to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

the joyous logic of booze is that once you've drunk yrself into isolation what else is there to do but carry on?

read Kingsley Amis' writing on drinking?

Still, the idea of being on holiday and not drinking every single evening is just weird to me.

alas, I haven't had a holiday in 6 years now, but probably the rising price of booze might save me from oblivion :p

Still, the idea of being on holiday and not drinking every single evening is just weird to me.

oh for sure. holidays are lethal.

read Kingsley Amis' writing on drinking?

great book.

used to be a daily drinker to a greater or lesser degree but i barely drink at all now

the anti-depressants i'm taking at the moment make drinking a lot less fun - if regular drinking feels like putting the output of your senses through a fuzz pedal and playing a glorious windmilling pete townshend power-chord, then drinking on anti-depressants feels like fumbling a jazz chord and getting drenched in pints of piss hurled by an angry audience

I didn't start drinking with any regularity until much later in life, some time in my early 30s. In fact, I do recall actually thinking at some point, "hmm, I really should be drinking more." (I blame the kids, but I also embraced it as a hobby, especially as collecting CDs/DVDs became pointless). So I set about learning all I could about beers and spirits (still more or less in the dark about wine), learning personal limits (I've never been drunk to excess, and rarely to the point of discomfort - I wonder if this is part and parcel with starting older?) and how to mix great cocktails for enthusiastic friends. Of my core group of friends, I don't think any of them has or ever had a drinking problem, though they drank plenty growing up and at least one has problems in the family and another, who owns restaurants/bars/clubs, has seen the worst of everything and knows how to take it easy. Still, just as I was getting up to speed many of them started to cut back. The women, as part of fitness regiments, and the men, too, to some extent, because their spouses were drinking less. So now several of them follow the mostly/only-the-weekends model, or only on vacation model. Me, I'll have a beer or two most/many nights, shifting to wine/cocktails/spirits in the colder months. Since I have no problems in the family or among friends, since I'm healthy and don't drink to excess, I can always justify drinking. But I can also go several days without a drink just fine, though what's the point of that?

My fave drinking story came from Frank Sinatra (not directly, and I'm paraphrasing massively). Someone went up to Sinatra and said, Frank, you are a legendary drinker, people are always buying you drinks, how do you hold your liquor? And he explained in response: I go to a party and someone says Frank, let me buy you a drink. So I get a drink, take a few sips, set it down. Then a few minutes later someone sees me with no drink and says Frank, let me buy you a drink! So I get another drink, take a few sips, and set it down. People always see me with a drink in hand, but they don't realize I'm only taking a couple of sips of each drink.

In my case I like playing bartender. I'll sip on a couple of beers while I mix drinks, which keeps me too busy to drink too much. By the end of the night I'm nicely buzzed but not too beyond the pale to neaten up.

My fave drinking story came from Frank Sinatra (not directly, and I'm paraphrasing massively). Someone went up to Sinatra and said, Frank, you are a legendary drinker, people are always buying you drinks, how do you hold your liquor? And he explained in response: I go to a party and someone says Frank, let me buy you a drink. So I get a drink, take a few sips, set it down. Then a few minutes later someone sees me with no drink and says Frank, let me buy you a drink! So I get another drink, take a few sips, and set it down. People always see me with a drink in hand, but they don't realize I'm only taking a couple of sips of each drink.

not to troll your story but this reads a bit like something on clickhole. it makes it sound like he deliberately hides the first drink so that he's offered another, just so he can get bought drinks by everyone, drinks he revels in leaving unfinished.

That would be funny, too!

i guess so - maybe he wanted people to get the satisfaction of buying him a drink? or perhaps he was just a sociopath.

He's in cahoots with the bartender.

I mean, I'm sure he was a functioning alcoholic. It reminds me of a time I interviewed Paul Westerberg, and he sort of defensively claimed the Replacements would start out a set drunk and sloppy, but by the end of the night they'd sweated off most of the alcohol and were often pretty solid, but by then everyone had left. Maaaaayve, but they still drank a shit ton to excess.

I first read that Sinatra story in The Way You Wear Your Hat about twenty years ago. It sounds true, just like I also believe he was carried out of many a bar often.

I've been off the sauce completely since mid-March and at this point I really can't see going back. I had fallen into a Homer Simpson-esque existence of pounding back a few after work/during dinner/before bed. Every once in a while I'd let myself dry out for a few weeks, but would soon fall back into the same pattern.

My main reasons for quitting:

1.) I had just started going through physical therapy and I realized that I still smelled of booze at my 7:30 a.m. appointments. Additionally, alcohol in the system made me less motivated to do my daily exercises.
2.) My kids got one bout of cold/flu after the other this winter. After a couple months of this, I had lost the energy to take care of my sick kids while drinking as well.
3.) I've been stuck at about 70 lbs overweight for the entire 2010s. Booze was a huge part of my caloric intake and usually led to me binging on junk food as well. Without the booze, it's been easier to reign those other impulses in. I'm still fat but I'm beginning to see results.

