The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations (36 page)

Robert and Sarah were right—I was spending more time as “Drunk Paul” than I was sober. I still knew that, even with Sarah’s help, there was almost no chance of my being hired by TechCrunch but she was showing a huge amount of faith in me even to try.

It was one thing me writing stuff for the
Guardian
that embarrassed her, but quite another to write it for a publication for which she was an editor. For that faith alone, stopping drinking was the least I could do. And, anyway, the more I thought about it the more convinced I was that drinking was really just a stage prop for me.

I was perfectly capable of having ridiculous adventures sober: I’d been sober at the toga party, I’d been sober driving the Challenger, I’d been … no, actually, that was about it—but the point stood: there had been times that I’d been sober and had fun. There was no reason I couldn’t survive without drink. Whatever the news from TechCrunch, I was going to quit.

For Robert, for Sarah, for all my other friends, and also for Karen and everyone else my drunken behavior had hurt. Most importantly, though, I was going to quit to prove to myself that I could.

“Hey!”

Sarah’s call came the day before my flight.

“Mike’s going to email you.”

“What’s the verdict?” I said.

“Well, amusingly, at first he thought he wouldn’t be able to afford
you. I assured him he could.”

“Thanks. I’m not sure how to take that.”

Nor me. I’m not sure Internet editors realize how badly paid newspaper columnists are. The point is, he thinks your column—assuming you make the changes we talked about—could work really well as a weekend thing, published on a Saturday or Sunday morning. You could write long, and he’ll probably be fine with you swearing, too.”

“Holy shit, really?”

“Just check your mail. He’s going to send you an offer today.”

“I really don’t know what to say,” I said.

“Just don’t fuck it up.”

“I won’t,” I said, “and in fact I’ve decided to stop drinking. I’m going to focus on writing for the next few months and spend less time acting like a drunken idiot at parties.”

I don’t know how I expected her to react, but in hindsight she said exactly the right thing.

“I don’t believe you, but it would be nice if I were wrong.”

And she was wrong. At first at least.

I arrived back in San Francisco on July 20th and checked into the Gaylord Suites for two months, at $50 a night.

I spent the whole of the first week working on my TechCrunch column. The first one is always the easiest, just introducing myself and setting out my stall for the column, and yet I still worked harder on it than I had on my previous dozen or so
Guardian
columns. The opening paragraph read:

I was joking, of course, but there was truth in that introduction. I was pretty sure that it would be just a matter of time before I did something stupid, and ended up fired again.

But in the meantime, news of TechCrunch’s latest “hard-drinking” hire got around quickly and almost immediately the party invitations started back up again—as well as emails from PR people who decided that the way to my heart would probably be through my liver. In the week after the first column, no fewer than four separate PR types invited me to drinks, each of them mentioning rum. I had to at least give them credit for doing their homework.

Still, I resisted the invitations. I had lunch with Sarah, with Scott and with Eris and with a few other friends I hadn’t seen for far too long, but generally stayed locked away in my hotel room. I decided that the best way to avoid drinking was to avoid temptation—so instead I bought a new notepad and began sketching out a plan for the new book.

There was no reason why my calming down for a while should stop me writing a book telling others how to do the opposite. I saw the book as a kind of lifestyle manual—part (in deference to my publisher) blagger’s guide but also part manifesto; encouraging others to follow in my footsteps, at least as far as living in hotels goes.

Having lived that way for seventeen months, I couldn’t imagine ever going back to renting an apartment; at least not until I got married
to a girl who demanded her own cushions. The Kings of the Road Club name had stuck; both as a working title for the book, but also among those people I know who had either joined it or were seriously considering doing so.

Eris was the latest recruit; over lunch she told me that she’d decided to quit her ridiculously high-paying job and, inspired by my travels, was going to hit the road in search of adventure. I happily gave her the benefit of my advice: which was basically not to plan anything in advance, as she’d probably wake up naked in a hotel corridor and fuck everything up.

There were some problems with advocating the life I’d led since leaving London. As a freelance writer, I was able to work from anywhere and to focus my writing on whichever place I happened to find myself.

Rob is an entrepreneur without any permanent employees, and so enjoyed similar freedom. Eris would be able to do freelance design work as she traveled, but even so she only intended to live nomadically for a few months before returning to San Francisco.

The truth is, for most people living as a permanent nomad was at best impractical and at worst impossible; their jobs and other personal circumstances just don’t allow it. It seemed disingenuous at best—plain dishonest at worst—to write a book advocating a lifestyle that most people simply couldn’t replicate.

But then I started reading other so-called “lifestyle manuals” and was amazed how often the lifestyle being described in them could only be achieved by someone who started with almost the exact same circumstances as the writer.

And even then there was a marked contrast between what was written, and reality. On my flight back to San Francisco from London, I’d reread Tim Ferriss’
The 4-Hour Workweek
, which had gone onto become a
New York Times
Best Seller.

Since first reading the book in San Diego, I’d seen Tim at various conferences and had heard him talk about how one of the best ways to cut down on your workload is to say “no” to things. In fact, I’d run into him at ETech, at South by Southwest, at TechCrunch 50, at LeWeb and at about half a dozen other events. Coupled with his daily blog, TV and radio appearances and guest articles in the press, I’d say, at a conservative estimate, Tim Ferriss spends about a hundred hours a week promoting his four-hour-a-week work life.

The point, I suppose, is not that you’re supposed to live exactly as Tim describes in his book—but rather that you draw inspiration from his overall message, picking the elements that you can apply to your own life. Once I understood the secret behind lifestyle manuals: that they’re basically bullshit, it was like I’d unlocked the gate to a magical garden. It wasn’t just the 4-Hour Workweek: every aspirational media brand in the world worked the same way.

