Call the Midlife by Chris Evans Read Free Book Online

mightbe. Does this mean I’m not an alcoholic?
    ‘Again, I don’t know. This is all too simplistic. What immediately is more interesting to me is why you thought you needed to stop at all?’
    I did it because I wanted to know what it felt like to be totally sober for three months. (This was a lie, I did it to prove to myself that I could. Not that it mattered; Amanda was already on to me.)
    ‘Ah, now, there you see, that’s not a thought that just appears from nowhere. It’s a premise that suggests to me you’ve been thinking about your relationship with alcohol for some time, perhaps longer than you care to admit, or at least feel comfortable admitting. Now, for one reason or another you felt like you wanted to do something about it.’
    Talk about cutting to the chase! But of course she is absolutely right. Bang on the money. I have increasingly thought alcohol was becoming the puppet master rather than the puppet. Certainly more of an issue than I would like it to be. And certainly more than it has ever been before, even though I did successfully complete a hundred-day booze fast and am now drinking far less than I have done for years.
    But I suppose that’s part of the reason in many ways. During my three months and eight days of total sobriety, my life was so much more liveable. I smiled more, I thought more, I achieved more, I had more extra capacity, awareness and energy to do more of all the things I liked.
    Not only that but I didn’t miss ‘the taste’ of beer, wine and spirits at all – the main reason I cited for liking them. In fact, during my self-imposed period of abstinence I often smelt friends’ wine and brandy and found it almost repulsive.
    This reminded me of when I was little and my dad offered me a sip of his pale ale one Christmas; I thought it was utterly disgusting. I truly believe learning to enjoy alcohol is a three-stage process: firstly we close our eyes, hold our nose and try merely to bear its disgusting taste, then we become used to how horrible it tastes, before convincing ourselves that we’ve actually come to love it.
    ‘I stopped because I was no longer sure I could or wanted to handle what alcohol was doing to me,’ continued Amanda. ‘It began to make me feel paranoid as soon as the first drop passed my lips, or even the thought of it. Like I’d walked into another room, but one I wasn’t used to. Almost like I knew it was the beginning of the end of whatever it was I’d been doing as another state was about to ensue. A definite line between before and after I am drinking seems to have emerged. A line that, once the line is crossed, brought in a whole new set of terms and conditions.
    ‘Where this had once felt like a place I couldn’t wait to get to, it had somehow become a place I began to dread and eventually fear.’
    So can drinking ever be a good thing?
    ‘Absolutely, yes, but it’s very much a one-hit wonder rather than a whole back catalogue of timeless classics. One of the things alcohol does is gradually and systematically shut down every part of your conscious brain, including the ability to control one’s behaviour or inhibitions.
    ‘This is why it can be so useful at parties to help break the ice. But taken to its extreme (which begins to happen startlingly quickly), this is also how come otherwise perfectly reasonable people go on to do dreadful things. When they’re said to be “under the influence”.’
    Oh dear, this was all sounding a bit too close to home. Meanwhile Amanda had yet more home truths up her sleeve . . .
    ‘Alcohol is often perceived to be liberating, but it’s really only a one-trick pony. Sure it can maybe take away the fear and awkwardness of a situation but it also simultaneously blinkers you as to where you might end up as a result.
    ‘Ultimately I found alcohol did for me exactly the opposite of what I wanted it to do. Instead of facilitating my freedom, what it actually ended up doing was reducing my ability to be