to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

Dry January

I think if you are a reasonable drinker, and *don't* regularly drink to excess, then what difference does it make, really? Cutting out alcohol for a month shouldn't be a shock to the system,

mm well tbh i do tend to go pretty hard pretty regularly

I have dessert like.. a few times a year

now, take away my occasional salty/spicy snacks and I'm angry

never had em

oh my god dot's pretzels are the truth

I checked and apparently they only carry them at Ace Hardware here? idk

What I'd like to know is who are these people who have parties where, if you don't drink, you freeze to death? That weirded me out more than the not drinking itself.

a lot of personal essays fail because they seek to generalize experiences that most people don't have at all. this is a great example.

lol yes

too much even when i'm on self-imposed wagon (fer example, now) it's on my mind a little, i am seriously not so happy with me.

i don't drink a large qty, and i'm typically not too impaired, but both conditions have been increasing in the past year.

Yes LBI that was very strange. I have been in a lot of rooms - sober, tipsy, and drunk. I have also experienced a lot of evenings where the food schedule was delayed or amorphous.

I have literally never thought "this room would be comfortable if I were drinking" or "this delay in the food conveyor belt would be tolerable if I were drinking." In each case, I guess I would put on a jacket or eat something or, um, just... deal with it and wait? Seems like that's a weirdly specific situation that she blamed on OMG Pervasive Booziness! instead of the specific situation with that host in that moment.

Personally I don't feel much attraction to something like abstaining in January, or Tuesdays, or during the full moon, or whatever. No judgment for those who do, it just seems arbitrary and therefore unnecessary.

What if you're in drynuary and you happen into a fine convivial occasion where it makes sense to enjoy a beverage that symbolizes and celebrates camaraderie, fellowship, a good food pairing, and the just plain joy of a sensuous life (that happily happens to include champagne)? You say no because of an arbitrary promise you made to no one in particular just to... just to what? Demonstrate your freedom from compulsion? Sounds like the opposite of freedom to me. But then I am a notorious libertine.

I think in the writer’s case she realized these were her drinking friends and everything was awkward when she wasn’t drinking. Waiting for someone seemed to take forever, the room seemed colder, and she felt judged by her absence of drink. The worrying about spoiling dinner in the piece is so weird — eat the snacks and get a light dinner or share an entree, who gives a shit?

i'd feel shitty if i were betsy and doug or whatever their names were

I occasionally take a month off or whatever, it's good for me,and I drink enough that I notice slight differences (bank balance, being slightly better rested at work). It I also good for me to see that I can do it because I've been drinking heavily for 23 years and while I'm not am alcoholic I'm definitely not in total control of my consumption.

fair

I wonder if I’d have certain life things in a different order or shape right now but drinking, recreational or otherwise, is a side effect or symptom of other life choices imo

My drinking is a side effect of being from the west of scotland mainly

My drinking is a side effect of the drinks being delicious

My drinking is a side effect of inability to raw dog reality

i don't drink at all anymore but if you asked me to quit sugar i don't think i could do it

like once or twice a year, inevitably at a party where I'm uncomfortable and don't know anyone, i do the YEAH FUCKIT drink binge and knock out three to five drinks fairly quickly and nothing good ever happens and i always feel shitty the next day and that sort of inoculates me against socially drinking at all and i guess that's good?

mostly i'm just conscious of the fact that i have a personality that leans toward overdoing everything and a history of alcoholics in the family
i had a year or three of make-believe alcoholism that started thinking about becoming actual alcoholism followed by a pause and then another half-hearted attempt in that direction and a few moments of the lure of self-destruction in utero and now it's just wiser to stay away from that machinery.
whether it was wine or beer or liquor, having one drink aways felt like bullshit, if i was gonna do it i wanted to get real fucked up every time.
whenever i was starting to get just a little drunk that's inevitably when reptile brain suggested doing more and then i start doing dumb shit and blacking out.
i'm proud of living long enough to know my limitations but a little ashamed that i don't have the will/dna to allow that to be part of my life and that's about where it's at.

