Reward and Punishment

This week has been hard. My job can be pretty stressful at times, and this week - Friday in particular - was really tough.

By the end of Friday I wanted a glass of wine (and wine isn’t usually my go-to drink of choice) so badly that it made me grumpy. Of course the result of the week and that day in particular being stressful contributed to that grumpiness, but the fact I wasn’t able to relieve that stress and grump with a class of wine made it worse.

I am pleased that at no point did I seriously consider just giving in and having a booze - that wasn’t an option and never even entered my mind - but I was keenly aware of how much I wanted one, how I felt I deserved one, and how I ‘knew’ that nothing else would achieve the same result.

I asked on my facebook: “Work day from HELL. What can I do after work that will achieve the same result as a large glass of wine without being alcoholic or fattening?”

Some of the answers (I suspect some may be more serious than others)

  • Go to the Gym
  • Listen to loud music
  • Crystal Meth
  • Valium
  • Spliff
  • Drive really fast
  • Karaoke
  • Trampolining
  • Cocaine
  • Just have a bloody drink woman

I think you will notice a theme to the list without my assistance. I realised as the evening wore on that the things I most wanted to do in the absence of a large glass of wine was

  1. Eat ALL OF THE BREAD
  2. Eat ALL OF THE CHOCOLATE
  3. Buy ALL OF THE SHOES

In short, my brain appears to be wired to find relaxation/pleasure/reward in drinking, eating carbs, eating sugar and spending money on pretty-but-pointless things. If I am going to survive this year without growing much fatter, poorer or running out of space to keep shoes I’ll never wear then I am going to have to find alternative coping mechanisms - because while Friday was a considerably more stressful day at work than usual there will be many more over the coming year which will need to be Coped With.

There were a number of people that suggested gym classes - and it appears my gym does offer an interesting sounding class on a Friday evening. I shall experiment with this and report back. It is going to be difficult though because unlike wine, carbs, sugar and shoes my brain’s reward centre does not see gym classes or exercise as any sort of reward; in fact it’s quite the opposite. I have to FORCE myself to the gym. Once I am there, and once the class kicks in, I generally do enjoy it, get those little wooshy work out endorphins and feel all smug and relieved afterwards. But those don’t last until my next workout session and I have to go through it all over again, cajoling and bribing myself to go to the gym, trying to remind myself that I’ll enjoy it once I am there (or if not I’ll be glad afterwards that I did it). It’s a battle to get my brain to accept that working out is Good Thing.

I don’t have to dig too deeply to work out why I have such a strong aversion to exercise.

The whole experience of PE, from having to be in public in gym knickers to being shouted at in front of the class for coming last in Cross Country, is one of the single most dreadful experiences in my whole life, and has genuinely affected me well into adulthood.

If you were sporty at school or good at games, you may not understand. But for those of us who were not terribly good at any of it, PE was HELL.

The assumption is that those of us who aren’t fast runners, or that can’t hit a hockey ball in a straight line, or can’t jump a long way into a sandpit are just NOT TRYING. It’s not that we aren’t any good at it, or have poor co-ordination, or painful feet, or any other reason. No. We’re just NOT TRYING.

And, as a result, PE for those of us who clearly AREN’T TRYING was a regular session of ritualised embarrassment, ridicule and punishment. The girls who were good at tennis, or hockey, or lacrosse, or cross-country, or track-and-field; they got encouragement and support. Those of us that weren’t could never please. Our individual improvement didn’t matter, that we’d maybe run 5 minutes faster in cross country this week that last week. It didn’t matter because we weren’t good at it. SO there was no point trying to improve yourself, because you’d never be as good as the golden sporty ones.

The emphasis was very much on the school winning against other schools, or Your class win against Other class, or if you went somewhere really posh, that your house won against the other houses. If you couldn’t help your fellow students win things against The Other Ones, then you were useless.

There was no education about how your muscles worked. About how important it is to keep hydrated as you exercise. How exercise affects your health and well being. There was no encouragement to the non-sporty (NOT TRYING!) ones to exercise for the sake of fitness itself. There was in fact no encouragement to exercise for the sake of fitness itself at all. As a result, the sporty ones got fitter because they liked to, and the non sporty ones got the impression that exercise FUCKING SUCKS.

