I seem to spend most of my life either bored or excruciatingly embarrassed. My embarrassment is nearly always associated with alcohol.

I go out, I get drunk and then I wake up with this feeling of dread. I always wake up feeling guilty – as if I accidentally pooed in someone’s pint glass when they turned their back. What did I say? What did I do ? Did I shout at that cab driver? It only seems to be getting worse as I get older. Sometimes this guilt wakes me up in the middle of the night! It’s like I’ve got someone leering over my bed whispering paranoid thoughts in my ear while I try and sleep. I try to rationalise it, “I didn’t do anything wrong, apart from getting my sister in law in a headlock…” The voice in my ear is going, “She’ll never speak to you again, everyone in the room was looking at you like you were mental. No one likes you, not even your Mum. She told everyone that she thinks your hair looks like a hat and that your forehead is abnormally large!” Whatever actually happened on the night has now been replayed so many times in my head that I am now convinced that I must have stripped naked at the dinner table and force fed every guest rice pudding from my arse crack. I can’t sleep now. How many apologetic text messages will I need to send in the morning? I probably won’t have any friends left, my family will have disowned me. I WILL SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE ALONE! So far these feelings of dread, depression, anxiety and paranoia haven’t stopped me drinking. I’m either mentally ill or extremely British…