My Name’s Martin, and I’m an Alcoholic
Owning one’s bullshit by realising one’s co-created problems
I’ve been in Bali for four months now. In some ways, time has passed by so quickly, but when I also consider how far I’ve come on my healing journey, it’s astonishing. I am now an entirely new being.
After closing my creative agency in London, I had detailed plans to start an augmented reality gaming studio in Bali. The idea was a simple one: to create an awesome AR game brand, build an active audience and sell out for what I hoped would be a few million dollars. Happy days… The location and workspace were key: a seaside property on the east coast of Bali — with free yoga and guided meditation sessions and surfing on tap. A pretty perfect workspace for Indonesian coders and ‘bule’ (foreign) digital nomads alike; a cool workplace culture with mindfulness at its core. Despite just managing to break free from the stress-inducing world of busyness and having literally only just recovered from a nervous breakdown, I’d already spent a load of time and cash developing the concept, and the plan was set.
From the age of 18, the longest holiday I’d ever had was two and a half weeks. For at least fifty per cent of those holidays, in some capacity, I would work. In the latter few years, I worked on and off through all of my vacations. Naturally, any holiday I’d had in those twenty-odd years had involved being moderately- to blind-drunk a lot of the time. As I’m sure many people with a drinking problem can relate: my ‘moderately drunk’ would have most people flat on their backs. The point: holidays were rarely proper downtime for me — rarely giving myself occasion for true and deep inner reflection.
And then I got to Bali.
And despite being sober for over a year, I really began my healing process. I didn’t waste any time, and within days I was attending sound healing and guided breath-work meditation sessions. I was in the gym, having surf lessons, and in yoga classes twice weekly. But the really cool thing I’d promised myself was to set and stick to a rigid meditation practice. Above all, this was my goal — to make time every morning and every evening to properly meditate for at least thirty minutes at a time.
So there I was… Having pressed the reset switch on my entire life, I suddenly had the time and space I needed to do some very intense methodical inner work. This work (I use the word deliberately) brought me face-to-face with who I am and who I had been. I had already done some phenomenal work in taking full responsibility for my life choices, but this was something altogether different. And then, at a specific moment which I’ll never ever forget, I had the stark yet blissful realisation that I no longer wanted to be in ‘busyness’ at all and that I wanted to write a book about my experiences, in the hope that it might help others in some way to work through their own addiction issues. Perhaps it might help those suffering from depression or even those who have considered taking their own lives, as I have — and indeed almost did — back in my dark days.
To be perfectly candid: writing a book about overcoming (your own) alcoholism and mental illness is proving to be an uneasy kind of therapy. Though a most welcome addition, it is too. Whilst I no longer live in my past, nor do I carry my pain or suffering into the here and now, the process of writing an autobiography forces me to sit uncomfortably in those dark spaces of the past. To watch the many incidents whereby I inflicted so much damage upon myself and others and to quietly observe the true flow of events (not the made-up or edited versions I spoon-fed to myself). In these instances, it has now become natural for me to observe, feel, learn, and then let go of the pain once more. To fully acknowledge the perspectives of those affected by my illness and subsequent behaviour. This is only through doing some very, very deep work.
“Writing a book about overcoming alcoholism and mental illness is proving to be an uneasy kind of therapy.”
Though I grew up with a chronically alcoholic mother; this process of remembering and healing has once again reminded me of the brutal and distinct lack of empathy that a narcissist has for others. So embroiled was I in my own self-indulgence, my own self-sabotaged dramas. I encouraged a queue of unsuspecting visitors to my carefully tended portfolio of Drama Triangles — many of them unwittingly taking an unplanned battering before being carelessly left by the wayside.
I write this not as a woeful journey into self-pity but as a positive affirmation that my rampage is over. I’ve recalled, observed, learnt from, and let go of all of it. Discussing the complexities surrounding the wider mental health effects of alcohol and substance abuse is still seemingly a taboo area carrying much social stigma. I’d like us to crack this conversation wide open. And as this happens, we will be able to fully recognise and accept the wide-reaching and epidemic issues surrounding our unhealthy relationship with alcohol and drugs; and the ways in which we use these substances to numb our pain.
I believe there is now a very blurred line between us having a regular drink and having a drinking problem. I often wonder what required more of my willpower: to stop drinking or to admit I was an alcoholic. Either way, here we are. My name’s Martin, and I’m an alcoholic.