Is it any wonder, really, that so many of us leave school firmly associating exercise with pain, humiliation and just general awfulness? Is it any wonder that so many of us even now have a MASSIVE mental block about going to the gym?

I really enjoy the gym classes I go to, I know I do, I feel great during them, after them, and I sleep better, feel better and am much fitter. But making myself go is such a massive effort of will, because I have it deeply ingrained deeply into my very soul that I HATE PE, and PE = EXERCISE and therefore I HATE EXERCISE.

Alcohol, chocolate and shopping are a different kettle of fish though. All the marketing aimed at us tells us that these will make us better and happier INSTANTLY, but I’m a fairly intelligent marketing-cynical woman and I don’t think it’s the marketing that makes my brain and body yearn for high fat high sugar high spend mental rewards. While I know where my deep seated fear/hatred of working out comes from, I don’t know how it came to the point where my whole being demands these unhealthy and unwise rewards for getting through a difficult day. Was is something from my childhood, whereby pudding was only allowed if I ate the vegetables? I do know I was a very picky eater. Where chocolate was only allowed if I’d been good? I don’t remember sweets being used as rewards so much as a child, but I do remember gifts being used as bribes. I remember Mum promising me a new Garfield toy if I was good at a family gathering once. I remember for university essays I would buy a massive bag of mini eggs and allow myself one for every 200 words. Do we all have this unhealthy reward reaction, or is it just some of us who learn that booze/sugar/shoes are the reward for life, rather than *life* being the reward for life? This all needs exploring in more depth and perhaps this time off the alcohol will help give me the time and the clarity of thought to really unpick it.

As for the fear of working out, this is something I managed to lose while I was playing roller derby and learning that my body was a tool and a weapon, and was powerful in its own right, and I learned to love my body and what it could do. Over the months after the injury and retirement I have lost that along the way and need to rediscover it. I know where the work-out fear comes from though, and I know how to beat it. I do think however that a link between the rising obesity of young people in this country has something to do with PE in schools and the sorts of experiences I had.

Perhaps a solution to the so called ‘obesity crisis’ is to shift the emphasis on PE in schools away from ‘winning’ and overall achievement to a greater emphasis on personal fitness, on how your muscles work, on how to keep fit, and most importantly, that exercise can be fun, and that it can make you feel really good, and that it is a means to its own reward - not because you can allow yourself some cake afterwards. Working out IS the cake. As it were.

I have struggled for most of my life with my weight and fitness. If anyone at school had said to me ‘it’s really not whether you win, or how fast you run. It’s about getting your body moving so that it gets stronger, and you feel better’ I think it would have made a HUGE difference.

If I was queen of the universe, PE would become ‘Health and Fitness’ and would consist of a much wider breadth of sports covered, it would focus on individual improvement over school attainment, and would teach children how important exercise is, and that exercise is fun.

And I’d make gym knickers and communal changing rooms illegal.

4 Comments From The Vaults, Me Me Me

Sugar logic

Three weekends in and I’ve still not hit the wall. I’m still enjoying not drinking, and while last weekend had some wobbles there were few this weekend.

The closest I came to a wobble this week was on the countdown to 5pm at work, with a colleague’s leaving drinks and a wedding reception to attend. As the weekend drew nearer I started to feel like there is slightly less joy to that weekend countdown when there’s no glass of wine on the other side of 5 o’clock. It did make me wonder why I have such a strong association with the end of the working week and a booze drink. I think this is pretty typical of our culture; we see that glass of wine/beer/G&T etc as a reward, as a gift to ourself for our hard work. I love my job but it can be stressful at times and my office environment is full of people doing REALLY stressful jobs and there is definitely a link between having that rewarding drink and unwinding and letting all the crap of the week go so you can enjoy the weekend. Some of the drunkest nights I’ve had have been Friday after work drinks with colleagues. I suspect as the year goes on and this gets harder (and I am sure it will, once the novelty wears off) I am going to have to ensure that I make plans for Friday nights or Saturday morning so that I have something to look forward to that isn’t alcoholic.

