Sobriety - The Twelth Anniversary Waltz

Until a few years ago, when they finally decided to do one last tour for old times sake, today marked the anniversary of the last time i saw one of my favourite bands, and the last time i saw some people who mean a great deal to me.
And what a night it was, especially after seeing them the previous night in London, and travelling back up to Manchester on the coach with an old friend.
The last night of the tour, the last time I had randoms crash at mine after a gig, the last time I had a drink... Wait, what?
Lets back up a bit.
For some time prior to this, I had come to realise that I had something of a problem - my crippling social anxiety and terminal shyness made it difficult to make and maintain friendships, and while I could pretend to adhere to some if not most of societies expections with regards to social discourse, I found it emotionally and physically exhausting.
Then came the discovery of alcohol, and its almost mystical ability to mask my social inadequacies, at least temporarily. Just a couple of drinks was enough to turn me from some bloke standing in the corner of a room watching everyone into the life and soul of any party, the problem being that the effects wore off pretty quickly, meaning that to keep up the pretence, I had to keep drinking.
Nigh on 20 years of this left me barely functional without some liquid courage, and I found myself drinking more and more (and more often) just to maintain the illusion of being like everyone else.
It got to the stage where it was a standing joke at work that with my in-work and outside-work personas being so different, my preparations for a night out included necking half a bottle of whisky before leaving the house. (No one knew just how close to the truth this was - I wasn't necking it, I kept it classy and served it in a glass - but yeah, close to half a bottle for nights out with people from work).
Fairly early on in my drinking career, I would notice that pleasant buzz that enabled me to function wearing off, and I would mention to whichever group of friends I was with that I was going for a walk around whichever club we were in, or that I had spotted someone across the other side of the bar I wanted a word with, and off I would go to refill the tank - no-one saw me drinking inbetween visits to the bar, so they never realised that something wasn't quite right, and as the years went on, this only got worse.
The situation wasn't helped when I accidentally found myself working part time as a freelance photographer for several bands - It's one of those jobs where you spend all your time surrounded by alcohol, and people in various stages of inebriance, and no one bats an eyelid at someone over-doing it on the loopy juice - nearly 10 years of that almost got the better of me.
While I may have been a genial, often generous drunk (the cry "Whose round is it? Ahh sod it, I'll get them in!" was often to be found coming from my lips), a hard, mean streak occasionally surfaced - I was never violent or agressive, but would sometimes, randomly, say things which on occasion lead to friends abandoning me, or even cutting me out of their lives. But hey, who needs them, there are always more friends to make, aren't there?
As the years went on, the alcohol started exacting a toll on my body - as a young man, it didn't matter how much I drank, I never had a hangover, but the older I got, the more hangovers had, and the worse they were - which made getting up for work each day that much harder, and indeed staying at work without showing any ill effects was becoming almost impossible. Somehow, though, I managed to never miss a day of work, or be sent home ill due to being severely hungover - or, indeed, still drunk...
Occasionally I would take a week or 2 away from the sauce, try to sort my system out, but each time, I was back on it, harder than ever, I even occasionally threatened to quit entirely, but each time I found myself back on the road with various bands, with little to do but drink the night (and most of the day) away.
I realised I had a bigger problem than I had originally thought when there was a discussion about the show Friends, and specifically which characters we were - like most blokes, I was a mix of Joey, Ross, and Chandler, and usually the worst aspects of each - but then it hit me - I was actually Fun Bobby, Monica's barely functionally alcoholic boyfriend who would sneak drinks to make himself the biggest party animal in the room, but was completely socially inadequate, shy, even boring without a drink.
Then came this night, 16th March 2008, last night of the Four Star Mary UK tour 2008 - I had one last drink with the bands, went back to mine with a couple of friends, watched some videos I had taken over the tour on my laptop, and crashed...
The following morning, after saying goodbye to Mike and Gemma, and nursing the hangover from hell, I emailed some of the bands I was working with on a regular basis, telling them that I was taking a couple of weeks off to reboot my system and get some rest, possibly even indulge in some hobbies I had been neglecting recently. By the time that 2 weeks was up, most of them went on hiatus while preparing for final exams at uni, or went in to the studio and never came out, or just plain old split up, so by the time I had managed to keep away from drinking for a month or so, I no longer really had any reasons for going out drinking - which made it easier to not actually drink.
I noticed 2 things immediately - dealing with people on a day to day basis was much harder, my social anxiety had kicked back in with a vengence, and I was finding it more difficult to maintain existing friendships, except at a distance via the internet, and also I was feeling much better, both physically and mentally. Okay, I would have stepped over someones grandmother to get a drink, but not drinking meant that it was actually fairly easy to not go out without drinking, because going out and not drinking was, quite frankly, terrifying.
4 months after giving up drinking for a couple of weeks, several ex-girlfriends pinged me with friend requests on Facebook at about the same time - most of them I blocked right away, but one I decided to think about for a bit. A month later, I made my decision - I can't be doing with people, so meet my block button! Unfortunately, Facebook had moved some buttons around, and I hit the wrong one, accepting her friend request - minutes later, I got a chat request, we got talking, after a few weeks of late night FB chats and phone calls we decided to meet up, 11 weeks later we got engaged, and 9 weeks after that we were married...
11 years after getting married it is a lot easier - I have 4 fantastic reasons for not drinking (my gorgeous wife, my 2 adult children who may as well be mine even though they came as bonuses when I got married, and my baby daughter, who is everything I never knew I wanted), and though the temptation is still there, I just don't want to lose what I have.

My name is Stuart, and I am an alcoholic - it has been 12 years since my last drink...

StuartB