to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

Definitely no reason to start if you haven't. I enjoy mild-to-medium mood- and mind-alteration, it works for me but I don't have any illusion that it's "healthy" per se. And it's nice to take a break just to know for sure that I don't "need" it.

I can thank/blame my school's anti-drug classes for introducing me to the existence of LSD and accidentally making it sound like the best thing ever (and it is, as well as the worst)

idk if more focus on the perils of booze beyond the already-outdated-by-then scourge of "alcopops" would have helped or hindered me but every time I'm drunk like now I'm reminded what a nasty piece of shit drug it is

anti-drug propaganda was so embedded within the school, one of our typing assignments was reproducing a three or four page anti-marijuana paper, which basically suggested a high school girl basically ate her baby and couldn't play the piano anymore because of weed

I've done my share of drugs and would not recommend starting over forty.

xpost Professor Longhair would have some things to say about that. (The piano, not the baby-eating.) There's a great passage in Dr. John's memoir where he talks about Fess smoking spliffs the size of your arm before he went on stage.

these days staying sober seems way more fucking cool than whatever bullshit 3rd hand hippie hangover drug romanticism we inherited which I really hope has finally run its course by now

you can never have enough posts on here about Professor Longhair, what a ledge!

I remember being mighty confused in 4th grade about how weed was supposed to ruin your life and possibly kill you when at the same time they considered it a "gateway drug" like the cigarettes and beer my Dad had. I still remember being terrified to try it, then when I finally did I kept laughing and thinking "wait, this is it?". in retrospect the shit I smoked was probably 95% oregano

"I don't smoke
I don't drink
I don't fuck
At least I can fucking think"

if he's so straight edge why does he sound like barney gumble

i don't care about being cool i care about getting through a day

Also: Negronis taste better than Jake Gyllenhaal's lips.

I only drink on fridays and saturdays now. I'm teetotal the rest of the time, that's my latest thing!

Negronis taste better than Jake Gyllenhaal's lips.

Discarded Taylor Swift lyrics

https://www.shockcinemamagazine.com/stoned.jpg

These days I take frequent and extended breaks from drinking (or, more accurately, I drink only sparingly except for special occasions).

So I am genially amused by my local bar advertising specials for dry January: dry white wine and dry martinis.

Just listened to a long podcast episode about alcohol and its effects and boy did it make a great case for not drinking at all. Then again, I've never had any problem related to drinking, not that I know of, and compared to a lot of folks really don't drink that much; I chalk it up to not starting until I was at least in my late '20s. Of course, the podcast repeatedly emphasizes that there is no "safe" amount of what is essentially poison to imbibe, so who knows.

Anyway, here's the podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkS1pkKpILY

One thing that's definitely a corollary of the metabolic slowdown: not wanting to stay up late. I can't be doing with 3am sessions any more. I can't be doing with midnight sessions, tbh.

― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Friday, January 6, 2023 2:38 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is a point of amusement with friends I’ve known since we were 18-19 - the point in the evening where we’re like “well, looks like I should get home - gotta do some laundry, maybe catch up on reading.” In the old days we’d have been drinking until dawn.

Or, if not drinking, then talking, etc.

i still love staying up late. just not with other people.

❤️

(I don’t want to throw this thread off course, but to expand on Neanderthal’s point: there are few things in life as wonderful as a killer book, a third wind, and a Friday or Saturday evening. MIDDLE AGE RIOT)

yeah, 11pm is my current witching hour.. that's when I'm either home in bed, or trying to get home to bed. (Shows, of course, don't count)

I am sipping a sidecar as I read this thread.

Well, it is almost the weekend.

It's sidecar o'clock somewhere.

EST to be specific

Wait Until Friday, Bandini

Coming up on 5 months and I’m don’t miss drinking at all.

But my body does; it wants SUGAR so bad. I have to keep carbs out of this house or I will annihilate them.

“I,” not “I’m”

So, Dry January was fine. (OK, I had one margarita at a party, but I made the margaritas for the party so it seemed important for quality control.) My wife says she's slept better, that may be true for me too but I wouldn't say I've noticed a huge difference. Anyway, we let it end at sunset last night with a pair of Negronis, which were delicious. I feel like we may drink less for a bit now that we've gotten used to it? But who knows, I guess we'll see.

