I promise you all that I will eventually write about things that aren’t announcements. I pledge to you that there will be some amusing observational essay, or hilarious but dividing opinion piece. Though until then please allow me this on a special anniversary. I also took a blurry photo after recording the video version, see blurry photo where I look incredibly serious below. and video version - HERE - I’m gonna stop doing video AND written ones of the same thing cause I need to use YouTube for songs and here for this sort of stuff.
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The day of me posting this, I will be exactly 1 year completely sober. A fact probably more surprising to people who have casually crossed paths with me over the years than to anyone else.
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Unfortunately I happened to build a whole brand around being hammered. I say brand rather than personality because it felt more intertwined with any work, which when typing out - sounds completely deranged.
Gin addled! Gin swilling! Gin soaked! Wine guzzling! Wine drenched! Boozy old clown!
For a while when you googled gin addled whore, I was the number one google image result. Followed closely by Paris Hilton and strangely, Adam Lambert? (Hi Adam, I know you must be reading this. You follow me on instagram so I can only assume you’re incredibly invested in everything I do. Probably? Please write back and confirm your previous gin addled whore status, thank you.)
I even had ‘GIN?’ Tattooed across my fingers, which I’ve now had covered up. Covered not just due to the sentiment but also because it looked shit.
I felt like I couldn’t DO my work without having a drink. In my starting (performing in pubs underage with a fake ID) years it was whisky, then gin, eventually shifting into red wine, then it was full circle back to whisky on my last stretch of boozing while on the clock.
More often than not I’d also goad an audience into goading me to drink more and more on stage. Making it feel like an important part of the experience, a vital part of my theatrical exchange with them. Where as the show goes on I have to try really hard to stay focussed while a good majority seem to find it funny that I’m getting more and more dismissive and belligerent and erratic. I’d also do anything for a laugh, so I could just excuse my frequent state for artistic dedication? It also just felt like what I should be doing while I’m doing what I do. Some C minor vampy oom pah pah plays while I stand there, the demented weimar sex clown I am - croaking out whatever song about death, murder or disease that I happen to be doing. Though thankfully now I know this can also be a sober activity.
There’s a few reasons I stopped drinking, that I couldn’t sincerely pin it onto one. Though I’m partial to being erratic emotionally, like anyone who actively chooses to work in the arts. So that’s not an ideal baseline to be working from to begin with anyway is it?
To give it a vague but possibly relatable overview - In the weeks leading up to my decision, I felt like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol being visited by ghosts. Me in one of those long hats that people sleep in for some reason in these things, being belligerent and denying I was ever a problem. Then like Scrooge in the story - a fairly eye opening visit from The ghost of Christmas future, then I was sober fairly quickly.
I didn’t really make a big song and dance about doing it, I just did it. I decided not to post anything online or make any big dramatic statements unless I made it to 1 year (here we are!) - partly because it was no one else’s business but also on the risk of me just not sticking to it. So a whole year felt like the correct amount of time to make sure I -
Wanted to do it
Actually did it
Would decide to stay sober longterm
I had vaguely mentioned it in a few shows in a passing ‘I don’t drink anymore’ flippant way. I’d once mentioned it more thoroughly during a particularly awful show where I hadn’t long been sober and I just had to lament that usually I’d be completely hammered by this point, as I was feeling a bit too ‘seen’ and in the moment and wished I had something to take the edge off a half filled room of people who didn’t really know what they’d come to see and were acting like I’d forced them there.
I also recently mentioned it to a packed show full of lovely people and got a fantastic riotous cheer, which felt like the people who cheer on marathon runners. So that was beautifully encouraging and I will assume you got me here.
I got a few different reactions when I told people I was now sober, though the most frequent reoccurring one was asking if I now felt better because of it. The answer is honestly - not really?
Though I certainly don’t feel worse. I can always see the situations where I feel not shit anymore more clearly. Waking up the day after an event staring at the ceiling, retained muscle memory making me unwilling to move because thats when I’ll feel like hell. Then now I do move and I am fine? That still gets me and makes me feel grateful.
