I loved "EastEnders" - the endless storylines that interwove so intricately and the sense of community. The team that put it together were so talented and of course the pressure must have been on continuously to keep churning out the content with characters arriving or leaving and yet more topical subjects to add to the mix.
Teaching in Thailand for six months in 2011 meant that I kind of lost my connection with the soap opera. When I came home I decided to stop watching it. It had been taking up too much of my time and too much of my head space. Since 2011 I have not seen a single episode of "EastEnders". I just went cold turkey and broke my addiction.
It was the same with cigarettes. I first took up smoking when I was twenty one and ceased entirely one morning in the summer of 1988 when I was thirty four years old. I went to the dustbin and broke up my last packet of cigarettes and have not smoked another one since. I was stubbornly determined to be a non-smoker and for thirty six years I have not wavered.
Until recently, I was spending about £50 a week on my personal consumption of alcohol - bought in pubs and supermarkets and mostly beer. For different reasons I decided to greatly reduce my alcohol intake and stopped buying beer to drink at home. I also go out to pubs far less than before and on most nights I climb the stairs to bed without having drunk a drop of beer or wine.
I haven't found this change hard but unlike "EastEnders" and cigarettes I have no intention of giving up the demon drink entirely. It's just nice to keep it in check and nowadays I guess that I am only spending £20 a week on beer and wine for my own consumption.
With all these things, what has been important to me is willpower and in that regard I guess I have been blessed. Not everyone has a healthy store of the stuff.
Interesting and I find you spend much more than me on the demon drink. But then I don't go out any more and only have a toddle or two or three or at most four most evenings. But I commend you. I'm presently reading an old P.G. Wodehouse novel and can appreciate the consumption.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of secret drinking happening in people's homes.
DeleteSWMBO Bruce! Wake up! You're loaded again. It's time for bed.
BRUCE Whaa? What? Who are you? Hic!
I would like a little of your willpower. You are an inspiration, sir.
ReplyDeleteDig deep Sparkler - I am sure you will find it.
DeleteThe hardest thing I ever did was to quit smoking.
ReplyDeleteBut one of the best things!
DeleteSaving 30 pound a week could earn you a decent holiday and do a lot for your health.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed.
£30 x 52 = £1560
DeleteIt seems like you KNOW when enough is enough and so you stop, or cut down. A lot of people don't see that in themselves.
ReplyDeleteAlcohol made my gut too big and I am hoping to deflate it.
DeleteI have willpower but it is buried deep. I really need to haul it up and use it to cut my consumption of sweet and snacky things. I have never seen Eastenders, I tend to avoid programs like that since the Australian version seem to always start out interesting but soon degenerate into who's fighting/sleeping with everyone else and the cast all look the same, tanned, young and rich. There's nothing at all real about them.
ReplyDeleteHa-ha! I like your description of Aussie soaps but what about Toadfish?
DeleteNever heard of Toadfish.
DeleteI stopped watching Eastenders and other soaps back in 90's, like you said, they took up too much of my time, and I wanted our daughters not to be addicted to TV. I only now have a glass of wine on a Friday and Saturday evening, I don't miss it any other times.
ReplyDeleteLife changes doesn't it? None of us stay quite the same and its the same with our habits.
DeleteI was addicted to chocolate at a point in my life when work was very stressful. It took me a while to summon up the willpower to stop.
ReplyDeleteIf there's chocolate in our house, it always magnetises me.
DeleteI rarely drink alcohol (probably one glass of wine a month) and, as you know, have witnessed the devastation alcohol addiction can create, but I am addicted to Eastenders and have barely missed an episode! Likewise I am addicted to watching a Northern soap series too.
ReplyDeleteWould that northern soap series be "Coronation Street" or "Emmerdale"?
DeleteThere must be many people who envy your willpower Y.P.
ReplyDeleteSmoking is something I'm glad that I never took up - my parents were non-smokers, so that probably helped. All my friends seemed to smoke - it was seen as sophisticated in our late teens and early 20's. I don't drink, and have never been tempted, although it was always available at home - but neither of my parents imbibed much.
