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I know I seem a little obsessed by The Cure right now, but don’t worry, I’m a pro - it’s just one of about a gazillion current obsessions. Wait til I get on to Faust. And the vintage drum kit I’m trying to justify buying because it was used on one of my favourite albums, notwithstanding no drumming ability, no space for a drum kit, and no money.

I like this cover of “Catch” by Art Brut, it sounds rather like some East End pub rock band decided to launch into a bit of goth pop. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Captures the nonchalance of Robert Smith’s lyric quite well, I think (strokes beard thoughtfully). I don’t know much about Art Brut - they have a song called “Alcoholics Unanimous” which I’m not going to post as I think it’s rather too obvious for this blog, as well as being pants.

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Art Brut - Catch

Well, in order to kick-start this blog after a few months in the doldrums, I thought I’d work through some non-AA (or other 12 step fellowship) approved literature. So I’m going to be choosing as topics quotes from one of my favourite films, the childish, immature, facile but nonetheless completely brilliant “Wayne’s World”.

Well, I hope this is going to work.

My concert going is not quite at the level of absolute mania it was last year, but looking back at the list of stuff in my last.fm diary there’s been some good ones recently, and one of those was the Indietracks festival at the Midlands Railway, Butterley in Derbyshire. This is a completely charming festival where you park up, wander on to a railway platform, get on a real live steam train, and sit in a Formica bar drinking lukewarm pop as you chug through a leafy cutting to a railway yard stuffed full of old engines, carriages, railway buildings, and twee indie pop bands. With the main stage sponsored by Madrid’s Elefant Records there was a healthy contingent of Spanish bands and Spanish people, who always seem to be the friendliest people I ever meet at festivals. So, to kick off the totally amazing, excellent discovery of the Indietracks festival, here’s Cooper, a Spanish band who had heard before but didn’t really *get* until I saw them there supporting the Teenage Fanclub set. Whilst not likely to win any awards for innovation, they were nonetheless a charming, competent and heart warming outfit, who even apologised for singing in Spanish and threw in some English covers to make up for it. Here’s a picture I took of Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub enjoying the entirety of the Cooper Set.

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Cooper - En El Sofa

The sharp-eyed amongst you might have noticed that this post has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 12 step recovery. Well, I thought I’d try to ease back into that, the way I’m easing back into meetings (2 this week, an improvement). I really don’t feel like forcing it, I am sure I will think of something to say when I get the inspiration.

A classic example of this is creating an argument with a loved one with the specific intention of storming off in a huff and using once alone. At one stage in my active addiction, Sunday night (great choice!) was reserved in my head for using. So Sunday was the night I “worked”, so I had to be alone. Sometimes my then girlfriend had the temerity to think that she might stay over, watch some TV, stay the night, whilst I was working downstairs. Cue tantrums, “panic attacks”, pointless arguments about nothing. What a total cock. But of course this was my powerlessness over my addiction, as this question in the Narcotics Anonymous “Steps Working Guides” reminds us. Doesn’t excuse it, but explains it.

John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” seems appropriate at this juncture, here covered by The Faces, from a bootleg called “Killer Highlights”, shamelessly stolen (including the pic!) from here.

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The Faces - Jealous Guy

Next topic: Have I tried to quit using and found that I couldn’t?

Ha. See here.

Actually, the real crisis was hitting a place where there was no possibility of running, hiding, wheedling, whining, or negotiating my way out of it. There is really no need for a rock bottom to be a true spectacular, and although mine felt like it to me, there others with things that might objectively seem worse and others with things that objectively seem not so worse. I guess it’s the point when you subjectively think and feel that this is it, life cannot carry on like this, and something must be done. You don’t need to know what that is right away - that’s step 2.

Gruesome though my rock bottom was, I know look back on it as a point when things began to get better, and better, and better. And so today I’m lucky enough to be sober, in Spain, in a town called Elche, here to see my beloved Klaus & Kinski play. Here’s a suitably appropriate cover by them, and the same song covered live by Belle & Sebastian.

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Klaus & Kinski - Here Comes the Sun

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Belle & Sebastian - Here Comes the Sun (Live)

Next topic: What situation led me to formally work Step One?

OK, well at first I simply did not get this question, but then I read the f***ing manual:

Denial is the part of our disease that tells us we don’t have a disease. When we are in denial, we are unable to see the reality of our addiction. We minimize its effects. We blame others, citing the too-high expectations of families, friends, employers. We compare ourselves with other addicts whose addiction seems “worse” than our own. We may blame one particular drug. If we have been abstinent from drugs for some time, we might compare the current manifestation of our addiction with our drug use, rationalizing that nothing we do today could possibly be as bad as that was! One of the easiest ways to tell we are in denial is when we find ourselves giving plausable but untrue reasons for our behaviour.

Yep, there’s some familiar bells ringing here in the Narcotics Anonymous’ Step Working Guides. I can remember (pre-internet) having a flat with bookshelves groaning under the weight of CD’s that I couldn’t really afford, and justifying that to myself on the basis that as I didn’t drink it was ok, even though in its own way it was making my life unmanageable. If only the addiction had remained with CD’s… An addict can generally get addicted to *anything*, and justify that addiction on the basis that “it’s not as bad as [insert some other addiction]“. Whilst that might be true on a snapshot view, as addiction is a progressive illness, unless it goes unchecked, it’s going to get worse and cause unmanageability, and probably lead to other addictions.

“Addicted to Love” has always been an obvious choice for this blog, and hopefully to be slightly less obvious, here’s Ciccone Youth’s blasé cover of the Robert Palmer original, apparently recorded in a karaoke booth in a mall.

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Ciccone Youth - Addicted to Love

Next topic: Have I been thinking that I have enough information about addiction and recovery to get my behaviour under control before it gets out of hand?

Remember your last drunk, not your first drink.

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The Clash - I Fought the Law

Next topic: Avoiding dangerous drugs and medications.

Sometimes it’s quite refreshing to go back to the literature and see how low key and non-prescriptive it actually is. “Keep an open mind” says Living Sober. It goes on (and I paraphrase): If you find some of the stuff we suggest to be a bit whacky, rather than rejecting it forever, keep it to one side for the time being. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way. Do what works for you. Work the programme cafeteria style at first, if that’s what suits you. But try to keep a balance; our experience has shown the sooner we work the steps the better; and, remember, try not to rule things out permanently.

With the benefit of a little time in recovery, it’s easy to think that I’m helping newcomers by saying that they must do this and they must do that and if they don’t do the other, they’re gonna die. I forget how suspicious and stubborn and brittle and egotistical and, just, well, how screwed up I was at that point. And of course I have all the answers, right? The literature reminds me to be gentle. Even if the newcomer can get the concept of open mindedness to areas of the programme that don’t initially appeal, that’s achieving something that took me a decade or more to get to.

Aphex Twin has always scared me witless. His songs are scary, his videos are scary, I look at his website and it feels like the homepage to Hades. So, keeping an open mind, here’s two Aphex Twin songs melded together by Adem to produce something that is hypnotic, gentle and simply beautiful. Adem can obviously see something that I cannot. So thanks to him, and, erm, to Aphex too, I guess. From Adem’s 2008 covers album “Takes” this is “To Cure a Weakling Child/Boy Girl Song”.

Adem - Photo: Marius W Hansen

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Adem - To Cure a Weakling Child / Boy Girl Song

Next post: Use Your Common Sense