February 14th 2012
Why No Booze for Taff

 For the past two weeks I have again been working as an instructor for sailing in school in Antigua. One way or another I have been doing this for quite a few years now. However each course brings a new set of characters to enjoy the Caribbean sunshine and the learning experience. With the Antigua experience there is the culture of drinking, you want to see binge drinking WOW!  the crews out here have turned it into an art form, sometimes Falmouth and English Harbour's, resemble an open air lunatic asylum...People often ask why I don't drink alcohol? My instinct is always to tell them the way it is. That being, the fact, that I am and always will be an alcoholic. It is many years, in fact in excess of 25years since I had a drink of alcohol and it plays no real part of my life.

It used to be that I would never tell people of my alcoholism. I remember once being at a dinner party with some other people some who knew that I was in recovery from alcoholism, while others were oblivious to the fact, after all they didn't care what I had in my glass only what they had in theirs. In those days I was a bit more careful who I broke my anonymity with, but one rather tipsy lady at a dinner party, looked me straight in the eye and said "why don't you drink?" I paused for effect, then holding her fractured gaze,I said in my loud welsh baritone, "because I'm a Muslim "  there was a stunned silence around the table, to which she said in her slurred voice  "Oh! how unfortunate!!!"

Peoples reaction on boats
I am sometimes confused when people get upset with one another on a small boat, when after all the object of the exercise is to achieve a reasonable skill set to allow them to move on either as a leisure activity, or with their professional qualifications to work on luxury boats as their chosen profession. It just seems that being thrown together ad hoc in a small boat can sometimes bring out the worst traits in some people. In others they become the life and can be the soul of the vessel, thank God, the latter is most often the case.

My Reaction sometimes irrational
I so often write of people, or a person who seemingly affects the way I am or what I do. I can be drawn by soft words or an ill thought comment, into despair. As is oft said these sticks and stones will break my bones but names and comments will never hurt me. What often hurts is the perception of what people think, their ill thought out ideas or half-truths which my fellowship seems rife with. My weak perception is such that I want no more of it. Having said that, I am quickly reminded by my subconscious mind that the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is what got me any measure of relief from alcoholism. You may wish to fire the doctor, but the medicine still works so long as I remember to take the correct dose.

 For several days now I have been favoured by gentle thoughts, even so, my truth and oft careless comment can shatter the illusion of another, as with one time, my comment regarding my ex wife. I seldom think of her these days but then a simple film with an actress of similar hauteur to her triggers my memory. These brief memories are discarded in a flash, but my ill-conceived comment upset the person I was with. These painful memory traps, or comments crop up from time to time, often regarding past relationships, very often causing damage, simply because they did not know the true facts. I suppose the truth is to let these comments go, because I cannot be responsible for the germination of seeds of untruths which grow in fertile minds of even of the people we love, too often we, me included, are ready to accept gossip and licentious thoughts. And these often find fertile acceptance in our heads, I know they do in mine.

 Why then do I continue to go to AA? someone asks, AA that forum of confused messages. Why then listen to the oft repeated dogma which excludes all original thought, if there is such a thing as original thought? For me today there is brief understanding that to let go often pays rich dividends, like the rotating of crops. The mind, like the land requires time left fallow. Friendships and relationships also require this fallow time to develop and grow, or set aside, that which is not needed. Absence they say makes the heart grow fonder…A doubtful truth! Maybe or maybe not. Growth is not passionate for me, more a measured gathering of information. Because of that, some of our growth is flawed! Thank god we are not perfect, what a burden that would be?

 I will continue with my ready inclusion of AA in my life, if for nothing else than it is the only thing available that works! and that is guaranteed. my life such as it is bears wittness to that. My simple faith is unshakable; I cannot at this time even pay lip service to a religious God, but faith! There's another thing, from one who is assailed by doubts and weaknesses, to a person now who has a complete faith that things are going to be all right, not always exactly what I want! but invariably or at least its just right enough, and that will do today

 Today I will try and do the next best thing and play the honest tune, no matter if it's not what people wish to hear, but I will try today not to cause gratuitous hurt by my actions or comments.

 Again I emphasise that I believe emphatically, “that there are no answers, only understanding.”
Finally
If ignorance is bliss? "Why are more people not happy"?