The last time I drank alcohol was 3 weeks ago today. I am 21 days sober. This is no milestone, no cause for celebration, no victory lap. But for me, it’s huge. The longest I have gone on without a drink in my adult life, and a path I want to continue on – without a final destination in mind; without an estimated time of arrival. There will be no detours, no shortcuts. Going off-piste to get pissed is what I will avoid. I am navigating through this journey one day, one step at a time.
The last time I drank alcohol was at the Army and Navy Pub. England were playing woefully against Slovakia and the garden was packed to the rafters. Whilst kick off was at 5pm, I only planned to be there until 4pm, stopping for a quick pint after a lunch down the road with a friend who was visiting from Portugal. We stopped by for 1 or 2, just 1 or 2, as I intended to go to work from there slightly merry, slightly looser, and run the floor with service whereby we’d inevitably be extremely quiet that evening due to the big match and the heat wave keeping punters away.
One, maybe two beers. In, out. Then back on the graft, leading by example, fulfilling my self-imposed duties.
Sadly, as an alcoholic, things do not often pan that way. As an alcoholic, as someone who is prone to stress due to the nature of my job, who is prone to anxiety due to my upbringing and traumas, I often found myself spiralling out of control after the second pint when I am already feeling heightened negative emotions. That often means I become blackout drunk, where I lose all memory of the last 2-3 hours of the night, and wake up the next day miraculously wondering how the hell I even made it home in one piece? And then the self-loathing kicks in. I want to kick the shit out of myself. I want to crawl in a hole and have the ground swallow me up. I want to run, run anywhere, but run away. To switch my phone off and go AWOL. To message everyone and ask “Was I a dickhead last night?” but equally to avoid everyone because I am afraid of what they’ll reveal to me, about me. I want to die.
And there I am, having flashbacks of the night before. I am arguing with Jim, the landlord of the Army and Navy, because he won’t let in someone who is supposed to join us. Someone who I have never met before, by the way, but I take it personally because I am by this stage 5 Guinness deep. I keep pestering him, and like a broken record he is telling me “I said no more entries” and I see 5 people leave and say “LOOK! LOOK! They just left, surely you can let ONE more person in Jim? Eh? Jim? I thought we were pals? Jim??? Jim, why do you hate me so much? Come on Jim don’t be stubborn. JIM????!!!” And Jim finally snaps and shouts at me, full of rage “I SAID NO MORE ENTRIES AND THAT’S THAT – NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!”
Why am I arguing with Jim? Why am I drunk? Why am I not at work? What am I even doing?
All these thoughts mask my brain the next day. I fucked up, again. I went too far, again. How many times this year, Ferhat? How many more times? What’s the end goal here?
I am twelve. It’s Saturday and I head to work at Mangal II with my dad because it is the only way I get to see him and spend time with him. My parents aren’t divorced or estranged – it’s just that he works 7 days a week and always in the evenings, so I never get to see him except in the mornings before school where I kiss his forehead as he sleeps and I take the change out of his jean pockets so I can buy sweets. The restaurant has a small bureau downstairs back then, and mid-service, when no one notices me disappearing, I sneak into the devil’s lair and open the bottles of Baileys, Tia Maria, Gordon’s Gin and Smirnoff Ice, and take sips out of them all. I am twelve and I am drinking straight shots of alcohol in my father’s restaurant because… well, I don’t know why but I have this urge to. My dad drinks all the time and my uncles’ drink, and all our family get togethers are piled with grown-ups getting drunk and arguing and eventually fighting, and it’s all my tiny child self has ever been exposed to, so I figure I may as well give it a bash because that’s what every male role model does in my life. I drink it and it tastes like shit but the next week there I am again, back on the horse, taking shots and feeling a slight buzz, and I keep it all secret.
I figure, my alcoholism started there, at Mangal II. There are many more anecdotes, all negative, when I tie in getting drunk with my working life – the two intertwined like hell and fire. There’s the lock-ins. The afters. The mess. The time I was handcuffed and bundled in a police van. But also, there’s no need to overexpose myself any further. I am, or shall I say - I have been, reckless. I used to brush it off to mates and say “Yeah, my life’s been a bit wild, init? A bit rock n roll.” In hindsight, with maturity, I can categorically say that this is absurd. A completely stupid take. Embarrassing. There isn’t a single thing that is cool about getting drunk. More than anything, it’s sad. A chronic pattern of behaviour passed down to me as it was normalised to me as a child – often through the medium of the workplace (my family restaurant) as I saw my own dad in action, my own cousins who’d work there, all getting smashed. Subconsciously, I mirrored them, thinking that was the biproduct of working in hospitality. That chefs and waiters and restaurateurs all got fucked-up because it’s part of the culture.
It may yet be true.
But it doesn’t need to be my truth. Not anymore. My drinking had increased over the last 3 years. The blackouts more frequent. The regret and realisation of the consequences of my drinking more prevalent. The desire to stop, to change, to moderate it or something, anything, enhanced. But there was always an occasion – a friend’s restaurant invitation, a birthday, a favourite customer coming in and asking me to join them for a glass of wine, a trade tasting, a gift sent by a supplier. There was always a reason to keep drinking. There always will be. Now, I realise this acceptance is just a cop-out. I can’t avoid life, and whether I drink or not is not anyone else’s responsibility but my own. I can always find an excuse to drink and absolve myself of any accountability. Now, though, I see how that is a trap for me to revert to alcoholism.
I think about how I will be at the beach in Turkey in 3 week’s time, 35C intense heat as the sea washes over my feet. The shop next to the shore selling ice-cold Efes beers for £1, and how I’ll be thirsty and dying to quench that. And then remind I myself how tasty Lipton Ice Tea peach-flavour in a can is.
I think about my best friend’s wedding coming up in September and how I’ll be giving a speech as best man. And how, now, it will be with a sober voice – no shots or champagne to settle the nerves whilst I try and make 100 people laugh.
I think about the Mangal II book launch party we will hold in October with all my nearest and dearest present. How I’ll have to work the room, charm everyone and keep them entertained – all without my muse, my little pick-me-up, my old trustee alcohol to give me that edge. I will be raw-dogging it.
And I think, “You’ve got this”. Babysteps.
It wasn’t easy for me to write this latest newsletter, and it deviates a little from what a restaurant should be saying. But my descent into drinking started here. And the last time I drank, I was avoiding work. The cycle feels complete now, or more accurately, broken. And for that, I feel whole again.