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POST #7: The Myth of the Functioning Alcoholic: A Toast to Delusion
Every year, as the nights start drawing in, the nation’s wine racks breathe a sigh of relief as thousands crack on with Sober October, the 31-day challenge to abstain from alcohol. Overnight, the grape juice runs dry and, for many, the moral panic flows: are you just a social drinker, or should you be worried?…
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POST #6: From pissed to pious: my move to the moral high ground
There’s a breed of sobriety that comes loaded, not just with humility, but with a sort of moral altitude sickness. The man who once raised more glasses than a Soviet submarine crew now sips mint tea with the sanctimony of a minister. He doesn’t just abstain, he ascends. And I’ve got to come clean. I…
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POST #5: We didn’t want serenity. We wanted sedation
What us reformed drinkers really wanted was the warm, wet blanket of oblivion. We wanted to change nothing and feel everything less. Or feel everything more. Or feel anything at all. You see, it’s not a one size fits all problem, but alcohol is something of a universal solution. It’s brilliant at providing temporary relief…
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POST #4: Britain doesn’t celebrate bank holidays. It survives them
I’m just jealous. Jealous of the pub-bound and proudly paralytic. Our true national sport. British bank holiday weather will be either apocalyptic or aggressively mediocre (it was actually quite nice, wasn’t it – I got a tan) but it won’t matter. Because the real forecast is a downpour of lager, prosecco and regret. We don’t…
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POST #3: It’s a London thing…
London, that great and garrulous sponge of lost souls, was the ideal city in which to cultivate a taste for things best left uncultivated. I moved there in 2000 for no other reason than people I knew were doing the same. To borrow from the lexicon of the lost, I was rudderless, a ship in…
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POST #2: The Exuberance of Youth
We convened in The Chapel. A multi-faith space for those seeking their higher power if that’s where they wanted to get it. The leaded windows cast a flat, empty light across the dated carpet – a dignified gloom which was fitting for the proceedings. It sometimes took a while for the group to engage in…
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POST #1: Am I an Australian Tax Resident?
Maybe you really are an Australian Tax resident. Maybe you’d rather believe you were. Anything is better than the truth, right? I remember asking the internet questions that I really didn’t want the answers to. We’ve all done it. Or rather, I wanted the answers, but I sure as hell wasn’t prepared, or didn’t know…