Whilst many of us have joked about the Mariners driving us to drink, for GTST wordsmith Chris the combination of football and alcohol has been far from a laughing matter.

For those of you who read my last piece about QPR, I touched briefly upon how I felt that following Town on the road had played a prominent part in my subsequent demons.

As you may recall, I’d spent the return journey home to Slough confirming a journalist’s rather low opinion of football fans. For once, I did manage to get off at the right stop, but then fell down the steps at Platform 5 on my way out and returned to the platform using my head on each step as a brake before landing in a heap at the bottom with other passengers screaming around me.

Seeing British Transport Police on Platform 1 on the other side of the station, I thought (if that is the right word for someone in that state of inebriation) that there was a good chance of being arrested for drunk and disorderly and, given that it would not enhance my career prospects, I decided to jump on a London train, getting off at the next stop and hopefully evading capture.

This was about eight in the evening and the next thing I remember is waking up on a porter’s trolley at Paddington at half past two the following morning. Unbelievably, I hadn’t been rolled and given that I lacked any sort of coordination, I doubt I got there by myself so can only assume I was kindly put there to stop the station looking untidy.

The thing is, the story can sound funny but is anything but. If anyone reading this has been in a similar position they possibly need to ask themselves whether they are indulging in anything approaching social drinking. The potential consequences didn’t really bear thinking about and thankfully the only thing I had to pay for was a taxi with two other inebriates.

Before I continue, I am not anti-alcohol and if the only price I had to pay for a heavy night on the tiles was a hangover, then I’d possibly be back on it. However, for whatever reason, when I have one, I want to drink more and no matter how much I have, my next thought is on the next one. Always. Many of my friends like to imbibe and that is okay by me but I have said to them that if I decide to part company during the course of an evening or day out, then it is because I have a problem and not them.

I started drinking when I was 17 and there isn’t anything particularly earth shattering about it. I had a pitiful capacity for the stuff and in later years wished it had remained so because it would have been a far cheaper form of amnesia. At the same time, I was persuaded to go to my first ever Town game, which was at home to Blackpool. We raced into a 2-0 lead, went 3-2 down and then won 4-3. I was hooked.

I’d always been interested in the game and liked a kickabout more than most but unbeknownst to me, Town were about to embark on a Third Division winning campaign and a few cup runs for good measure. 

What I found in both alcohol and Town was a sense of identity that I hadn’t enjoyed before, having found my earlier teens as a small quiet bespectacled kid very traumatic and full of fear at school. When I had a drink, I felt two feet taller and broader at the shoulders and was capable of getting well leery, although I had grown in stature by then. I also liked watching games within what were then massive crowds with large feisty away support. I thought I’d found what I had been yearning for - a sense of belonging - and that the bonding ritual of drinking would enhance my membership of this elite club of fans.

The main brake on my intake in these early days was a lack of money, but we did have a celebration in the Tivoli after stuffing Sheffield United, the pre-season favourites, 4-0 to clinch the Third Division Championship ahead of Wednesday in the last game of the season. This actually remains my favourite game ever, although I remember trying hard not to spoil it by having too much to drink that night. Nowadays, just to bask in the reflected glory would be sufficient.

The next major event in my life was going away to university in the autumn of 1980, which was a wrench given my new found way of spending Saturdays. It also meant I was out of sight and I could practice my new drinking career. Within a few months, my pitiful (as I saw it) capacity had risen somewhat so that a friend and I would knock back a litre of Sainsbury’s vodka between us before we actually went out. However, I wasn’t combining the two hobbies yet, having only the odd pint before a home game whilst opportunities for away games had not yet arisen.

One reason for this was that I was sampling the delights of nearby Ipswich Town who were probably the best football team in the country at that time and it cost only £1.50 to get in. I came home to Grimsby for the games that particularly appealed and hoped there would be plenty of fixtures to see outside of term time.

We came close to promotion that season and I did a fair few away games, but it was only at the end of the student year that I really qualified in lunchtime drinking, which set the stage for the next couple of seasons. Perhaps you know what is coming next.

