coryjohnrist

[coryjohnrist]

Three Years Sober

12th January 2018

One year on from sitting in a café in Washington D.C writing to you we take a look at the subsequent 12 months. How have you been? Is the world getting any better? Do I have a job yet? Where do I get my protein? Patience, patience, all will be revealed. The Perth summer is treating me well and as I type, the international dog of mystery Poppy is trying to get my attention with a toy, I guess she succeeded.

Well, one thing is for sure, nothing stays the same, everything changes. I have been back in Perth for six months now. ‘Merica is a contradictory place in many ways but I saw so many great things whilst there. D.C is a strange but charming little place, I grew to love the ease of getting around but hating the weather.  Hating the politics but loving the culture and sexual openness (men holding hands anywhere in the city has it’s dangers in most cities of the world). I guess I felt very at ease. As for the other places I visited….  San Francisco is as dirty and geographically bipolar as ever. Portland might be my favourite city outside of Australia with easily the biggest and best bookshop I have ever seen (Powells) and every vegan delicacy your heart may desire, if only it had the weather of LA it would be perfect. Yosemite National Park (or really any national park we went to) I loved so much, it inspired me in so many ways and would lead to my rediscovery of my own Perth backyard (more on that later). Staying in a log cabin in the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains was exactly as romantic and picturesque as you would imagine.  Going to Puerto Rico over Inauguration Weekend and seeing half of D.C had the same idea was funny. Beautiful country and people. I don’t really care about New York so I didn’t go there.

I did my first ever Marathon on March 11, 26.2 Miles (42km) all the way around the District of Columbia (that really gives you an idea how small D.C is as a ‘city state’), to my horror the temperature at the start line around 7am was -2 degrees centigrade. I have no living memory of being that cold, I thought my fingers legitimately had frostbite and were going to fall off. I completed it in a time I don’t care to remember and was exceptionally happy, the plan is to do one marathon per year from now on.

I guess I can add housewife to my (seemingly endless) list of occupations after my six months there. Send off the old ball and chain to work, go to the coffee shop and write a letter or two, do some yoga in the afternoon before preparing dinner and doing the ironing, I quite enjoyed that life. I can say that having plants to look after adds to that responsibility ten fold, as I found out at the start of spring. Eric and I were good together but in the end were a few amendments short of a bill, he thought I was a bit stubborn in my lifestyle choices (true) and I wasn’t willing to be overly social (also true). When you can agree on character flaws, arguments and breakups are rather an easy business.

I did two 10 day silent meditation retreats in 2017 (that’s 20 days of complete silence, think of that), a fascinating thing being with your own thoughts and feelings for 20 days. I learned much, I talked not and I sat cross legged until the pain went away, mind over matter is real. Pain and thoughts may occur, its how you process them and how you react that matters, something I have integrated into everyday life now.

What is free and gets you far away from Facebook and Reality TV? Long distance bush walking of course! I decided (after seeing the beauty of America’s backcountry) to get out and walk some of the red dirt that has been at my fingertips my whole life. The Bibbulmun Track has a reputation as one of the best long distance walks in Australia, not only is it right here, it has tremendous facilities (Water, shelter, toilet at the end of every days walking) which practically called my name to walk it. I did my research, bought some gear and got out there. Firstly as a 5 day ‘taster’ trek from Kalamunda to Brookton Hwy. I loved that 5 day stint so much I retooled my pack and got back out there for 9 more days a mere 2 weeks later. This time from Brookton Hwy to Dwellingup, different scenery and different challenges (blood sucking ticks anyone?).

Being Australia, the heat can and will kill you if out there at the wrong time of the year, I got out there just before it got dangerously hot. Now I hibernate (aka go to the beach) until it is cool enough to go back out. My goal is to walk the whole thing by the end of 2018 (called section hiking), this would be a total of 1000km, of which I have done 1/5. It takes roughly 6 weeks in total. The peace and simplicity of the trail life is very appealing to me. Eating/Sleeping/Walking is the only requirement of the day, this leaves plenty of time for the good things. Reflection, reading, relaxation, physical challenge and most importantly taking in the natural wonder that is Western Australia. I learnt more about the weather and how birds operate in 13 days than I have in the past 13 years. Going to sleep when the sun goes down and waking when it rises is also a great pleasure, I felt connected with the nature and environment around me, not as a tourist but a living, breathing member of something bigger.

