Being a young British gentleman in the 21^st century who is at a legal age to drink alcoholic beverages (and has been for the past number of years now), more often than not, particularly on weekend nights, I am likely to consume a good amount. Being a Type 1 diabetic there is no hiding from the fact that a degree of responsibility is needed with it, as it can affect blood glucose levels and lead to bad results on long-term HBA1C results.

Those who know of me know that I am very sportingly active and exercise as regularly as possible. A marathon is a casual run in my book. Those who know me well know that I do occasionally like to enjoy a good number of pints here and there to go with it. Quite a combination I suppose, however, looking upon my late teenaged years when alcohol became a new and in thing, something every friend (who didn’t have diabetes) would base their lives around on nights out (and to be honest still do), it became a regular aspect of my life. The hard part with this, I believe for all young people with diabetes, is accepting that your body is not exactly the same as everybody else’s, those who don’t have any illness can afford to drink, drink and drink some more without it having any major affects… well, apart from on the liver, but what teen cares about that? Those with diabetes, well unfortunately it is quite clear that it has affects, even if it is hard to notice.

A fact is that alcohol, along with a number of other aspects such as poor food diets, has three times the affect on a diabetic than a normal person… this results with the likes of myself getting drunk easier than my friends and average people. In some regards that’s good: a cheaper night out and some Dutch courage… what more do you want? However, I can hold my hands up and say on many occasions in the past I’ve drunk like everybody else (and more) and disregarded my diabetes, and the difference is that without exercise I would be at a much higher HBA1C level than I am, (I’m currently 7.7 from March checkup). Before turning 18 my A1C was at 6.5, it was quality, the Doctors loved me, the best controlled diabetic in the entire hospital they used to say, at 17 I had ran 29 miles in 3 hours 1 minute and taken my first attempt at the 70 mile Isle of Wight, with all the training in between, diabetes was a doddle! I still had a drink when I could back then, but as soon as 18 came around it was more or less a weekly occurrence. My A1C continued to rise through the 7’s and last year was as high as 8.0 (not unbelievably high but above where it should be). Fortunately this year I have found myself back in training and after completing 44 miles in April, perhaps I’m now the lower 7’s, which is positive. My message to teen diabetics, have fun and live your life – hell yeah – but don’t feel you have to follow your friends leads as they don’t have diabetes, remember your own responsibilities, a few drinks on nights out is great and getting drunk from time to time is life, but I think it is important to occasionally be smart and keep control of it all, which is what living diabetes is all about.

This is a story about a young me back in 2008, who could have got alcohol on a night-out on a friend’s 18^th party in a hall, but instead had other plans…

Along with a good mate of mine one night, Matt, back in the sixth form party years, it was Teri’s birthday, and there were between 60-80 people from school or Teri’s family in attendance; we put on a night for them all to remember. It took a few weeks of training and choreographing, costume preparing and all kinds of crazy planning to get right. But, by God… we nailed it! We purchased these outfits, which Matt’s mother edited for us by attaching velcro to the sides… they were Pilot costumes. In buying a particular CD, we chose the track we wanted which was by the great Mr. Tom Jones, and had a female friend go into a shop to purchase the final part of our act and costume, which let’s just say we wore underneath…

After an unsuccessful dress rehearsal on the night in front of Matt’s mum and sister, where one or two things came out of place, we set off to the party dressed normally, like everybody else. The velcroed up Pilot outfits remained hidden in our friend’s car. 10PM was our cue, as I mentioned to the DJ our plan and gave him the CD informing about the specific Tom Jones track we wanted. At ten minutes to 10 Matt and I fetched the costumes and had the Gents toilets blocked off for a moment as we got changed, before the music cue and opening beat of Tom Jone’s Leave Your Hat On sounded…

Out we walked.

We had Teri placed on a chair in the centre of the dance floor as a very large crowd gathered around us, clapping along, with a number of female viewers screaming aloud! Practise makes perfect, so the error in the rehearsal allowed us to be more prepared on the actual moment. We mastered all the moves: thrusting, turning, pointing – and most importantly, stripping our clothes off. The final part was the best of all, on Tom’s last loud cue of “you give me reasons to live”  during the track, we gave the crowd a reason to live! The velcro worked well as we whipped our trousers off and bared our tight shiny thongs to the applauding mob.  We did not leave our hats on though, they were flung in the air.

The moral to this story, apart from me also being a nutty stripper as well as an ultra-marathon runner; having diabetes didn’t stop me from giving everybody a good time, and I didn’t need alcohol to do it either!