Charlie, I really associate with the things you write. You seem to think about a lot of similar things to me.

My realisation around alcohol came five years ago, when I suddenly recognised that drinking alcohol altered my consciousness. That might seem simplistic, because that’s exactly what alcohol is about for most people, it’s a specific tool to take them away from their own consciousness, to get them out of the burden of their life. That’s certainly how I’d used it for a very long time, to get away from my life, from my own thoughts and feelings.

However, this time, I realised only reason I would want to get rid of something, or change it, is because I don’t like it. If I cherish something, I would never want to change it or lose it. So surely the same is true with my experience of life? For instance, if I don’t like my own consciousness, then alcohol is a great tool to get away from it. However, if you turn that logic on it’s head, it says that if I was completely happy in my own consciousness, then I would never want to change that, by drinking alocohol or any other means.

After this realisation, drinking alocohol lost it’s appeal and I suddenly wanted to start pursuing other, sober ways to improve my experience of life. Part of that meant ‘recalibrating’ my life away from the one that had alcohol entwined with it. The hard part was comparing a sober lifestyle to one with alcohol in it, but they’re completely different experiences, so it’s a pointless comparison. I now find myself doing things that I would never have considered being involved in when drinking, which has broadened my experience of the world enormously.