Alcohol, oh yeah. Well that is not an issue. I have made inroads back to an old love, playing music, something that I thought was done for. After my complete disassociation from alcohol, I am now in a place that has led me back to music, both listening and playing. Hopefully there will be more to update on this next year.

Cooking and eating well are still daily passions as ever, if not more so this year. What can be achieved with the humble vegetable family is truly never ending. Cooking is not really something you ever really stop learning from, there are always new ideas or combinations to try. Different spices and sauces and ideas, I truly love it.

Where on earth or the universe will the next 12 months take me? We will have to wait and see. 

Lots of Love,

Cory

[coryjohnrist]

Two Years Sober

12 January 2017

Lets make this an annual tradition. A life update hidden in a sobriety update. I am writing this from a café in Le Droit Park, Washington DC, USA. That is not something I thought I would be writing just one year after my last correspondence, life moves in very interesting ways when you let it. Year number two of not drinking was very different from the first year that’s for sure. Not necessarily 100% for the better either, but mostly.

 Sometimes you drift in different directions from the people you love and share things with. Sometimes that is no ones fault and sometimes that’s one persons and sometimes its both of you, there is no hardened rule, needless to say there are some folks who I don’t see as much as I used to. Id rather be up at 6am on a Saturday morning seeing the sun rise than seeing it as I get into bed. I can’t be at gigs if everyone is drunk, things I used to do on a daily basis are now no-go zones. Everyone deals with change differently and don’t get me wrong, friends and family have been universally supportive of the changes I have made in my life, but I have lost touch with certain people and that’s just what happens, that’s ok, people change, I’ve changed.

 The first year felt like a great achievement. Losing weight and getting in shape brought back the self-confidence I lacked for so many years, my body can finally do all the things my mind wants it to do, I feel that’s only just begun. Someone said early on that they were worried i had given up one addiction (drinking) for another (running). I didn’t think so at the time and I still really don’t. Having a passion for something and doing it it regularly isn’t anything to be ashamed of, unless that something is killing you, which it defiantly was. My passions now bring me joy and keep me healthy. Running, Yoga, Vegetarian/Vegan cooking, Reading, Jazz, I want to bring positivity into my life from all directions, I think I’m getting there. It isn’t just one big hippy love in, I am still as stubborn and unimpressed with much of the world as ever, I’m just healthier doing it.

 That’s mainly what the past year has been about though. Increasing the positive practices in my life and expanding into others. After reading a book called ‘Eat & Run’ by Scott Jurek (an endurance runner who advocates a plant based diet and has conquered the ultra running world) I started researching and becoming interested in what food is and where it comes from. How I fuel my body, rather than just shovelling something down my throat to get me through. This led down some fascinating and disturbing rabbit holes. If you ever have the pleasure of looking into factory farming and how your food actually gets to your table you cant really go back. Hence I am now Vegan, I wont go into too much detail here for the sake of being too preachy, if you want to know more, ask. Needless to say I am in the best physical shape of my adult life and cant wait to go out running and get in the kitchen every day, even a year ago that was not the case, knowing what food you eat to the very last ingredient is an empowering and creatively fulfilling thing to have in your life.

 So I’ve been in DC, the heart of US politics and by default I guess world politics for a month now. It is very hard to avoid the daily circus that is the 45th President of the United States (we have a rule in our house that we don’t say his name), but I am trying. I mainly hear the latest updates from other people or from newspaper front pages, I find politics immensely frustrating right now, especially the ‘all or nothing’ game that is happening here. To be honest it’s just sad, sad to see a great country turn against each other rather than coexist and compromise. But hey, I’m just on a tourist visa, which means i can’t work (oh damn!), I thus have ample time for a good romance novel, sip coffee at a café of my choice or watch as much wrestling as I like, and I do! Among other things, I am training for a my first marathon in late March, doing yoga about 5 days a week and home cooking meals every day, other than the cold weather, it’s a pretty good life right now.

