4 pints 
 
My names ……….and I’m an alcoholic 
Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an almost over exaggerated interest in anything that captures my imagination. 
We sometimes call it an all or nothing attitude. An all or nothing personality. 
And that’s probably a good description of how I approach anything that catches my attention. 
Even my hobbies often resulted in being blown into some world changing enterprise. 
Small business ideas soon became world leaders.  
An Afternoons walk in the hills, could end up as being planned as an arctic expedition. They sometimes were. 
Everything was big and bold. 
The reality of these big plans, they existed purely in my head. 
An unusual reaction to something, would be how you’d describe how I approached any new plan. 
And the unusual reaction I had, was no different, to my reaction I to alcohol. 
It was an all-consuming, focused, a totally mesmerising reaction. 
I’d had it from an early age. 
A ludicrously young age. 
I was obsessed with alcohol, as I was with anything that I loved. 
My alcohol consumption was on the same level as I put into planning, buying and thinking about drink. 
I lived for getting drunk. 
I lived for party nights. 
I got so excited about anything I’d been invited to. Especially if it involved a free never-ending supply of alcohol. 
I’d got excited about anything, absolutely anything, that involved drinking. 
Occasionally, there would be two parties to go to in one evening. 
I worked out which one to go to first, which one would have the biggest supply of booze, and which one I could drink at without interruption, all night. 
It was all meticulously planned. 
I never got it right all the time. 
Occasionally, I misjudged a party, and heard the next day how I’d missed the better one down the road. And I ended up at some pathetic do, with about enough booze to get a knat pissed. 
The same thing happened on xmas eve and New Year’s Eve. I still didn’t choose very well, I kicked myself many times the next day when I heard about the other amazing party that id missed. It was more than annoying to get it wrong. It was actually depressing. 
I never once thought of which friends I was meeting. Or the good music I might hear. 
I wasn’t even interested in free food. 
Dinner parties became just a complete waste of my time and a complete waste of the lovely food being served. 
Why, because I just wasn’t interested. I went to dinner parties, only out of a sense of duty. 
If I did go to a dinner party, I couldn’t wait for the meal to be over. So that I could get on with real purpose of the evening. To get completely pissed as a mattress. 
What a waste it all was. 
What a complete waste of some lovely friendships, of some lovely evenings. 
I was at the time, in my teens, working as a builder. 
One job I was doing, was renovating a large old Georgian house for a solicitor friend. 
I was asked to clear the seller out and put all the rubbish in a skip. 
I was always honest. Without reservation. 
Whilst clearing all this rubbish out, I found two, one litre bottles of Sherry Brandy. 
Old bottles that the solicitor had obvious bought decades earlier. And they had laid in that basement for all those years. 
I wasn’t a thief. 
But I was asked to clear everything into the skip. 
So, I reasoned that if I drank the contents of these two bottles of Cherry Brandy, I wasn’t actually stealing them. As the bottles ended up in the skip as promised. 
Why this seemed reasonable, I don’t know. 
But I did. 
I was so obsessed with anything involving alcohol, that throwing the bottles away, still full, just wasn’t an option. I would rather have fed my toes to an alligator. I would have rather gone without air for an hour. 
So, I did what any normal alcoholic would do, and I drank them. 
And then I put the bottles in the skip. Empty. 
Four pints of Sherry brandy. In one sitting. 
In one afternoon. 
It was bloody wonderful. It was possibly the best afternoons work I’ve ever done and enjoyed so much. 
I went home very happy. 
And very pissed. 
I can still taste that Sherry brandy 45 years later. Especially if I eat a glanced cherry. 
Four pints of beer would have been a lot to drink and then drive home. 
Drinking Four pints of Sherry brandy was I’m sure a record. Especially in one go. 
What else was I meant to do? 
After all I’m a real alcoholic of our type. 
 
Anon