1981/82 was a turnaround from the previous season and Town were bottom or thereabouts for most of it. I had found plenty of drinking partners at university, although most had some sense of control. We were also living in Colchester, which was well endowed with pubs at the time.

I think the first time I got blasted at lunchtime to see a game was at Cambridge in February 1982. It was a very easy game to get to so me and a Swindon supporting pal of mine hopped on the local train from Ipswich and had a pub crawl in Cambridge. By the time one of my pals saw us, we were virtually crawling in the gutter so he did the best thing that he could and avoided us. I hate to say that this wasn’t the last time that this happened. I do remember the game, goals and songs oddly enough. We then got hammered back in Colchester.

There was another first that weekend as well and something I didn’t recall until I ended up in rehab. The following day I had what I consider was a mild dose of the shakes. I say mild because it was, compared to the full blown DTs that I would endure in later years. Although I didn’t drink to excess at every game I subsequently went to, I would if I had plenty of time to do so and the die was therefore cast.

A month later and I had the first real warning shot across the bows when I was admitted to hospital with combined alcohol and barbiturate poisoning which led to me not leaving a drink unattended for a good number of years. This begs the question of if I didn’t trust who I drank with, why keep their company? The event took the shine off our first win in six months against Derby. Instead of having a quiet gloat whilst watching Match of the Day, I was suffering the indignity of a stomach wash at Grimsby General.

The 1982/3 season was where I first made my excuses for knocking back as much as I did. After a really good start, six wins and a draw in our first seven games, we nosedived and suffered some impressive defeats. I had had a summer job and saved about £1000 which was a lot of money in those days, about two thirds of a full annual grant. Unlike the previous year where a severe winter had curtailed our spending as the money had gone on fripperies such as heating, I was flush with money. This meant I could go to games and drink as much as I wanted.

As Town were by and large playing badly, I reasoned as in the previous season, that you needed a drink just to watch them and that was the start of the denial as to why I was really doing it. I also came to the attention of the authorities (and let’s leave it at that for the moment) at the FA Cup game at Ipswich before and during the game and also in Colchester before the game. The thing is I don’t remember all of it so this marks my first daytime blackout.

Some readers might think that isn’t too much to worry about but I had obviously crossed the line whilst not in full control of my limited faculties and I know there are others who have served prison sentences for things they have done but do not remember. Like anyone else in the same scrapes, I would make something of the notoriety I gained whilst inwardly quaking at whether I was going to be caught or held to account for my latest indiscretion.

Oddly enough, when I went home at the end of term, I used to calm down a bit. It was a bit like drying out and it also gave me a chance to stop getting into scrapes. This reckless phase was just covering up my own feelings of social inadequacy at university where in retrospect, I lacked the maturity to make the most of the opportunity. I gained most of my sense of belonging as a Grimsby supporter and suspect I am not the only sad person to do so and imagine that it is the same for some followers of all clubs.

In 1983/4, I was living back in Grimsby and working at a local factory which kept me in beer and football money, which was about as ambitious as I was at that time. I counted myself to be fortunate to have work at the time unlike many of my fellow graduates. Like a lot of folk my age, I enjoyed a night out on the tiles at the weekend but the boozing had moderated in that I wasn’t doing so in the middle of the week, even for games.

However, I had got a taste for a Saturday lunchtime session and was conscious of pushing the limits of my capacity. Overindulgence was a regular feature of away games which involved getting the 07:30ish service out of Grimsby Town and changing at Newark to arrive at the Market Porter near London Bridge for opening time. Even at this early stage of my career, I would have felt out of sorts had I not had about a gallon before a game. I have to say that I did enjoy these days out and many subsequent ones but my so called enjoyment of the game depended to some extent on how much I had consumed.

The next few seasons saw a gradual progression of the problem and then I moved down south in early 1986 and took up a job which put paid to my Saturdays off. It was fortuitous in one way as I missed two consecutive relegations and although I missed going to games, I was surprised at how I got used to it. Live matches were being shown on ITV and I would regularly meet one of my brothers to take in a Sunday game in London. We were sat in the World’s End in Camden Town at chucking out time one Sunday lunchtime (2pm in those days!) and decided on the spur of the moment to watch Arsenal v Man Utd and did so, paying on the gate, after the customary gallon or so of course.