 About 18 months in (so roughly 6 months ago) milestones regarding my drinking no longer had any great meaning. I stopped looking at the ‘I Am Sober’ app that keeps a day and dollar count on your sobriety (at last look its about $12,000), I would have been truly lost in the first few months without this great little free app and cant recommend it enough, now though this is my normal life and I don’t need it. The sober coin i so proudly hung from my keychain and looked forward to replacing with a ‘2 year’ version in January didn’t have any importance to me either. Dates and anniversaries fell by the wayside as I guess I just got on with shit. It has taken me about a month to actually write this. I have done so much since January 12 but worry about my sobriety is not one.  

 That day, Jan 12, was my last day in Australia of 2017, I’m sitting in a café right now writing this, a few minute walk from where I am living, with my boyfriend Eric. To be sober and happy is one thing, a very important thing which I was quite happy and content with that for a while. Then I got some mojo back in the tank. A self-confidence when I looked in the mirror and was not disappointed in what was staring back at me. I opened myself up to love and desire and it fell right in my lap. Well, I sort of fell into his lap. At the culmination of my short-lived but enjoyable comedy run I had my own show, and on the last night of that show (and subsequently the last proper stand up show I have done) I took a chance and it paid off. I performed a lap dance (for the purpose of the show of course) on a man I had never met in front of a room of people, I gave my phone number to a stranger for the first time in my life, I went to Melbourne to see him, he came back to Perth to see me, we fell in Love. It paid off. Taking a risk, betting on yourself and seeing where it leads you. That’s why I am sitting in a café in Washington DC right now. Well that and because Eric is lovely and kind and makes cat sounds to me as I fall asleep.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, I enjoyed living it.

Lots of Love,

Cory

[coryjohnrist]

One Year Sober

12 January 2016

Every few months I have posted a little blue picture, today that will stop. Those little blue pictures signify 3/6/9 months of this little thing I have been doing called sobriety. They have been small totem poles on the way toward what I would like to just pass off as regular days in my life but in reality have been small victories of a larger scene. Today I have been sober for one year.

 I was trying to decide what to do for the occasion. Have a party (booze free? That Facebook event would have a whole lot of ‘maybes’), Go out for a nice meal with friends and family (I just had lunch with my family yesterday, lets not get too carried away) or have a stiff whisky and say ��great job, you did it, now back on the sauce” (the idea of ‘taking a break’ is not what this is all about). In the end I decided to write this. My social media output is limited to say the least, if this is the only thing of substance you read from me online this year it wouldn’t surprise me. I guess what I am trying to say is the fact that I am sitting down and writing about a subject so alien to most people (and myself just over a year ago) this is my congratulatory pat on the back.

 I was a daily drinker for 10 years and for the last 5 of that would say I was a heavy drinker. I don’t really like to say I was an alcoholic because that term is so loaded with connotations and varied definitions that some may take offense to it. What I can say is this, for 5 years of my late 20’s I have barely any recollection. Other than key moments from the history of the band I played in (Mezzanine) and some major life moments (what the fuck that means I do not know) it’s pretty much a blur. I would not change anything of those 5 years, it was some of the best fun in the world to play in a gigging, touring band. Drinking and drinking to excess go hand in hand with playing in a band and I most certainly made the most of it. Then shit started to go downhill.

 I had a six month period whist living with my best friend that I call the ‘Red Wine Lost Weekend”, this was still a good 2-3 years before I quite booze. I would drink alone for roughly 5-7 hours every day, never going out, never inviting anyone over and most certainly not engaging in any romantic or sexual endeavours. I became a drunk hermit. Things would improve slightly after the band started gigging again after a sabbatical but the seeds were sown for the future. By the end I was drinking a six pack of beer and 2L cask of white wine almost every day. The BWS clerks knew me by name. I started drinking at least two to three bottles of whisky or gin a week, basically i hated myself. I had ballooned in weight to around 100kg, self respect was not in the Rist Dictionary. 