The wedding reception was tricky at first - it was a low key affair being held in a craft beer pub in Hackney (there are many many craft beer pubs in Hackney. If you throw a brick in Hackney and don’t hit a craft beer pub or a microbrewery it’s probably because the brick hit a hipster first.) We arrived before the wedding party and I felt a little awkward holding my lime and soda surrounded by many drunk trendy people, students and Craft Beards (which is what I call people REALLY into Craft Beer). This was the first time I’ve found it hard to get into the party mood while sober - I couldn’t quite get comfortable, or find my way into conversations. This was exactly what I’ve always been worried out - that I am a boring person, bereft of charm and conversational skills. Being drunk has always been like having layer of liquid confidence - a sparkling armour that makes you hilarious and fun; and if you’re NOT hilarious and fun then at least everyone else is drunk, and you can always say later ‘god, how embarrassing, I was SOOO drunk.” This moment was always going to come, and I suspect there will be more, so it was good to get the first one over and done with. This is also exactly why I need to do this. I can’t go through life drinking just so I feel interesting. I need to learn to be interesting without being drunk. Or perhaps get up enough self esteem to believe I already am.

On Saturday I had a good hair day. These don’t happen often. I insisted that Mr RockstarDinosarPirate and I go out, because I couldn’t waste a good hair day on a quiet night in. As it turned out this good hair day coincided with a flying visit from Mr RockstarDinosarPirate ‘s beer blogging friend’s Dad Mr F, over from Colorado which is even more Craft Beer obsessed than Hackney. Mr F loves his booze. Mr RockstarDinosarPirate and I were in Colorado for his birthday earlier this year and Mr F has more drinking stamina than people a third of his age and can be very insistent that you join in. How many of your friends’ Dads make you do tequila shots at 3am at an afterparty? (The day after his birthday we had a flight to New York with one of the worst hangovers I’ve ever had.) Mr F was very keen to see us and we arranged to meet them in Brewdog. On the plus side, this meant that my Good Hair got to go out. On the downside, it meant I needed a strategy for Saying No to Mr F. We decided telling him I’d given up for at least 3 months wouldn’t work. We considered trying the Medication Strategy (sad face I am on antibiotics) but that wouldn’t work either. We thought perhaps just accept any drink purchased for me and pretending to drink it whilst sneakily pouring it into Mr RockstarDinosarPirate’s glass. In the end we went for simply making sure I always had a drink in my hand, so the topic never came up. It worked, but mainly because by the time we met up Mr F and family had been drinking for much of the day already and probably didn’t even notice that I was sober.

Non-alcoholic options in bars (in London, at least) are definitely getting more interesting. But then perhaps they’ve always been interesting and I’ve just never asked. Why would I? I’m too busy seeing what rums they have. Brewdog had a delicious sugar free cola from Hamburg. Unfortunately due to the ‘always have a drink in hand’ strategy this meant I had more than was probably wise, and the caffeine hit meant I was up watching You Tube videos of Penn and Teller until long after Mr RockstarDinosarPirate had drifted into a somewhat craft beer induced slumber. At my colleague’s leaving drinks I discovered ‘Raw Fyah’ - a super spicy ginger beer made locally in Hackney. Super tasty (and I have to admit it would be lovely mixed with a spiced rum) but again too many and I’d have a sugar high of epic proportions. I don’t want to exchange an alcohol problem for a sugar one. But at least there are more interesting options out there for the non boozers than your basic J2O or a lime and soda.

Sundays are fast becoming a joy. When you’re not shattered or hungover the weekends seem longer, and whereas Sundays used to be recovery space in between PARTY TIME and OH GOD MONDAY - usually involving a duvet, a pizza and some sort of Netflix marathon - they are turning into an occasion to see friends, see London and try new things. Today was a real treat - afternoon tea with some Dry January pals. We put on party dresses and makeup and treated ourselves to tea and cake as a reward for our effort at sobriety, and shared some of our experiences. It’s clearly not just me who is loving Sundays, and it was interesting to hear that most of them are also sleeping better. I’ve always been a terrible sleeper but for the last two weeks have found it much easier to get to sleep and stay asleep. I’ve been waking up feeling rested rather than ragged and drained. After stuffing ourself with cake and scones the sugar high hit us like a train. I’ve always had a sweet tooth but never noticed sugar highs with such intensity before; we wondered if we were noticing it more because none of us had had alcohol for weeks. We then went on a sugar crazed spending spree of epic proportions - buying bags, makeup and perfume and justifying it all as being money that we’d SAVED by not drinking so therefore TECHNICALLY all of this is FREE STUFF. Sugar logic is potentially as dangerous as alcohol logic - and at least with alcohol logic it’s at night so most of the shops are shut and the worse purchasing decision you can make is a Pot Noodle.

