Addiction

'The early stages feel good'
Joe, 42, grew up in London but now lives in Hamburg, north-west Germany. He is a musician and also works as a gardener. Joe is also, he says, dependent on alcohol.

'I drank my first beer at the age of 13. I wasn't overwhelmed by the taste, but I loved the feeling. I started drinking 'regularly' (at the weekends) at 15.

'I've always been primarily a beer drinker. In my teens and twenties I drank spirits, mainly vodka and whisky, in larger quantities than I do these days. I don't think that my level of alcohol consumption has changed much over the years, but my sense of dependency has certainly increased. I do more solitary drinking than I used to.'

A personal ritual
'On a working day, my first beer, which is usually a can in the train on the way home, is pretty much the pivotal point of the day. It's a personal ritual: turning a switch off (or on), celebrating the end of the wage-slave part of the day. If I'm working the next day, and there's nothing special planned for the night, my consumption will be moderate, by my standards, over the evening: two cans on the 45-minute journey home, a cup of tea when I get in, another beer as an aperitif, then food with either a bottle of wine (of which my partner will drink one or two glasses) or two to three more beers, either at home or in the local.

'Weekends and non-working days are different. The first drink is usually earlier – around mid-afternoon. When I go out, to a bar or club, the rate escalates. I'll drink five or six beers without really noticing them. Then, when I'm already half drunk, 'second wind' often sets in, and I'll start drinking shorts, usually straight tequilas, in between the next couple of beers.

'If I've had enough to feel bad the next day, I'll go easier; if not, Saturday night is the same procedure as Friday... It has to be a pretty severe morning after for me to go more than 48 hours without a drink, unless I've made a conscious decision to go on the wagon.

'I like pubs, but I probably do more drinking (though at a slower rate) in than out. Apart from anything else, there's a simple financial reason for this. In Germany, where I live, you can get six beers in the supermarket for the price of one in the pub. Although I do worry about my drinking in general, I have no particular sense of guilt or stigma about solitary drinking – I enjoy it, in fact; it makes me feel more relaxed and reflective than social drinking does.

The good and the bad
'As for the effects in general, it's the early stages that feel good, of course. Usually, I hate actually being pissed; but the initial feeling of altering my state of mind, of shifting the perspective a little, is very pleasant – I have a sense of stress evaporating, of neuroses fading into the background for a while.

'I don't particularly worry about the negative physical effects – not yet, anyway. In spite of the booze'n'fags, I'm reasonably fit, and at my last check-up (five years ago, admittedly) my liver was fine. If I have a hangover headache, I'm fairly stoical about it. However, the psychological effects do worry me. I can take an aspirin for a sore head, but the only thing I can take for the anxiety and depression that follow a heavy bout of drinking is ... another drink, of course.

'The only practical problem that I see about being a regular drinker is the waste – of both time and money.'

Other drugs
'The only thing I'm more dependent on than alcohol is nicotine, and it bothers me that, inevitably, I smoke more heavily when I'm drinking. I also smoke cannabis, though not as much as I used to, as my resistance to it is much lower than it used to be, and I can never be sure whether it's going to make me feel hilariously good-humoured or just plain paranoid. In general, I'm sure cannabis is a less harmful drug than alcohol; but I personally feel (or have the illusion) that I'm more in control with alcohol. I don't find that cannabis works well together with alcohol – you tend to get the worst of both worlds – though for some reason it seems to mix better with wine than with beer, for me.

'I take cocaine occasionally – maybe four or five times a year. This does 'mix well' with alcohol, in that it allows you to drink a lot more without feeling particularly drunk – with a corresponding increase in the severity of the hangover, especially the anxiety aspect of it.

Other people
'Drinking has certainly caused problems in my relationship. My partner drinks as well, though not to the extent that I do. Alcohol-fuelled aggression has never caused me to be physically violent; but it's certainly caused me to be verbally cruel, on occasions. Perhaps the cruellest thing is that you might be saying exactly what you mean, when drunk, cutting through the protective mechanisms of social propriety and emotional responsibility – in vino veritas?

'I've occasionally got into trouble with friends through drinking, but, as many of my friends are also drinkers, there tends to be an appropriate level of tolerance.

'As far as work is concerned, the only detrimental effect is the danger of being in a zombie-like state on a Monday morning – but I generally avoid heavy drinking when I'm working the next day.'

Dependence
'I know that I'm dependent on alcohol – and I think that it's a dependence bordering on addiction. I'm also aware of a family history of alcoholism: my grandmother drank herself to death at the age of 46.

'I give up drinking for a couple of weeks or so about once a year. Sometimes I just smoke dope instead; sometimes I give up both. I find that it helps to give up coffee at the same time.

'As I get older, I feel increasingly bad about my drinking. I feel varying degrees of self-disgust, anxiety and futility; but I don't feel guilty – guilt is something to feel about the damage you do to other people, not to yourself.

'Being on the wagon is hard work, especially for the first couple of days. The worst problem is getting to sleep: the last time I did it, I resorted to sleeping pills for the first few days. Having a pub-oriented social life doesn't help, of course. It does get easier after a while, but I'm always looking forward to falling off again.'

Danger and embarrassment
'I suppose the worst drink-related experiences that I've had, in retrospect, are a couple of escapades, both long ago, that could very easily have ended (I now realise) in death or serious injury: climbing out of a fifth-floor window, for example.

'Embarrassing episodes are too numerous to mention, though I suspect that the most embarrassing ones are likely to be those that have mercifully been blanked out of memory – or at least, out of mine...'