 Then something happened. I realized I was dependant on alcohol. When you get home from work and your body is shaking and bordering on a nervous wreck you know shit’s getting real. When the average time from walking through the door to cracking the first beer is less than a minute, shit is getting real, I never drank to wind down, I drank to wind up. I had a mental state that whatever good was going to happen was going to happen when I was drunk. Near the very end I woke up a few times, freezing cold at 4am still sitting on the chair I’d sat down at roughly 11 hours before in the backyard, a few occasions my laptop would be sitting there still open and my phone next to it, outside in the (sometimes) rain. That period was my blackout phase. Many people get this when they have a big night out on the weekend but this would be on a Tuesday.

 One of the strangest parts of this whole situation is that I was actually still functioning on a decent level, I came across as a fairly normal (debatable personality wise) member of society. I ran a half marathon and competed in triathlons that whole time, I did a 12km City To Surf fun run the morning after almost polishing off a litre bottle of Bacardi, physically I despised what I saw in the mirror but I could still kick it when necessary.  Make no mistake I didn’t feel great and was hung over for almost 5 years straight but when a challenge was presented I still had the fire to complete it. What happened to my body was not the worst part at all, it was what was happening to my head, to my spirit and to my outlook on what the future would be. The first two singles Mezzanine released were titled ‘Can’t Feel A Thing’ and ‘Someone To Abuse’, I love those songs to this day but the proof is in the depressed pudding my friends.

 Mental health is such an important and often supressed part of our lives, it seems we are finally getting somewhere with this issue but depression is still a son of a bitch for a whole bunch of us. I was depressed and I took anti-depressants. Anti-Depressants don’t tend to work so well after 2L of goon white wine on a Tuesday, or any day of the week for that matter. What I would always say about anti-depressants is that they removed the top 10%, that really dangerous top 10% that would scream “what’s the point, lets blow this cake stand” or “I just wanna die”. I have never really admitted that to anyone before. I told my family one night, after a particularly bad experience where I wigged out at a music festival, that I wanted to die. That was the lowest night of my life. I kept drinking for roughly another year after that but the writing was on the wall.

 What began the chain of events that leads to today really wasn’t a singular event though, it was a slow decline and one key person in this whole story. Now I am a very stubborn person, I don’t accept help very well, or compliments (as some of you may know) so accepting any help, especially as it pertained to my beloved drinking was going to be a stretch. A few years before this I had decreed that I shall expect no gifts nor shall any be given in return (so what I hear you say, no big deal), I mean for anything, birthdays, christmas, weddings, work colleague’s moving to a new job (don’t even get me started on this one), accepting help or gifts or compliments or blowjobs was squarely off the table, at least I thought.

 My best girl friend (not girlfriend, girl… friend) is the one. The one who should have hit the too hard button many many times, the one who would listen and tolerate all of my bullshit. Her name is Annette. She slowly started introducing ideas or suggestions on what I could do to get better, to shake the black dog and to kick a habit that had lasted the majority of my adult life. And that is all it took, simple when I write it in one sentence but really a case by which no one had any real breakthrough method beforehand. Once the seed was planted I started to do my research. A medication had caught my attention at work which I thought seemed if not a cure, than a damn good chance. Anatabuse. A medication that if mixed with any alcohol consumption produces quite unsavoury results. Basically you throw up everywhere and probably end up in the hospital. Sounded perfect.

 I plan it out about a week before,. I get the prescription, the band is playing its last ever gig on January 10, 2015, perfect. What a way to bow out of the drinking game, get shit faced with my best mates and play the biggest show we have ever done. The show goes about as good as I could possibly imagine, we even cover Pixies ‘Where Is My Mind?” (I have only just now realized how fitting that plot narrative is) and as the band ride off into the sunset, I gallop back into it. I told almost no one this was happening, kept it on the DL for reasons of fear and I guess trepidation. What came next changed my fucking life.

