Want to sober up? The prison approach certainly works

Good news for booze-happy Britons who are advised today to go easy on their wholesale tippling. It’s easy to give up, and this from a fellow who drank a bottle of wine almost every night for … well, for about 20 years.

Even when I sailed around the world to become a singlehanded Cape Horner, Spirit of Pentax was well-laden with bottles and cans.

 I have to admit that at least one was opened almost every day, even in storms.

 Now I’m a wowser and have been for, yes, twenty years again. But back in my journalism days – journalism daze perhaps – to drink lots every day was just normal.

Horrendous, self-harming

A supper break in Fleet Street, for instance, meant that just about all of the journalistic staff would meet at a corner pub, usually no more than a corner away.

Looking back, it seems horrendous, wasteful and self-harming.

 And yet that’s what almost all of us did, following the drunken history of newspapermen before us since, well, almost since the trade was invented.

 The good news for those who would like to give up, who ought to give up, follows. Regulars to this blog page will know of the ambush that left me in jail for eight years. I was visiting friends in Hampshire when a gang from the now-defunct customs department ambushed the house.

 What a surprise to realise that I didn’t miss it for a moment - not in that first month, in the first year, nor in any of the eight years till dear friends who owned the ambushed home, Pat and Gerry, came to take me home.

I was taken straight into prison on a totally false charge of smuggling, which I believe the irresponsible agency soon realised.

A prisoner for eight years

However, they needed a 'smuggler' to convict an alleged drugs gang, and I remained a prisoner for eight years. Continues on the blogs for my adventure sailing book at http://sailingtopurgatory.com/index.php/feeds/392-want-to-sober-up-the-prison-approach-certainly-works