So look, basically I consider myself a highly functioning drinker, stroke pisshead, stroke

alcoholic, pick your choice of words.

Booze bag?

Yeah, yeah, definitely a booze bag.

Whatever you want, Vic, throw it at me.

I'll take them all. Hen. Yeah, hen, definitely. Yeah, happy hen. Booze bag. Whatever you want, Vic, throw it at me. I'll take them all.

Hen.

Yeah, hen, definitely. Yeah, happy hen. Boo's hen.

Hangover hen.

For a long time, I was able to manage my life around my all-encompassing drinking habit and kind of pass myself off as a reasonably

successful human being, kind of anyway. Yes, there was the odd casualty along the way for both

Vic and I, a lost finger here, a lost job there, but nothing that we couldn't laugh off.

And I would add it to my repertoire of drunken misdemeanours

that made me, well, so entertaining and fun to be with. And it wasn't until a long time later

when things got so bad that I finally admitted to myself that actually my life wasn't functioning

properly and that maybe, just maybe, it was

to do with my drinking. That's right, Lucy. Until we decided on this topic of the dangers of

highly functioning, I'd never really labelled myself as a highly functional drinker. I wore my

fuck-uppery like a badge of honour, being the world's best

pisshead west of the M4 Heston Motorway Services, was how I represented myself. And I didn't

feel like I was hiding anything. I was cleverly, socially destroying myself, which kind of made my

drinking acceptable. But when I look deeper into

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