Over Christmas this year, I stayed with some friends, which was very pleasant. Food, company, sleep, and alcohol. Obviously the first three were all good things to achieve. The fourth I'm more ambivalent about. Yes, alcohol in general is a pretty good thing, but it made me start thinking about some things, looking at how some things change while others simply stay the same, and no matter about how long they stay buried, there still comes a time when they'll resurface.

  Several years back, I had a period where I had a kind of alcohol problem. Of course at the time it wasn't a problem, and in fact it was pretty cool. It was the cure to problems, not the problem itself. There was a large amount of other stuff going on at the time, things I had trouble dealing with, or accepting, or simply allowing to flood over me. Because of those, I started drinking more and more, in an attempt to block out the damage that was occurring from other sources, appearing from behind the scenes, and try to maintain some form of being me, instead of accepting the changes that these events were bringing about. Thankfully I've never tried to say I was smart...

  I don't know how to describe the habits and effects properly without it appearing to sound like some self-pitying drivel that even a politician would sneer at. I ended up with a period of time where I was getting through a bottle of spirits every day, sometimes more, but never less. I was never roaringly drunk, nor would I drink 'til I was sick, in fact I was rarely anything other than simply relaxed and unworried - but I'd have been lethal if I'd been driving a car, or attemtping to do anything that required some level of responsibility or competence. I didn't wake up craving a drink, but once a bottle was opened, it got finished. Drinking was simply natural, it wasn't any of the media-cliched cravings, binges, or anything else. It was simply natural.

  It took a while to come out of that mode - well, if not to come out of it then to realise it wasn't helping with anything, and to look at dealing with problems rather than avoiding them. Having a doctor do a check-up, sit back and give me a hugely reduced life-expectancy if I didn't stop immediately helped too.

  I spent three years not drinking at all. During that time I dealt with a lot of the stuff that had been going on at the time, worked on realising what had changed, what I'd done wrong, altered life-styles a bit, and generally worked on pulling things back into some semblance of normality - or at least what passes as normality for me. After that, I found I could drink sociably - not often, because it was just as easy for me to be me without the need for any alcohol at all. I've never been into the entire "drinks after work on a Friday" scheme of things, nor for the ethos of "It's the weekend, time to get fucked up beyond all hope of recognition". I'd visit friends, and be able to drink as much as I wanted, then stop. It's always been the stopping that's the hardest thing for me. All the same, the bottles were always emptied when they'd been opened.

  During that time, I gained a variety of friends who didn't understand quite why I could drink they way I could - nor could they understand why it was so important to me to be able to stop when I wanted to. I was accused of worrying too much about it, that I wasn't an alcoholic, that it was OK to drink every so often. I was told I was odd because I didn't see the point in getting so pissed I couldn't move, or that I had to puke my guts up. In fact, there was even pressure to drink when I wasn't in the mood to do so - until the people I was with realised that I was no different when sober to when drinking, that I still did the same daft things, and really didn't need to drink to lower inhibitions, or have a good time.

  Over the Christmas period though, I was relaxed, and content, and just drank because I wanted to. I didn't need to escape, didn't need to avoid changes or anything - it was just natural drinking. By natural, I mean I drank at a pace and a quantity that was comfortable for me. Not pissed, not even really drunk, just relaxed and content. But that level involved a bottle of vodka per night. It didn't hurt me, I didn't need to builld up to it, it was just the natural level. And that's what made me think.

  In the intervening decade of time, nothing's changed. No matter that I stopped drinking, or that I now drink maybe once a month on average (I suspect the figure is actually lower than that, but once a month will do for the purposes of this piece) and I don't drink to excess even then. But even after that ten years, I can slip straight back into drinking at that level. In many ways, it was scary to realise that, and in others it felt more like a vindication. I was right to worry sometimes about what I could drink, and to pay attention to my ability to stop drinking. Drinking a bottle of spirits isn't the challenge for me - NOT drinking the entire bottle is the challenge.

  I don't see myself as an alcoholic - I don't crave drink when I'm sober, I don't have binges of excessive drinking, and I don't drink until I collapse. But I don't know if that's how alcoholism works, or if that's not just the way the media portrays it. I'm not addicted to booze, nowhere near - but if I let myself drink the natural amount, I could easily drink a daily amount that would leave most people in a rehab clinic, or getting their stomachs pumped out - and I can drink it with no ill effect. So what does that make me?

  In truth. I don't know. I don't want to attempt to be "glamourous" by saying it's alcoholism, nor do I have any intention of belittling the people who do suffer from alcoholism. In many ways this has been one of the hardest pieces to write, because I don't want to sound like it's all bragging, the inevitable teenage boy's chant of "I can drink more than you", nor is it a way of seeking attention or sympathy, in fact all that I know this is is a set of thoughts that I'm putting into a keyboard. I don't know how things work out - all I know is that it's strange the way these things have that habit of coming back to seek braintime when you least expect them to.