As for beer – I've almost completely lost my taste for it. Even on this beach trip I mentioned a few posts ago I said I'm having a beer because it's hot and It's What You Do and was so bloated after half a pint that I poured it down the drain.

beautiful metaphors gazzarra xxxxp

16 or 17 to 29, revolved bigly; 30 to today, less than zero. The incompatibility of hangovers and a career change was the deciding factor; it was pretty clear immediately you couldn't be running out of a classroom every 10 minutes, so the decision made it itself. That, and I'd lost interest in going to clubs to see bands. Stopping was easy.

Mozeltov hows life

Another angle is that my entire life p much pivoted around relationships - personal and professional- that were to a large extent sealed or advanced to the critical point of intimacy or w/e under the shared influence and experience of alcohol.

Teetotality is well and good but the odds of me being a destitute virgin skyrocket tbph NB I'm Irish YMMV

I've never really had hangovers except after a really big night, and never got headaches in any case, so there never much deterrent there. But the thing that basically killed weeknight drinking for me, even moderately, was when I started waking up four hours into the night and not being able to get back to sleep. I wasn't going to voluntarily put myself through that for anything.

same thing used to happen to me! 4am on the dot, suddenly wide awake, feeling godawful and unable to get back to sleep

yeah I'd noticed that too as I got older. used to be able to sleep 'til football came on, now it's like three solid hours of blackout + a series of 30 minute naps

alcohol is a regular part of my life but no more than coffee or weed (cf booze --- coffee --- weed). it is much easier to skip the end-of-the-day drink than it is to skip a coffee in the morning.

i'll have a drink every night when i get home. i'll open a beer while i'm cooking or getting my boys ready for bed and then finish it with dinner. if i have guests over or if it's a weekend i might have 2-3 over the course of an evening. if weed is involved, i find it much, much easier to limit my alcohol intake to just a couple drinks. i have a regular friday night meetup w/ some close friends and we'll cook food and pass a few joints throughout the night but only share one or two 750ml bottles of beer between us.

tbh as much as i love alcohol if i just had a tasty effervescent drink w/o alcohol that would be just fine. having kombucha around i could easily skip alcohol or just keep it to one drink a day.

I told a friend last week that these days when I drink with lunch and smoke a cigarette, I get sad – I have nothing to look forward to later in the day!

OTM on my losing the inability to binge drink for pool parties and all day activities. I just returned from a six-day beach vacation and, barring two glasses of white wine, I drank no alcohol during the day – again, if I'm drunk at 2 p.m. what is there to look forward to?

Exactly. Wine/smoking/novel has unfortunately become my daily relaxation routine, and that plus normal tiredness is what sends me to sleep every night. I usually don't start the process until 8-9, sometimes even 10-11pm depending on work events.

I think I've forgotten how to drink socially though. Drinking at bars just reminds me that it's cheaper and more comfortable at home. Along with several of my neighbors I've perfected the stoop hang, in which ppl sit outside and chat with whomever walks by, and everyone stays out as long (or as little) as they want. It's so perfect that it's spoiled me for anything else.

Bringing a book to a bar in the middle of the day to have lunch + chatting with the bartender = one of my favorite things

However, customers and some bartenders are inclined to give me suspicious glances when I read. As if staring and thumbing your phone wasn't weird!

I am very cheap thrifty & alcohol, especially out, is expensive, so I rarely drink unless someone else is picking up the tab. I don't care about it enough to bother otherwise.

Oh god yeah, reading in pubs is wonderful and something I would never give up. You can't really have more than a couple of drinks in that situation though, and it's more of a winter thing. You need the right pubs around you as well.

Chatting with the bartender or dinner at the bar in general is great.

ppl sit outside and chat with whomever walks by

Oh, man, we generally have a standing (sitting) neighbor night in which 20 people or so, give or take, hold court at the end of the block every Friday once summer silly season of camps and stuff is over, grown ups drinking and kids running around like loons. At first I thought the adults were relatively modest drinkers, and then I realized that they'd (the dudes at least) likely already been drinking a while before I got there and by the time my household showed up they were sort of in a lull. And then, much later, once most people had gone back home, the hardcore start diving right back in again. Everyone is twice my size, like proper midwest ogres, so I guess it just takes a bit longer before they get all wobbly.

Communal home drinking is the best! Our only complications are 1)open containers are illegal in public so technically we could all get tickets every time (occasionally someone does--putting your drink in an innocuous cup or glass is key), and 2) that a couple of non-social, non-smoking neighbors object to the smoke. I am not unfeeling--we moved our usual place to further from their windows--but it's inevitable that everyone's outdoor space is minimal and shared and them's the breaks. Close your windows. Also if you want to complain about us, please refrain from screaming at your child in the hallways every day because community is a two-way street.