 The first week was not fun, in particular the first three days, horrible nightmares (I had sleep paralysis issues (look it up, its fucked) for the two years leading up to this point), I shook almost all the time and my heart didn’t know what was going down. This was the longest break from drinking (sickness aside) I’d had in over 5, probably 7 years. Then guess what…? I was fine. The decision came so quickly to quit and I had discovered the best method by a fluke that there was no time to build it up in my head or have a false start. I was just doing it one day at a time. Also knowing that a hospitalization could come from just one beer is a damn good deterrent. I counted the days on the little blue app (It’s called ‘I Am Sober’ by the way) and Annette helped me through it, id go around to her house and just sit there, drinking tea, talking about it all, without her it never would have happened. I have grown to accept help and love from people now, get out the mini violins.

 Then I started running a whole bunch, and then guess what happened? The weight started to fly out the door. I lost about 10kg within the first 2-3 weeks. I am a mildly vain person but the decision to quit drinking was certainly not motivated by wanting to be shred. Then (at the insistence of Annette of course) is started doing personal training with a few other folks, and guess what?, more weight came tumbling down (shock horror! No drinking and exercise can cause weight loss), ok hold on, don’t get cocky, I just didn’t expect it for some reason (I have lost almost 30kg in 1 year as of today) so it was a nice little bonus, like those deodorants that will sometimes have a taped on promotional moisturiser.

 I now had the confidence to try something I had always wanted to try. Stand up comedy. On my 5th gig I won RAW comedy at His Majesties Theatre and performed in front of 3000 people within two shows (Melbourne Town Hall is not as nice), WHAT?! What the fuck is happening? Life son, life is happening.

 I went to America for the first time, on my own, this would be the biggest test. Merely 2 months into being sober I’m on holiday on my lonesome, surely ill be tempted and cave in, better make sure I take the Antabuse every day. By the second week in the US of Ayyy I’d simply forgotten to take em, it didn’t mean anything to me anymore. This was a revelation. When a habit has dictated every big and little decision of your life for so long it shouldn’t be this easy should it? It just was. I came back from California no longer needing to take the pills, I expected to be dependant on those little things for at least 6-12 months, the brain is a strange and amazing thing, sometimes once you decide on something its done.

 The intervening months between then and now have been getting better and better. Yoga has become a thing (you guessed it… Annette). The dating scene has a new cat on the loose and I’m about to do my first solo comedy show (‘A Rist Of One’s Own’, tickets available now at www.fringeworld.com.au) (cheap plug but hey, its funny and has jokes about me watching people in the shower). I’m healthy (still smoke, that’s gotta go soon) and most importantly HAPPY. Whenever I think about what the future holds or get the wishy part of a wishbone that’s all I want… to be happy, and for the first time in a long time, I am.

 Some have asked if this is just a temporary thing or if it is for life. Who knows? Who can be certain that Eskimo Joe wont release a song in 10 years time that is this generations ‘Bed’s Are Burning’? Its highly unlikely (and I mean hiiiiighly unlikely) but that’s my point. Who knows what’s around the corner. I have no desire to ever drink again, I know who I was before, and I know who I am now, I’m quite happy on this side of the fence

 Quitting drinking (or ‘getting sober’ if you want to get all 1980’s Los Angeles about it) is the best thing I have ever done. Every one of my friends and family have been supportive and encouraging, not one comedian or friend or goat has made me feel uncomfortable or regretful about my decision and you know what? Thanks. Thanks for being cool. This aint the wild west anymore. If I don’t drink, so what? If  i‘m attracted to men, so what? If I wear black all the time and I seem a little odd, so what? 28 was the worst year of my life, 29 has been the best. Here’s to sobriety (raises Holsten non-alcoholic beer) and being happy. Did I mention I don’t drink anymore.

  Thank you for reading,

Cory

[coryjohnrist]