It perhaps feels disingenuous to say I don’t feel better, because I really do - but not in the way I feel like people are asking me if I feel better. I think with alcohol sobriety it’s often expected to feel like a transcending experience, like somehow you’ve been given a key to unlock all your feelings and potential that have been held captive by excessive drinking. Like somehow when your head clears you’ll accomplish all these things you couldn’t manage before, because you were either too hammered or too hungover.
For some people I absolutely think that can be the case and the fact that it can do that for them is amazing, though I don’t think that is the case for everyone who would also maybe benefit from laying off the sauce. I think it should also be allowed to feel mundane and that can also be transformative for someone. Something as simple as being clear headed enough to wake up early in a new city and have a walk around before you need to leave again, which is a big part of what it’s been for me.
On reflecting when I’ve been too far gone to really enjoy something properly, the one that comes to mind is being at the London Palladium as part of a tour in 2022. We did 4 shows there and for 2 and a half of those shows I was too hungover or drunk to really string a sentence together. Yeah I did get 1 and a half of the 4 to take it in, but it’s unlikely I’ll ever be on that stage again, so in hindsight it would have been nice to actually get to be present for every moment.
But how many people can say they had a hungover nap in a full makeup backstage at the London palladium while listening to a podcast interview with Thom Yorke? Realistically - Probably a few to be honest, but I’d still be in the minority. Is it a good thing? Not really. But I gotta find some bright side - I do really enjoy Thom Yorke.
If asked would I have said I was an alcoholic? No, probably not.
Was I an alcoholic? Yes, probably.
I say probably because it feels like a huge conversation I don’t feel qualified to have. Though the reason I don’t feel qualified to have it is because the word alcoholic has mostly been reserved for only the most extreme cases. That because I wasn’t reaching for the bottle first thing in the morning it can’t apply to me. That because I wasn’t unravelling my life chasing my next drink, I couldn’t possibly be one of THOSE. Though was it effecting me negatively? Yes. Did I find myself unable to think about anything else in certain situations because I needed a drink? I sure did. When I was stressed or upset was it the first thing I turned to? It sure was. Well, that or smoking! And I don’t do that anymore either.
I quit smoking in January of this year, after nearly 15 years. I quit because I found out my dad had quit and I figured if that grizzled old fucker can do it after 50 years of chain smoking, I can do it after 15 - and I fucking did.
Quitting smoking was so much harder than drinking for me. Drinking I just decided I’d not do it anymore and I didn’t. Though for months I was plagued by drinking dreams nightly, waking up and having to take a moment to realise it never happened. Smoking felt more significant a cut for me because I knew and had acknowledged that was an addiction and I felt it was one I wouldn’t be able to kick. Though I’ve not kept an eagle eye on days/weeks/months for that - whereas drinking I proudly checked how long it had been regularly. I never had smoking dreams after quitting, until the day I was writing this. It involved comedian Katherine Ryan transporting cats to a festival in plastic bags, me hiding in a crawl space, running so fast in a field towards Bob Mortimer that I started flying and all the while I was wearing a Miss Piggy t-shirt. No wonder I needed a cigarette.
All things considered - I think I need to admit that maybe drinking did have a firmer grip on me than I would ever previously admitted.
I try to take stock of what I have now from not drinking.
A clearer head, more money, more mornings. Though most importantly I feel like I have more time. I’ve gotten days and days back.
Though in the spirit of honesty and not making this like some self help guru entirely transcending positive experience, those extra days have probably been equally as wasted as I would have been wasted the night before them. It’s just that it doesn’t hurt to enjoy that wasted time anymore.
Love,
Joe
x
ps - here is me lounging seductively yet soberly backstage. also the Tom Waits Small Change album cover I desperately want to recreate at some point, this is the closest i’ve gotten so far. One day. One day! He’s also sober now too.