By the end of the eighties I was ready for a change from the Saturday work and applied for the job I am now in and was duly recruited. This coincided with a recovery in the team’s performances and the FA Cup run that ended at Wimbledon. Having Saturdays off was a novelty that I abused to the full and I was determined to make up for lost ground when it came to games. Within a few years, I and many London Mariners were travelling up to most home and away games, including the midweekers.

Because I was on shifts, I could sometimes finish just after midday and would arrive at the meet already the worse for wear and it wasn’t unusual to crack the cans open whilst waiting for a lift early on Saturday mornings. On some days, I was drinking quite astronomically and thought I was being sensible if I could limit myself to anything less than about 20 pints. The fact that I kept a tally was skewed thinking in itself but my personal accounting was akin to some of the investment bankers who have been newsworthy lately. Anything that I had after midnight didn’t go on the previous day’s tally but never ended up on the next day’s either. It disappeared into the ether.

Today if someone asks me if they are drinking too much I say that only they can know the answer, but if they are concerned then they probably need to do something about it. I justified this match centric drinking as my way of de-stressing after the week, although I was now drinking heavily every day and really going for it on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

In 1992 I suffered my first bout of the DTs and although I knew the hallucinations were just that, I have to say it is the most terrifying experience I have been through. It meant that the home game against Watford was my first sober game for many a year although I had been introduced to something else which was to dog me over the coming years and had been prescribed to stop the alcohol withdrawal.

I spent the next couple of weeks sedated with diazepam (valium) and then when the memory of the DTs faded a bit started back on the alcohol, although much moderated in midweek. I then decided it would be okay to resume my chaotic drinking on match days as I couldn’t countenance going to a game sober. I therefore “white knuckled it” during the week to save myself up for the twice a week binge around football.

Any rational person would have accepted there was a problem but I seemed to get away with it for about a season and a half and even enjoyed some of it. However, by Christmas 1993, the inevitable escalation meant a return of the DTs when I felt too unwell to top up my system. Football even got in the way of that. The progression was shaking, then fits and then aural hallucinations which, amongst other unpleasantries, took the form of the classified results going around my head for several hours and it was always Port Vale 2 Grimsby Town 1. How weird is that? It was almost a relief to progress to the threats and paranoia that would last for the next few days. Then it would be rounded off by purple snakes and spiders and, as a friend of mine puts it, the dance of the carpet pixies.

The next two years saw me seeing quite a few matches but with not quite the same frequency and for a variety of reasons. One of these was the physical toll. By 1995 I was bordering on diabetes and had developed liver disease. I had to receive medical treatment at St Andrews when a combination of early shifts, tranquillisers and booze were stopping me breathing properly. At least I can claim to have been on the Birmingham City substitutes bench as I was unable to walk all the way back to the away end without resting.

It was around this time that I saw Town at Oldham, although I have no recollection of the day out at all but have it on good authority that I had a queue of hopeful punters by me in a nearby pub as I got out the various bottles of tablets that I was abusing to offset the limited alcohol intake, caused by almost constant nausea at this point. They had mistaken me for a drug dealer.

I actually had a limited flashback of this on the way to the Blackburn match this season. The nausea meant that I couldn’t really travel that far. In fact I had to take travel sickness tablets for the three mile bus ride to work. Paradoxically, therefore, whilst I felt unable to enjoy the match experience without a drink, the overdoing of it was causing me to miss large numbers of games.

I “celebrated” England’s win over Scotland in Euro 1996 by falling over in the house and being unable to move for several hours and then decided that despite being warned off drinking a few weeks before, it would be okay to have a few whilst watching the Holland game a few days later. Whilst it is rated as one of the best performances by England ever, I can’t recall any of it and ended up nearly bleeding to death the following day after another fall and the subsequent revelation that I had cirrhosis at the age of 34.

