Fucking bastard sobriety!

I don't actually want or need a drink at this very moment. But I am so envious of those who can!
Tonight Dulwich Hamlet lost at home to Woking in the quarter final of the Surrey Senior Cup. Which doesn't sound so bad when you bear in mind we play in the Ryman League Division One South & they are Conference National, which is the top rung of non-league football, and three divisions above us.

EXCEPT....

Woking are in a serious relegation battle, and sent a team of youngsters & assorted nobodies to fulfil the fixture. They even forgot to pack their shirts & had to borrow a green away strip from our Youth Team manager! But that wasn't the biggest shambles of the night. We are (un)comfortably mid table, no chance of promotion, the play-offs realistically out of reach since before Christmas, if everyone was honest. This cup would at least have been a decent end to the season, it would have been Merstham away in the semi, who are also from our division. Albeit above us. But it was winnable. Tonight. The semi final. The cup!

And that's what makes it so fucking frustrating. There's not a lot of good times supporting an average non-league football team, so you tend to grasp any tiny bit of hope that you can tentatively touch. 'Normal' people can unwind, release their anger, & calm down by knocking back a few pints by closing time. Maybe going home a bit tipsy, even drunk, but calmer. Alcohol is a downer of a drink, which brings on depression, but it can also lift moods at times like these. I won't even attempt to explain what I mean by 'times like these' for if you are a football fan there is no explanation needed. You understand.

But I can't do that. In sobriety I am unable to pick up one drink, for it is that first drink that will get me drunk. Not literally, though I doubt it would initially take too many pints, as I haven't had one for almost seven years! Because the first drink becomes a second, followed by a third, chased down with a fourth...and so on.

It would be great to be able to go out and have a few bevvies & get a bit mashed. Sometimes I hate not being able to, even though I know I don't want to. Maybe I'm wistfully looking back to how I imagine I used to drink after games, which is clearly nonsense, as I drank to get drunk and fuel my addiction. But still, in my head, I imagine my drinking like old people recall the 'good old days', when in truth they were shit!

If ever I allow the teasing dregs of alcoholic madness in my brain to allow me to pick up a drink then it won't be a 'drowning my sorrows' session, to clear cobwebs of footballing depression. I will be totally out of my depth & back on way to skid row. I was fortunate enough not to be a 'street drinker'. I always had a roof over my head, and kept my job. Ironically I came closest to losing my job in sobriety at the beginning of 2006, as readers of my old blog will know. But just as Dulwich Hamlet are semi professional footballers I was a 'part-time' street drinker. For more than once I didn't get home. Waking up at the end of the line at a deserted station, not able to get home. Or at the end of a bus route in the middle of knowhere. Or simply waking up on a bench, or on a bit of green, not knowing how I'd ended up there in alcoholic blackout. Not that often, over the years of my drinking. Maybe 'only' once every few months.

That's why I can't pick up another drink, which is why I said that I don't want or need a drink tonight. I just wish I could!