the Pavement magazine - Banter: No more quiet pints

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May 01 2019

No more quiet pints. Ruby’s tales of life off the drink

No more quiet pints. Ruby’s tales of life off the drink.

Some folk are lucky, they can just cut back. But I have to go all out abstinent. I can’t just have a quiet pint. If I have that, then I’ll definitely have another, followed by another three, minesweep anyone else’s at the pub, get a bottle of voddy after being thrown out and destroy my life in new and very shit ways. I did this maybe 1,000 times to learn I had to stay right off it. Well I had to be sure, didn’t I?
They tell you that you’ll replace one addiction with another. On films, and telly, you see addicts working out down the gym. Literally every person I know replaced the gear with pies and sausage rolls. Now their higher power is Greggs.
In recovery, you’ve forever got staff on yer back going on about how you are: ‘Have you spoken to the nurse?’ ‘Have you taken your meds?’ So, when you bump into yer pal down the road and he asks how y’are, you forget that he doesn’t want to hear all about your struggles shitting on the methadone. Maybe mind that.
I’ve learnt I don’t have an anger problem. Folk just need to stop pissing me off.
I discovered all these skills I didn’t know I had till I was off the drink. I’d been years living on fuck all, and working out the ‘pissed per pence’ (ABV strength divided by the price) of everything in the pub. When I started doing sums like that in my head down the garage, they’re staring at me like I’m Stephen bloody Hawking.

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