then?

In June I made my escape from the unspeakably inconsiderate oaf who spoiled my life for seventeen months by playing loud music all night and moved into another flat within the block where I’ve lived for years. With apprehension I heard that a couple was moving in beside me. I dreaded it in case they were a couple of beer swilling louts with an equally loud stereo system and no desire to wear headphones. I worried myself to death for days until I could stand it no longer. Armed with a box of chocolates I did something I’m not noted for – I rang their bell and introduced myself to them. They invited me in, told me they’d suffered in the same way and that they were quiet and private people who also avoided alcohol. We clicked at once and are now not just neighbours but friends and I was so touched when, dreading Christmas as I always do, they invited me round for Christmas dinner. I had the loveliest Christmas possible. The lady of the house is a superb cook and I’ve been teasing them both about constructing a serving hatch in the adjoining wall so that I can push my plate through at meal times. They popped in for New Year’s Eve and throughout both occasions we drank coke or water. When I came home and when they left after each celebration, respectively, I was on such a self-induced high that on went the headphones and up went the music! Then I said to myself, with a shock: “June, you’ve done it all without alcohol but not without friends whose kindness helped you accomplish it”. Both these lovely people keep their eyes on me. If they don’t see me for a little while, I get a ring on the bell to ask if I’m okay. It’s taken me all my adult life to realise that celebrations, especially Christmas and New Year do not have to be lived in an alcoholic haze and life can be happy without it too.

Of course one addiction or need if you like has been replaced with another. I live with music in my ears and as I’ve said before I’ve a strong compulsion to write but at least these are harmless compulsions especially since, in the case of music, I keep it at a sensible volume because I need my ears so much more than I would if I could see. I have been invited to my friends’ and neighbours’ wedding this year and, yes, I expect that too will be an alcohol free affair but the obvious love they feel for each other is all they need and having them as my new neighbours and friends is all I need so folks, if you’re struggling with alcohol consumption and were, like me, conditioned to believe that you can’t manage your celebrations without it, the good news is that you can. Also, if you feel a bit apprehensive about popping round to new neighbours with a box of chocks and introducing yourself, go on, give it a go! You may be unlucky and find you’ve met a real waste of space like I did when the floods in my first flat caused me to live underneath the neighbour from hell but then again you may, as I have, strike oil. Whatever the outcome, if you sit in your own flat or apartment or house, isolated and drinking alone as I did, you’ll never know and you may miss the warmth and kindness of others which will come back to you for that which you gave and that is more beneficial and precious than any number of bottles of alcohol. Here’s to friendship, love and kindness, as I sit here with my cup of tea!