In recent years I watched friends struggle to stop smoking and reduce their intake of alcohol, most were successful but sadly some succumbed from the effects of long term smoking - my husband being amongst the casualties.
Without smoking your late husband might have still been with you - sharing your life in Spain as planned.
DeleteSmoker until 34. Get a routine chest X-ray. Small and entirely symptomless lung tumours leading to brain mets are not all that uncommon. I should know, and that was only because of about 14 years of smoky shared houses, offices, buses, pubs and cinemas, and polluted cities and factories.
ReplyDeleteYou are probably right Tasker but I am not as sensible as you.
DeleteI wasn't sensible, either. Use a bit of willpower and go.
DeleteGood for you on being able to give things up and stick with them. Reflecting on myself, I am fortunate in that I really haven't developed any bad habits. I have never smoked, rarely drink alcohol and don't habitually do anything daily other than getting dressed and eating. However, I would like to form a good habit of taking longer walks as you seem to be addicted to.
ReplyDeleteWe are lucky in England to have a vast network of public footpaths. You could give up getting dressed!
DeleteI don't think giving that up is in anybody's best interest!
DeleteI gave up smoking when I was 28. I am 60 in December. I applaud you on your will power with drink. I drink supermarket bought beer because pub beer is just too expensive these days.
ReplyDeleteYou could treat yourself to a pub session once a month - get Jean or one of your lads to taxi you down to Bantry Town Square and pick you up later on.
DeleteI am 67 years old and I have never smoked or drunk. I have surely saved myself a million disappointments and a lot of money.
ReplyDeleteAnd lengthened your life.
DeleteI call it willpower, my mother called it stubbornness, but at times it helps us do what is right.
ReplyDeleteThere is an overlap between the two.
DeleteLike Northsider, I applaud your willpower. I spend too much time on Instagram, but can't seem to stop this addiction.
ReplyDeleteThat is an addiction that has never affected me Debbie.
DeleteI admire your willpower as I have heard it is very hard to stop smoking. Fortunately for me, though my parents were both smokers when I was young, I never started. My father died young. He stopped smoking a couple of years before he passed. It was very hard for him. Good for you to realize when you need to cut back or stop something.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that your father died young Michael. I went to your Wordpress blog but got blocked when I tried to leave a comment about the picture of Currituck Beach.
DeleteHmmm...I don't know why you were blocked. Other blogspot people have been able to leave comments...I think? Technology can be frustrating.
DeleteI quit smoking when I got pregnant with my oldest son so that's 45 years ago and I quit drinking alcohol in the 1990s and haven't missed either since. Funny that this is the second post I've read today about cutting back on drinking.
ReplyDeleteSmoking and pregnancy is an awful mixture but 45 years ago that was not so clear.
DeleteI can claim no credit for any of my non-addictive 'virtues' because I was born without an addictive personality gene. I never realised it until Andrew, my late son, said that he had to be careful because he enjoyed a flutter on the horses and realised very early on that he had a potentially addictive personality. So far as I know he avoided addictions because of that awareness. It's a fascinating subject though and your willpower is admirable.
ReplyDeleteI guess that you think of Andrew every day.
DeleteI've never been tempted to smoke - as a youngster I remember listening to Bob Newhart's records, including his take on Sir Walter Rayleigh bringing back tobacco for the American colonies. After hearing that I could never take smoking seriously and was never tempted to start. My father had been a smoker whilst serving in the army during WW2, but stopped as soon as he was demobbed in 1946.
ReplyDeleteIs Power your surname Will? Will Power.
DeleteI think as we age our interests and enjoyments change. Drinking now doesn't feel as good as it did when I was younger (not that I ever drank THAT much) so drinking less as I get older seems easier. And coffee (my other chief vice) upsets my stomach! Fortunately I never took up cigarettes.
ReplyDelete