What my mates did when I quit drinking

Even Super Lads have love in their hearts

Last week I wrote about my my wife and my six years of sobriety. A great deal of people got in touch with words of encouragement and congratulations that really moved me. Some people, struggling with their own relationship with alcohol, reached out for advice. A recurring question surrounded mates: how can you maintain your friendships once you take booze out of the equation?

This made me think about the role my mates had played in my own sobriety. I hadn’t reflected on it before: I’d spent so much time feeling grateful towards my wife or my therapist or the other recovering addicts who had supported me along the way.

But my mates were there for me all the way too. The ones who had helped me (unwittingly) forge the foundations of my drink and drug problems in the first place. A handful of lads I met at school (a couple of them at nursery) and hadn’t shaken off since. They were, like me, complete cunts. But they were my cunts. I didn’t want to live without them.

We’d drank, popped, snorted and laughed our tits off with each other non-stop since the last days of Thatcher right through to the ghastly reign of David ‘Shitface’ Cameron.

We didn’t really say anything nice or supportive to each other for the first thirty years of our friendships.

Our affection and support was communicated silently: we were just there for each other. We were great at providing distraction when times were tough. We didn’t want to discuss each other’s problems but were always available to go out and get battered whenever necessary.

We chucked about insults and piss-takes and comic aggression like confetti. We told ourselves that all was fair in love and banter. We assumed that we were the only ones who went home and stewed over the cruel things that had been said and done. Turns out we were all going through the same shit, we were just too scared to show it.

Beers and bucket bongs in the park when we were barely shaving. Fingering girls in the sand bunker at the crazy golf. Holidays in the Costa Brava, smashed off our tits and locked out of the campsite at 3am. Coke in west-end khazis. Pills and carnivals. Deaths, marriages, births and divorces. We had been through it all together. But was there anything of any real substance there, behind all the hedonism and piss-taking?

In 2015 I got sober and didn’t know what to expect.

One by one I let my old mates know that' I’d stopped it all - for good this time. They knew me well enough to know I was serious. Their response was so beautiful. There was no fanfare or inquest. No judgments or piss-taking. They were unflinching. All of them simply got on with our friendship. They bought me lemonades or made me cups of tea and never bothered me with tedious cross-examinations.

They pretty much acted like they didn’t give a fuck - which is exactly what I needed. When you first quit drink you don’t want it to be a big deal that you have to keep discussing. You’re still straightening your own head out. You don’t have any answers yet. My mates gave me space and time to work it out. Slowly, after some years, I started to open up here and there. They knew what I needed. It was a case of caring by not over-sharing.

They never left me out of plans or complained about me being boring (to be fair, I am never boring). They never did that thing of drunkenly imploring me to have ‘just the one for old time’s sake.’ These men had bigger hearts and more sensitivity than I could have ever imagined.

What they did for me was so quietly powerful.

I didn’t want to lose my entire identity just because I wasn’t drinking. I didn’t want to hand in my Jack The Lad card. They let me keep it. They showed me that I was still the same old Sam - noisy, a bit annoying, full of shit - only sober. And that was enough for them.

Recovery has made me more open and reflective with everyone I know (sorry about that, by the way). I’ve seen my mates slowly start to move in the same direction as they get older. I go running in the park with one of my best pals every week. We talk about family and love and vulnerabilities and worry. We help each other make sense of our everyday problems. We give each other advice. Sometimes we do something that would have been unthinkable when we were younger: we actually praise each other. We say nice stuff that makes us feel better about ourselves.

On the sly, when no-one else is listening, each of them have told me they are proud of me. What they don’t realise is the massive part they played in my sobriety. The deeper meaning of my friendships has been one of best discoveries of sober life. There were times in the past when I might have thought my mates were just dickheads I got drunk with. It turned out that they were my brothers - beautiful humans with gigantic hearts and incredible sensitivity that had been hidden for so long beneath all the beer and coke and banter.

It is there in everyone, I think.

The Reset Extra - Coming Soon

I’ve been writing this newsletter for seven months now and the accompanying pod has been going for six. It has changed my life - giving me an outlet for thoughts and feelings I didn’t even know I had - and helped me make connections with so many of you.

Until now I have been doing it as a labour of love (in the very truest sense). But it has come to mean so much to me that I am planning to expand it beyond a side-hobby.

This weekly letter and the midweek podcast will still be free - I’m not taking any of that away because I want my own outpourings to help and engage as many people as possible.

But there will also be bonus stuff behind a (modest) paywall. The usual podcast will now carry ads (to help make ends meet). But paying subscribers will get an uncut and ad-free version of the pod 24 hours before it goes out to anyone else.

Subscribers to The Reset Extra will also receive an extra newsletter, twice a month, that carries more than just my lengthy ramblings: there will be mini Q&A’s with some of my favourite interesting people; books, movie and telly recommendations to help put a smile on your face and reset your demons; bits and bobs about the other passions that help with my mental health: from running to nature to the best alcohol-free beers and that.

On top of all that, Reset Extra subscribers will be invited to monthly livestreams, which will be fully interactive and have an ‘ask me anything’ element (I won’t have all the answers but you should know I will tell you pretty much anything about myself).

Anyway, this is a heads up - more details next week. In the meantime would welcome feedback on this idea. I am so grateful for all the support you have given The Reset so far, the messages I get mean the world.

I don’t want to lose this community - The Reset extra is the best way to make sure it keeps going into the future.

The Reset Pod Episode 20 - Bobby Mair

Fans of my much-missed (but not really missed that much at all) TV show ‘Sam Delaney’s News Thing’ will know about my relationship with brilliant Canadian comic Bobby Mair. He was a hilarious reporter and panelist on the show throughout it’s three year run. We got together to record this week’s pod and had the most heart-lifting and beautiful chat about our friendship and respective experiences of addiction and mental illness. Not only is Bobby LOLZ - he is incredibly wise. Give it a listen.

The Reset On Instagram

Don’t forget I’m resetting my demons one image at a time over on Instagram. Please follow me @TheResetSam

Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

@calm 0800 58 58 58

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@ChairtySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/