Introduction: Why "Sober Horror Fan?"

"The look of horror on his daughter's face was enough to stop his heart. The drink had beaten him at last, taken all that was good from him."

"He was the very image of a broken man—with only a lifetime of self-pity and recriminations to look forward to."

From Eeny Meeny by M. J. Arlidge

So, why "Sober Horror Fan?"

I have a drinking problem. The main problem being that I like it too much. In fact, I love it. I won't go into too much detail, but suffice to say if left unchecked I will easily (and frequently) drift into the habit of drinking alcohol every day, and a lot too. Drinking, in fact, until I am thoroughly drunk.

I have been concerned about this problem for well over a decade now, maybe even more than 15 years. And while I worry and fret, I have been unable to stop, or even significantly reduce, my excessive drinking—numerous promises and proclamations to myself, and just as many false starts on plans and rules for moderation or abstinence. Ultimately they were all doomed to fail.

Another thing I like just about as much as booze is a good horror movie. As a British national who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I was born and raised watching old Hammer films and suchlike on TV as a kid. I always loved them, and I think my interest developed from there. In recent years, though, horror movies have come to occupy a particularly significant place in my leisure time and my inner world. It's not so much that I like to be scared—there is something else, something about the pervading atmosphere. And there is something about the protagonists—often just normal people trying to struggle free of the nightmares that threaten to engulf them and restore some kind of normalcy and even goodness to their lives—that resonates with me and my own struggles and dreams.

Somehow, though, my love of horror films has become thoroughly entangled with my love of booze. Somehow it became such that I never wanted to sit down and watch a movie without a constant supply of alcohol. It became such that watching a newly purchased and much anticipated blu-ray sober seemed, in some way, "a waste." And in any case, if I wasn't drinking I wouldn't be able to relax or stop wishing I did have a drink. I began to doubt I would ever enjoy watching these movies sober again. It has actually struck me that, in that respect, the booze can be likened to a kind of parasite that attaches itself to almost any other pleasurable activity, sucking the life and genuine pleasure out of it, and rendering it a shadow of its former self. The ten-year-old me watching Curse of the Werewolf (or whatever) on TV never had that trouble. That wide-eyed little boy knew how to enjoy things without a drink in his hand.

I guess it was the seeming irreversible entanglement of those two things—booze and horror films—in my mind that prompted me to search the internet for the term "sober horror fan"—and various other iterations and similar terms. I suppose I was hoping to find some kind of community of people like myself—who were basically alcoholics and horror fans, but who were continuing to appreciate horror movies in their sobriety, and that such a community might provide me with the inspiration that I needed to finally kick the habit that I have no doubt is slowly and stealthily killing me (well, I hope it's slowly...).

No such luck, though. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, my searches unearthed practically nothing. I did find one Reddit thread where horror fans were discussing what they like to drink when watching horror movies. Amidst the replies were a few people who mentioned that they were on the wagon, and a few supportive comments were shared. I also found an article that someone wrote about how certain horror films inspired them to get sober, and a couple of other interesting pieces of writing here and there talking about, for example, the alcoholism metaphors in The Shining, but ultimately very little.

So, I decided to have a stab at planting my own little flag, and becoming "The Sober Horror Fan" myself. The "horror fan" part will be easy, but the "sober" part will probably not, as my 15-plus-year battle can testify. But here I go. One of my first touchstones is Red Miller in Panos Cosmatos' film Mandy—giving a brief shake of his head to refuse a bottle of beer offered by a co-worker as they ride a helicopter home after a hard day's work felling trees. Instead, Red returns home sober to the wife, and life, that he cherishes. And he is still sober later, when he sits down with Mandy to be completely engrossed in the horror B-movie Nightbeast, while forking his dinner into his mouth, eyes glued to the screen. (Of course his sobriety goes out of the window later on in the film, but there are extenuating circumstances, to say the least!)

I am not a cinema expert. I doubt will I have much of any great insight to say about any of the films I will mention here, or about sobriety or alcoholism either, for that matter. This is really just for me. It's an attempt to give myself a small banner to rally around in a battle that I have been fighting now for over a decade-and-a-half. Horror movies often get a bad rap as being a negative influence on people, but in my case I find them somehow empowering. I don't know why, maybe it's just because almost anything in our lives that we love or that brings us some kind of genuine happiness can be empowering. I'm hoping to leverage that power to succeed where I have previously failed, and use it to help me find my way home, back to the original version of me—the one that could fully enjoy life without alcohol.

So I guess this little blog is something of an inward-looking, selfish undertaking. But of course, in the unlikely event that anyone happens to stumble across it and get anything positive at all from it, I will be delighted.