I am coming to the conclusion that the manager of the Irish football team is living life like an alcoholic – an alcoholic living in denial.
Before I talk about Trapattoni, I need to explain a little about the mindset of people with drinking problems. When I first came up with the notion of getting and staying sober for good, I did a lot of research on the subject. The most important points which seemed to be repeated over and over no matter where I looked were these
Living in tropical paradise as I do at the moment reminds me of when I spent 6 months living in Greece almost ten years ago. I got a job working as a barman in an Irish cocktail bar on a beautiful Island called Kefalonia.
The sky was blue every day, new women were flown in every week and the drinks flowed like no tomorrow. Life was good.
I whizzed around on my moped and loved life in the little town where I lived.
It was here where I discovered what my life could be like one day if I followed one of the dreams I had of being a heavy drinking artist and womanising raconteur..
I have taken up the art of reading books again. Well, when I say reading books, I mean downloading books onto my kindle and ingesting them that way. Before I got my hands on a kindle I thought there was no way I would be the ponce who went around with one. But the books are cheaper. You can carry as many as you want. You can buy them whenever you want. I really think they are an awesome creation. If you haven’t
I’ve been sober for over two years now. It’s a substantial amount of time, but also less than 6% of my time alive…so I’m not out of the woods yet. If I am still sober when I reach fifty I will have been sober for just under 70% of my life, or just over half my adult life. For me that’s a very encouraging statistic. From an alcoholic point of view though
What is being a sober bar manager like? And by being sober I mean a recovering alcoholic. I suppose in one way it is like having a junkie working in a methadone clinic – Or having a contestant from “The Biggest Loser” working away in a Belgian chocolate factory. You are surrounded by temptation. You are surrounded by the very stuff which is normally your downfall. There are pretty much two things which can happen. The first is that you can give in. You sneak a box of truffles into your bag and nip off to the store room for some manic sugar indulgence where you are bound to be found hours later sobbing in your sleep, with chocolate smeared all over your face and hands…. with your belt unbuckled and splodges of nougat and praline splattered all over the walls. Or you stay behind after the bar shift ends and slowly sip a cold beer to shake off the arduous nature of the bar shift. Then you crack another and another. Before you know it you have the Karaoke machine blaring and are semi naked, drinking lemon flavoured dark rum mojito’s, singing some Brian Adams number as the sun comes up and the cleaners poke their non English speaking heads in the door.
Beginning blogs and finishing them are not the best of horny bedfellows. It’s akin to a lot of peoples exercise regime’s – it’s a simple thing to join the gym, but going there when you’ve just worked ten hours, it’s pissing down outside and the final of X factor is on is a completely different matter. It all takes dedication and persistence. Blah blah blah. Enough of that I say to you. Down off my soap box.