I want to talk about amends. Apologies are the staple of any attempt at recovery, as many of you may know, yet what you may not realise is how intensely awkward such a process is. People often find it very weird when you track them down years later to apologise for some minor slight. The principle is if apologising will do the person more harm than good then don’t do it, but often you can overestimate the harm you have caused someone. Like when you write a long message to someone for ruining their party a few years ago, and they reply by essentially telling you to get over it.

The same confusion can happen in pubs when you say you don’t drink. It’s odd that the verb ‘to drink’ has now become synonymous with alcohol. Often, when you tell some one you don’t drink, there is a confused pause as they try and figure out why this might be. I tend to say it is because it makes me ill, which is strictly true. But this is often after I have reassured them that I have not had a sheltered upbringing nor am I, God forbid, religiously inclined. 

And then there is the awkward conversation when you out yourself to a friend. It happened as I was writing this. A guy I just met decided to lean over and read what I was writing. He quickly realised what he had done, but not before he had managed to get a gist of the article. I decided it was best to explain what I was doing rather than leave things unsaid, so decided to sit this clearly embarrassed German man down and explain to him that I was an alcoholic and that I hadn’t had a drink for over two and a half years. I think he took it quite well.

This awkwardness is nothing compared to outing yourself to someone you have a crush on. It happened on my first date with my last girlfriend. She was talking about the value of honesty, and I was disagreeing with her saying it sometimes can be kinder to lie. An example I gave to back myself up required that I open up about my alcoholism. She was understanding, thankfully, but still struggled to know what to say. A few weeks later, she was referring to it as me being ‘naughty’ in my youth. 

There is a fundamental discordance between recovery and anonymity. You can tell as much by looking at any group of alcoholics. In my north London rehab, we used to joke as we stood on the steps outside that if anyone saw us together (an ex-con, a Norwegian cook, a teenage girl, a teenage girl’s mum and me) they would think we were part of some religious order, such was the incongruity of our group.

And yet there is a serious point here. These stories all represent me trying to figure out how much to give away about myself. My recovery is the most important thing in my life, and yet anonymity and not becoming ‘the sober guy’ is also vital. If I spoke freely of my disease I would worry that people around me would start to identify me with recovery; if I relapsed, it might seem that recovery didn’t and couldn’t work. That’s why it is so important that nobody speaks on behalf of the recovery fellowship. It is one of the reasons why this column is anonymous, and it’s why, with the difficulty of this balancing act, I am still very careful about who I open up to.