It would be nice to have a porch or a yard, undoubtedly.

I will read in bars, and will even work a crossword puzzle. But in orbit & JinC are also right that hanging on the stoop/porch/whatever and chatting with neighbors and passersby is also Most Chill.

Further, when I smoke pot I sometimes don't drink at all, to feel it on its own. That said, sometimes I'll have a beer as a centering/calming mechanism if I get anxious or feel unmoored while high. My body knows exactly what to do with beer, so that anchoring familiarity helps.

my favorite places to drink:

a front porch
a back porch
a kitchen
a bar

That said, sometimes I'll have a beer as a centering/calming mechanism if I get anxious or feel unmoored while high. My body knows exactly what to do with beer, so that anchoring familiarity helps.

yea agreed

i live in a community that is very much tied together by front porches, it is part of what makes this neighborhood so much nicer than other areas where i've lived

I love to drink in airports

Don't get me wrong. Airport drinking is barely defensible. It is definitely the worst place to drink, except for on the plane itself. Worse than a hotel bar. But I have grown to love it.

oh me too

Everyone is twice my size, like proper midwest ogres

<3 my Dutch and Swedish people

Me three! Getting to the airport early before a trip starts for a martini is one of life's civilizing pleasures.

Mostly, maybe, the way it feels like nobody can judge you for starting at 9:30 AM because it's 2230 where you're from and all you have to do for the next 10.7 hours is comply with the seatbelt sign

it really is nice, I got United Club passes once and it was like a revelation. even if it was just free light beer, still was great

being hungover on a plane is awful though

Tomboto OTM. I was just typing exactly that: Airports are great for drinking partly because it's a no-judgment zone. Everyone is going somewhere, you're never going to see any of them again, and no one knows what time zone you came from or which you're going to. Also no one knows whether you're terrified of flying, or whether your flight boards in three minutes, or whatever. The tyranny of airline travel is universally acknowledged, so no one will ever judge your response to it.

So if you're observed chugging down three bourbon & ginger ales at 10:30 AM on a Wednesday while wearing a business suit? No problemo. Whatever you need, dude.

The only downside is the prices are excessive. But if you're a business traveler and you play your cards right, you can expense it.

i stopped smoking in january after 30+ years so i can't really drink. or at least i don't want to because i know it will just make me want to smoke. i think i had two glasses of wine in the month of july. i kinda like it. makes me feel like an adult. i reckon if i keep with the not smoking for another couple of years i would lose that association. but i drank to get drunk for almost my entire adult life and smoked all through that so its a pretty strong association. i can't smoke pot either because again it just makes me want to smoke cigs and pot stresses me out. my goal is to be one of those people who just occasionally goes out to dinner and orders one fancy cocktail for fun. healthy!

i have been eating small amounts of mushrooms this summer for stress. they work! but i can't do it every day. i don't trip or anything. i can work and talk to people and all that. but they do provide a little mood lift/stress relief. still considering whether i want to go the pharma route for stress/anxiety. mushrooms seem pretty healthy. but they don't sell them at walgreens. i've also been using the nicotine lozenges as needed since january. they don't provide the medicinal benefits of a cigarette though and i still sometimes feel like i'm gonna lose it.

(i also cut back on drinking a lot since my wife stopped completely about 6 years ago. that definitely made it easier to go without this year. i do like being at the point where i don't care if people smoke and drink around me. it's a very liberating feeling.)

but carry on drinking, all you people!

being hungover on a plane is awful though

but being drunk on a plane is a+++++

being hungover on a plane is awful though

Shakes On A Plane.

Never been a daily drinker, was never much for having a single beer or glass of wine or two. I've always binged, usually isolated to weekends. Since becoming self-employed though that has definitely extended into weekdays. When I'm busy with work I don't drink at all. I don't even think about it or crave or miss it. But once I crack that first one I generally don't stop until I'm a stumbling mess, especially if I mix in some weed. Luckily for everyone involved I don't get angry or violent or horribly embarrassing, (or so I've been assured). It's much better now that I live where I can walk or easily get a ride share.

I've also never really kept booze around the house. It's always been something I go out to do, whether with people or occasionally alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrM39m22jH4

XP I'm not so sure that's true. I prefer to be mostly sober through security, tipsy at boarding so I can then get mildly drunk on the plane and sleep. I've been hammered on a plane a few times and it's terrible.

Just went to SF on Virgin America and their back-of-seat screen-thingy-doodle has a way you can order drinks whenever you want (as opposed to just when the cart comes by).

You can even send a drink to another person, via seat number. Were I not Very Married I would be trying to figure out how to use that for romantic advantage.

I've done it on ILX.

Ha, someone bought me a drink on Southwest earlier this week, just to be nice! They had coupons to use up.