7 Comments The List

January continues

On Monday I went to a free ‘Introduction to British Sign Language’ evening course. I cycled there, and got a bit lost. I stopped to ask for directions and - this being the sort of thing that happens to me - the dude I ask is deaf. He manages to give me pretty good directions, considering all I know of BSL pre-course is limited to the finger spelling alphabet and the makaton for ‘biscuit’ and ‘toilet’ due to teenage years spent volunteering with children with special needs. The course was great - and so I have signed up for the 6 month level one course. Mr RockstarPirateDinosaur pointed out that with the amount I drink, I’ve pretty much paid for the course if I don’t drink for 3 months. A sobering thought indeed.

And so, we’re two weeks into January. We’ve successfully navigated the allegedly most depressing day of the year, and the dry Januaryists have survived a third of their abstinence.

I haven’t worked out how far into mine I am because I think it will scare me out of it, and I kind of feel like ‘getting through it’ is the wrong attitude for me. I need to keep reminding myself that I am doing it to learn more about me, to reconnect to the me that can have fun without booze. To wish that to happen faster, to ‘get through that’, would be to do myself out of the experiences I need.

There have been three wobbles.

1 - At birthday drinks for a friend and long time drinking buddy where (due to being hopeless at remembering things like birthday cards) I bought him a birthday shot. I asked the barman for something ‘tasty and different’ and he winked at me, saying ‘I have just the thing’. He brought a bottle up from a hidden cupboard under the bar which seemed to contain liquid sunshine. I could smell the caramel aroma as he poured it into the shot glass. I nearly licked the damn glass. Apparently it was a toffee vanilla liqueur. I didn’t ask the brand and I am not about to google it. But it did make it to the birthday boy. Lick free.

2 - Mr RockstarPirateDinosaur had some bandmates over to record some tunes. The drummer brought along something called Pirate Rum. It had a skull and crossbones on it. It smelled like chocolate and islands and warm spice. I smelt the bottle repeatedly. We had a conversation about whether or not *tasting* is cheating. I suspect it is. I didn’t taste it. Or lick the bottle.

3 - A discussion on my facebook about a glittery fruit juice purchased to make not drinking more exciting led to how delicious and exciting it would be if you mixed it with Smirnoff gold leaf cinnamon vodka. I didn’t buy any. Or lick the screen.

There have also been some highs which more than balance the wobbles. Not drinking has meant that I’ve got back on my bike. I once cycled everywhere but somehow got out of the habit a few years ago when I broke my hand in February and my rib in April and never really got back on other than to cycle to work. This weekend I’ve clocked up around 35 miles - cycling to fun events at which I would normally drink heavily. The first an air hockey tournament at which I was knocked out in the first round - with only my poor motor skills to blame without the cheap bottles of rose the venue sells which are my usual excuse. Games were played, dodgems were (not) dodged, and I cycled through central London for the aforementioned birthday party. Today I cycled to Canary Wharf and back for the London Ice Sculpture festival. I am feeling pretty pleased with myself. You can call it ‘smug’ if you like, but I will stick with ‘proud’.

I had some interesting conversations at the birthday party - many friends had seen this blog and knew of my intentions. Others were hearing for the first time. Some were supportive - one told me of a new definition of ‘alcoholic’ he’d heard at Halloween (another spectacular fail of a booze night for me - I don’t remember the last hour and I lost my house keys). Someone had said that alcoholism isn’t just needing to drink all the time, or having to have a whiskey with your cereal. An alcoholic is someone who, once they start drinking, sees no reason to stop. That definitely describes me on a night out. Just having one has never seemed an option. Some were less supportive, or supportive in their own unique way - for example offering to pour shots into my lime and soda while I wasn’t looking. I had a chat with an old friend who has been booze free for some years now, who said “look at it this way, when you’re giving up alcohol just getting to the end of the day without drinking any is a successful day. You could sit in your bed all day eating jaffa cakes and watching bad films and at the end of the day you’ve still achieved something.”

