Sweet Addiction

The room was small, dark and creaky. Every footstep by any creature other than the smallest of mice could be heard in this old and dusty building. I stood up from where I had been sat, on a flimsy wooden chair, to face the circle of strangers sat around me. My throat was as dry as the sun and my heart was beating so loud I expected that other people could hear it. I briefly closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said, "I am Terry Hayward, and I am an addict".

When I eventually found the courage to look around the room, I was met with empathetic eyes. We all knew the pain of our addiction, the lost days, the broken relationships, the anxiety of waiting for the next hit. There were times when I found myself physically shaking, just waiting for another chance to crush some candy.

That's a drugs reference isn't it? That's what you're thinking, but no. If only it were that simple.

My addiction is far more insidious. As I stood in this room with fellow souls I regaled the sad story to them. It all started as curiosity. The present Mrs Hayward had become much quieter of an evening and was spending many hours, staring in a trance-like state at her phone. This wasn't the usual text messaging to her friends about shoes or No7 products in Boots, this was something different.

What I discovered was that it was a game. An innocent little game on her phone, called Candy Crush. After some persuasion she briefly showed me the screen and I realised I'd seen this before. I'd once seen a smartly dressed man on a train playing this, to the extent that he missed his stop entirely. I had judged him for being weak and childish but now judgement has turned to compassion as I too found myself downloading the game to see what all the fuss was about.

There are no instructions of any substance. You just mysteriously pick this simple game up. You move different coloured blobs (or candies) into a matching row of three which crushes them. Then all the other candies move down and the whole pointless process continues for level after level. I don't know how many levels there are. I'm beginning to suspect they are infinite.

Sometimes on a level you have to earn a certain total of points, sometimes it's against the clock, and sometimes you just have to clear all the jelly. That evil, evil jelly.

Before I realised what I was doing I had played five rounds and lost all my lives. A little moustachioed character leered at me from the screen and told me I had to wait half an hour for more lives. That was fine at first but as I got better and progressed past the first few levels those half an hours became longer and longer. It got bad. Real bad. I even downloaded Angry Birds to fill the gap while I waited for Candy Crush to give me more lives. This was getting serious.

I was mentally deteriorating. In my head, birdsong was being replaced with the whistly Candy Crush tune from when you lose a life, the music on the radio couldn't be heard over the relentless clanging tune that plays as you shift those candies around. If people spoke to me, I believed that they were interspersing their conversation with the encouraging word, "Sweet", and every time I closed my eyes I could see, yes see, the Candy Crush screen.

Then one day I woke up, and as the sun was streaming through the windows, I stretched and pronounced to the world, "Another day.....another full set of Candy Crush lives".

I didn't realise it at the time, but I needed help.

You will be pleased to hear that I'm now receiving that help and getting my life back. I am blogging again, as you can see, and today I'm going back to my first love. Beer.

You see, when you wake up, like I did last Monday morning, and realise that you never got out of your pyjamas, or left the house all weekend, then I can sort of live with that. However, when I realised that the weekend had been completely dry because I hadn't had time to pour myself a drink because of a ridiculous game on my phone, then I knew things had to change.

Today I am going to Sheffield, one of the spiritual homes for real ale in the UK. I shall be putting myself in the supporting arms of brewers and publicans, and I will cleanse myself with pale ales and/or stout. It's the only way.

If you need help to beat your addiction then I encourage you to join me. We will not let brightly coloured candy ruin our lives.

Thank you for your time. See you on the other side.


**If you have been affected by any of the issues in this blog post then please contact the BBC Action Line, who probably have a factsheet or something useful they can send you. Although don't tell them I sent you. Not after the last time. There was quite a hoo-hah. Sssshhhh!!!! **