Even I was afraid to touch the stuff anymore but, whilst having plenty of other substances to abuse instead, I still missed it despite what the consequences to me had been. I was too unwell to travel for some time and spent the next few seasons based at Griffin Park, although I did get to twenty plus Town games a season sometimes.

What did curtail my longer trips was the fact that I couldn’t bear to be around friends who were enjoying alcohol and of course it is a ritual on matchday to many and good luck to them I say. It felt like peering through a window and not being invited in. I did however have good friends who supported me throughout.

It was my alcoholic thinking that could make me feel utterly desolate and isolated in a pub full of fans enjoying a day out. I travelled to see Brentford at Watford one Saturday and whilst washing some tablets down with Benylin, a Bees fan said “You’re mad!” to me to which I replied, “At least I don’t drink,” pointing to a can of beer. The thing is it was just that, a can. And I genuinely felt morally superior. That is how insidious addiction is.

Needless to say I recovered quite well physically and went back to my old friend in 1998 and picked up where I left off. I often say that I have only had one drink since 1996 but it lasted 26 months and that is an accurate reflection. It was never the same going back to it and the cost was causing financial difficulties and behaviour problems which are best left unstated for my own protection.

It meant that QPR away in early 2000 was my last game until the Arsenal cup match in 2001. In between time, I was fortunate enough to be admitted to Broadway Lodge in Weston-Super-Mare where I picked up some skills to cope with life post drink and drugs. It was impressed upon me that abstinence and recovery were the most important things in life now and for me, that meant avoiding dangerous places, i.e. those I associated with that behaviour and for me that was football. I always kept an eye out for our scores but had come to terms with the fact that a previously large part of my life was finished.

I heard about Town’s 2-1 victory at Anfield as I was talking to my closest friend (a Liverpool fan) back home in Slough. I didn’t even really want to go because the stress of a long journey albeit with friends (who would probably be visiting a few pubs) would outweigh any pleasure from the game at that time. I couldn’t resist Arsenal away but, everyone I knew was drinking before the game and I have never felt so lonely at a game.

I could honestly have cried and nearly turned back for home. However, I saw a good friend, Micky Birtles, in the ground and he assured me that despite my feelings of isolation as a Town fan and not seeing anything like as many games as I used to, I was still a good ambassador and supporter of the Club. That really did touch me and made me realise that whilst I like to get to plenty of games nowadays, support doesn’t have to be measured like that. The Club have always been in my heart, or at least since 1979, and if I can’t always be there for them, it isn’t because I don’t care. It is because other things are sometimes more important.

I did return when my recovery was strong enough, although my resurgence in attendance has been during our worst ever seasons. However, I have felt uncomfortable on some occasions. One was after we had won at Brentford in 2003 where I felt I couldn’t share in the post match euphoria in the Princess Royal by the ground which had once been my spiritual home. Another was at Stockport last year in the JPT where I began to feel really agitated as my companions decided to have one or two. That came as a wake-up call for me. Unless I am having something to eat, I realise I have no business in pubs.

I can only stand so many of the long train journeys that I used to fill with drinking. I’m cool with that. I’ve been to plenty of games with others with my disease. We sometimes go over to Man City for midweek games, which don’t clash with Town’s and have a great laugh. The best thing is we would never think of compromising each other’s sobriety. That is not to say any of my friends have and I don’t have a problem with them drinking. As I said earlier, it is my problem but I can compromise myself by trying to fit in.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want them to stop doing something they enjoy because I have an illness that will never go away. Thankfully, those friends, who I have known for many years, appreciate my situation and for that I am very grateful.  I have also been greatly encouraged by my own spiritual guide for the last seven years, who is a Chelsea season ticket holder and a great believer in the benefits of a shout and singsong.

What I do know now is that I don’t have to worry about being arrested for drunk and disorderly. I don’t have to be the angriest fan in the ground. I don’t really have to worry about overstepping the mark, although I like to voice my opinions. I don’t have to be antisocial. I can respect other people’s opinions. I accept that I have no control over the game so don’t let the result ruin my weekend.  I’m less likely to be the victim of violence. I have perspective. In that way, my experiences have liberated me.