I definitely had a lot of fun this weekend. My ‘wobbles’ were more about wanting to *try* booze than *drink* booze, and I found myself perfectly able to have fun, be silly, let myself go and talk to people without alcohol assistance. It’s possible that the conversations I had with friends were considerably more coherent than usual. Today I even got the giggles, along with 2 fellow dry Januaryists, so much so that we all cried with laughter. Hilarity can ensue during arguments over whether sprouts are ‘evil sulphur balls of doom’ or ‘fun sized cabbages’ just as much sober as hammered.

Next weekend will be an even bigger test - a wedding reception…

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Introduction to the Rockstar Dinosaur Princess Pirate

When I was 5 I wanted to be a rockstar dinosaur pirate princess when I grew up.

30 years later I am none of these things, although I was briefly one for a while and one out of 4 of such lofty goals ain’t bad.

2014 is the year I will be closer to 40 than 30 and this makes no sense to me whatsoever. When I was 5 and had my rocking giant lizard corsair dreams 40 was so incredibly old I couldn’t even imagine ever reaching it.

2013 was the year I quit roller derby - the only hobby I’d ever truly stuck with - and it left a gaping hole in my life that I soon realised had, pre-roller derby, been filled with drinking, partying and general excesses. I made a list of things I wanted to achieve in the yawning chasm that became my spare time. Here is that list:

  • Learn to sew. Start with cushions, end up with dresses
  • Learn Sign language
  • Start writing again

It’s not a big list. And for the 6 months after roller derby I did nothing with that list other than make a half hearted and not terribly good cushion out of a roller derby t-shirt and ask a friend if I could borrow a sewing machine, which is still sitting in her hallway months later waiting for me to pick it up. The knee injury that hastened my retirement from sport became an excuse to do nothing and eat everything and my weight slowly crept back up to a level it hadn’t been at since a year on Weightwatchers back in 2002. I let life slide along, not entirely miserable but not exactly happy either. I started to feel like I was somehow participating in my life but not really living it; going through the motions but not really taking part.

Then New Year’s Eve 2013 happened. I don’t quite know what happened - but the short version is I had a horrible drinking experience. Possibly the worst of my life (and I have had some pretty horrible drinking experiences in my time) which lead to much sobbing, several panic attacks, a three day (at least, I’m still living it) hangover. It nearly ended my relationship. It’s a blessing almost that I don’t remember exactly what happened while drunk, but what I have been told makes me very sad indeed. Both the dreadful things I did and said, and the wonderful things that happened that I cannot remember. It made me really think about my relationship with alcohol, and how it has impacted on so many parts of my life.

I have a number of friends doing dry January, which I’d never even considered before. I’ve always been of the belief that January was miserable enough without denying yourself the best escape from that miserableness. But then I re-evaluated that statement. What it is about alcohol that makes it so important in my life? I mentioned to a few people I was considering going off the booze for January, and possibly longer. Reactions were a mix of horror, disbelief, condemnation and ridicule. This only made me think more about how alcohol - in particular social drinking - has taken on this huge significance in my life and that of my work colleagues, my friends and my family. How the act of not just drinking but of *being drunk* is tied up in my psyche. I want to really think about this in 2014 and unpick it.

So back to The List. It has grown, and changed.

  • Learn to sew. Start with cushions, end up with dresses
  • Learn Sign language
  • No drinking for 3 months - re-evaluate on 1st April whether I want to stay off booze for a further 3 months
  • Start writing again - and document my attempts to do all of the above

New Year’s Resolutions can go so horribly wrong, especially when you announce them to the entire world. It remains to be seen whether I will wake up in a pool of my own dribble after a massive bender in two weeks’ time, whether that sewing machine will remain in my friend’s hallway and whether my knowledge of sign language will be limited to the alphabet.

Possibly the hardest thing will be getting into the habit of writing weekly. I can’t even promise that my weekly posts will be about The List - I have a tendency to get an idea or a rant in my head which has to come out - so future posts might even cover feminism, politics, society, animals, the weather or whatever it is that has made me think or feel or cross or cheerful that week. I am open to suggestions.

So to sum up, just as I am not the Rock Star Dinosaur Pirate Princess I aimed to be when I was 5, this experiment of mine may turn out to be something quite different than where it started - with The List. But much like those intervening 30 years, it could also turn out to be just as interesting.

2 Comments Me Me Me, The List