No one, apart from Hugh Hefner, can possibly live the way that
Playboy
describes, but the magazine was successful because it was just convincing enough that every reader believed buying a copy was the first step to living an unobtainable dream. No one who reads
Vogue
can afford to buy all the clothes in its pages, but they can buy the magazine and maybe one pair of shoes and feel like they’re on their way. No one who reads Tim Ferriss’ book can work just four hours a week, but they can buy the dream.

My book would work the same way: no one who read it would be able to abandon their apartment, live in hotels around the world, blag their way into ridiculous situations and still remain alive and employed—but they could do some of it. The living in hotels aspect,
for example, is perfectly viable in most cities, even if you have an office job and no intention of traveling.

This realization also helped with my second problem: my lifestyle hadn’t even been sustainable for me. In fact, it had nearly killed me, along with driving away friends and getting me arrested. But those were minor details that could be safely ignored in the book—I’d just big-up the good times and the one-night stands while ignoring the hangovers and the screaming outside ex-girlfriends’ apartments. It wasn’t like anyone was going to be dumb enough to mimic me.

Satisfied with my plan, I started sketching out some chapter headings. As long as I kept away from booze, I’d easily have the thing finished by December.

T
he cravings were the worst thing.

Three weeks without a drink and alcohol was all I could think about. I’d started going to parties again—I was trying to focus on serious issues in my column, but there’s some information that you can only get from drunk people—and amazingly I’d managed to stick to water and Diet Coke throughout.

As much as my sobriety was about keeping productive, it was just as much about not letting Robert and Sarah down.

Robert’s pep talk at Butlins had not come easily to him: he’d always been hugely supportive of my drinking, and I could see he thought he’d helped create a monster.

Sarah had put herself out on a limb to get me the job at TechCrunch and I’d made her a promise that I’d quit drinking and work hard. San Francisco is a small town—precisely seven miles by seven miles—and I knew that if I started drinking again, she’d hear about it—and so by extension would Robert.

Knowing that kept me honest; frankly, I wasn’t sure I had the willpower on my own. Every time a beer commercial came on TV, I’d salivate. I was Pavlov’s drunk.

My first “fuck-up” was a combination of factors.

Factor one: a group of Brit entrepreneurs arrived in town from London and invited me for a drink to pitch their new company for a mention on TechCrunch.

Factor two: they suggested a bar that I’d never been to before, not somewhere frequented by any of my San Francisco friends.

Factor three: Sarah had starting researching her new book, and so was spending most of her time in other countries, away from the San Francisco gossip circle. I almost certainly could have got away with drinking occasionally and neither she nor Robert would ever find out.

In hindsight, I should have realized that this was a combination of factors too risky for someone who was starting to appreciate that maybe doing without alcohol wasn’t as easy as he’d thought. But I’d managed to stay sober this long—three whole weeks—and, hell, going to a place where I could get away with drinking—if I wanted to—would be the perfect test of my willpower. There was no reason I couldn’t stick to Diet Coke all night. And so I would.

The evening of the meeting came around and I sat in the bar, drinking black fizzy water by the gallon, as the three entrepreneurs told me all about their business. Their idea didn’t quite warrant a whole column, but I promised to keep an eye on them, and would write about them if they secured funding and started to expand.

The business portion of the meeting over, the conversation soon turned social—gossip from London, that kind of thing. The entrepreneurs ordered shots, but I stuck to Diet Coke. It was 11 p.m. And I was totally sober.

And then it happened—such a stupid thing: someone messed up a bar order and came back to the table with four pints of Stella and a Diet Coke instead of three pints and a Diet Coke. The pint just sat there, looking at me. I looked back. Just the one. I could wash it down with the Diet Coke; no one would ever know.

“Help yourself,” said one of the entrepreneurs. “It’ll just go to waste otherwise.”

“No,” I said, “thank you.”

“I woke up …” Ah, fuck.

The guilt I felt the next morning was worse than any guilt I’d ever felt after any previous night of drinking. Worse than the morning after showing up at Karen’s house, and worse even than either of the two mornings I’d woken up in a cell.

Or at least it was a different kind of guilt: not for my behavior—I hadn’t actually done anything bad—but for the first time in my life, the guilt was for the act of drinking itself.

For one thing, I’d let down Sarah and Robert, and everyone else who had for the past few weeks patted me on the back and congratulated me for cutting out the booze. But also, trite as it is to say, I’d let myself down—badly.

Up until that night I’d always assumed that I didn’t need to drink; that it was an active choice I was making in order to make my night more relaxing or fun. But I’d made it to eleven o’clock last night without drinking; I could have gone home and the night would still have been a success. And yet I still had the drink.

Worse than that, after a couple more beers the entrepreneurs had gone back to their hotel. But I’d stayed in the bar; just me and a roomful of strangers, drinking until closing time.

As I’d ordered my second beer I remember thinking “well, I’ve had one now; I’ve fallen off the wagon, I might as well make the most of it.”

But the truth is, I couldn’t stop. Physically could not stop. I had to keep drinking until I was drunk.

And, of course, it happened again. I’d got away with it the first time and I’d sworn to myself that it was just a blip. I’d tested myself, and I’d failed, so next time I’d avoid the situation.

But then my friend Richard came to visit, and suggested we catch up over a Sierra Nevada. He specifically mentioned the brand; it was one of the things he liked best about coming to San Francisco. It was rude not to join him for one. Just one.