I don't get it tbh. A couple times a year I stay away from second cigs (aka the Drinking Cig) for as long as I can, usually about six weeks, and it does feel good. By all means fast or take breaks from drinking...but using January strikes me as submitting to social media pressure for a fake occasion. Go dry when you want!

I read a Geoff Dyer line a few months ago. I paraphrase: I drink less now because I never want to lose my appetite and taste for alcohol.

otm


iirc the podcast I posted up thread claimed you need to go three or so months to see any health benefits from abstaining from alcohol. but he's pretty hardcore about how bad it is for your body.

Eh. Americans don't trust red wine like Spaniards and Cubans do

red wine is full of micronutrients that are very good for your health

I homebrew so I typically have 60 litres of cold beer on tap at any given moment + another 40L ready to go. Just finished 8 weeks off work downing a casual 2-3 beers everyday. I enjoy the mild buzz, but anything where I start feeling it in my body rather than just my perception (so more than 3 beers) I really dislike. No negative health effects, I can’t put on weight, hasn’t effected sleep or mood, it’s just been tasty beer drinking and a fun hobby. I’m the back of my head there’s worries about what health problems could potentially come, but it’s a fear of the unknown which is easy to shoo away whenever it comes up.

Hmmmm I posted nearly the same thing in this thread 9 months ago and there’s been no change so that’s good/bad

Go dry when you want!

It's my body and I'll dry if I want to!

I appreciate the sentiment but tbh I like seasonal rituals. The whole January health kick thing has always been beneficial for me, it's nice sometimes to reset. To me it's not pressure so much as kind of a reminder. But also this is the first/only Dry January I've done, so I'm not evangelizing it or committing to a lifetime habit.

this sounds like baloney, but i stopped drinking on january 1st without really knowing about the whole dry january ritual. i just knew that i needed to take a break. i also stopped smoking (marijuana) at the same time, which was by far the more consequential thing. i had fallen into a sad cycle with both drugs, a lot of being alone. halfway through january i made a pair of posts for this thread, both of which predictably went on for too long without a point, and i deleted them both before posting. a sober decision.

i'm having a beer, right now. and i did have a couple beers during a band practice halfway through the month. but on the whole, it was the driest month i've had since i was 16.

re: go dry whenever you want, i think part of the idea is having the support of other people doing the same thing. it didn't really work that way for me, but it would have been cool to have a friend who was also laying off the sauce for the month.

and really, that's why i'm drinking again now, i guess. it wasn't because the month of january. it's hard to do without some sort of support network, or just someone else who is holding you accountable. eventually, time passes, and things are still very very sad. it's hard. you can make the right decisions and try to make changes in your life, but there's an unpredictably interminable lag between change and effect. you can do the right thing and never have the right thing happen, and then, you can do the completely wrong thing and have a wonderful night. the superego is supposed to make sense of it all and remind the rest of the brain about the concept of lag, i suppose, but sometimes the superego goes on vacation or maybe got a divorce and lives at the bottom of an ocean now

otm

*old haggard cigarette torn voice*

i haven't been otm in forty years...

I am not good at coping with winter; I am mostly stuck inside and everything is dark and boring. Mid-January to mid-February is, for me, the worst possible time to deny myself a comfort.

Personally I find it way easier to take a break in summer, because I can go out and do stuff instead. Swim, bike, walk, play music outside.

My recent breaks have gone from June to September and those have gone okay. Even then I grant myself a select few "special occasion" passes.

btw i meant to mention, while putting together those 2 non-posts in mid-january, i read every post upthread and learned a lot. it was just a classic thread, imo. i wish i could have just posted "thank you for typing your words, everyone" and left it at that, at the time. but better late than never - thank you for typing your words, everyone!

I was going to do a sober Feb (the shortest month) but now that I'm involuntarily single (see Heartbreak thread) I'll be damned if I forgo the only thing that seems to silence the miserable thoughts I've been having this week

oooof. i have never opened the heartbreak thread, but i'm sorry to hear it Andy. and i tip my can of beer (definitely not an IPA. why would a white guy be drinking a can of IPA) at my computer monitor <3

y'all <3

thank you! I imagine my life will revolve quite closely around alcohol for the near forseeable future

xposts i always mix up the ego and superego, ugh