My drinking is a side effect of inability to raw dog reality

i've tried not eating sugar in its most obvious forms so many times and i get maybe a day, maybe two days if i'm lucky. i don't think i can do it.

my life used to revolve around it, and now i don't consume it anymore, but weirdly my life still revolves around it in a way

every day

I'd never recommend alcohol to anyone. Weed though. Very much.

my friend set me up with her co-worker the other day, gave me her number and i texted her proposing we meet for drinks. she said yes (we're going later this week), but later texted me "i'm actually not drinking right now, guess i'll get a soda". anyways i've wracked my brain trying to think of an alt first date option but came up dry (har har)... any suggestions?

i don't even love drinking that much but going for drinks is the perfect activity for first date. the next best options are all so far behind. eating is TMI, going to a movie is not enough I... i've had some nice dates just walking around, but it's winter

museum, coffee, movie, bakery, ice cream, skating rink?

yeah, weekend afternoon coffee is good because if it goes extremely well you can segue into something else. meaning another social activity, as it’s the middle of the day

as a mostly sober person, getting a soda/seltzer at a bar is fine

this year so far, quite a lot tbh but not more than usual in a negative sense

been enjoying one/two drinks after work or with dinner as a more common thing, and am consciously trying to cease more than say five or six in a go

i've tried not eating sugar in its most obvious forms so many times and i get maybe a day, maybe two days if i'm lucky. i don't think i can do it.

I had a friend who said quitting soda was more difficult than quitting smoking and nowadays I believe it. I think I'd feel a lot better after quitting sugar than quitting drinking honestly.

many midwesterners are fucking weird and, even if they drink regularly and aren't particularly religious/moral, think drinking is bad and anyone who abstains is affecting a morally superior position

if she's a minnesotan she's stuck halfway between catholic/lutheran morality and it's a hellscape of weird judgment and passive-aggressiveness

― mh, Tuesday, February 12, 2019 9:35 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For real for real. Your body is a temple.

my married friends were joking about the husband's mom and how she actually deployed the "well, that's different" when talking about a food she had not previously experienced. where "different" means "I don't like this because it is outside my conception of food"

scorching passive aggression

in our group of close friends we have a few couples and one pair of them decided to do Dry January. For two weeks the group chat was the rest of us making clubbing plans while they sat it out, so I decided that we were going to have a Sober Night In where we watched some TV shows and ate pizza and the worst thing we would consume was fizzy juice. There was a moment at 9.48pm where we all nervously asked "so if the off-license closes at 10pm and we can't buy booze, we are definitely doing this, right?" and there was a beat where nobody wanted to be the one to surrender or the one to insist. But we stuck it out, stayed sober and had a lovely night til 2am when they left on the note "this has been fun and we've all enjoyed it, but let's never do it again"

two weeks later we all got very drunk on a Saturday night and watched the same shows and listened to music and they left at Sunday 7pm and normally I would say "it's just a good night" but now I feel confident that it was good company and we could give up The Sesh and still enjoy a social life if we had to. Which is totally different to ~10 years ago when I went sober for six months and realised my whole social life was centred around drinking and dancing with people who had no common interests with me.

I didn't drink for 3years in the early-mid 2010s? I got into such good shape.

could you have gotten in shape and kept drinking? or was the drinking what was causing you to be out of shape?

I think it is close to impossible to get into that level of shape while drinking at all. I cut out all sugar, coffee and simple carbs too. I don't know what Marvel movie I was auditioning for.

in shape and drinking? ah, you've reminded me of the strangely alluring millenial-targeted marketing of the White Claw instagram
https://www.instagram.com/whiteclaw/

I spent ten minutes sitting around one day marveling at the weird cross-section of interests they've constructed in the purpose of selling alcoholic fruity sparkling water

damn, Yerac went hard

Yeah it sucks too because I look at pictures of pasta like it's porn.

aren't there a lot of beer ads that feature exclusively young and in-shape people who drink between bouts of volleyball and windsurfing

I am sure they are running one mile to defeat that one beer.

I mean I still exercise a lot, not as hard as I used to, but 75-85% of it is really what you eat/drink that makes the difference. Unfortunately, I heavily got into wine and spirits and I am very frugal so hate spitting during tastings if it's something that I bought or that I know is super expensive. And I want to eat the world when I drink.

I think it is close to impossible to get into that level of shape while drinking at all. I cut out all sugar, coffee and simple carbs too. I don't know what Marvel movie I was auditioning for.

― Yerac, Wednesday, February 13, 2019 4:15 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was my life from May through November before I started fucking up. Trying to get back on the horse again starting this week. Fitting into smaller clothing is great after years of not fitting into any sizes that they carry at department stores.

I ignore my own eating and exercise habits and just talk about "the metabolism" like some people talk about "the economy"

i overdrafted my account today. i think i might not be able to afford drinking in new york? if i tell myself this, will i believe it?

i want to have abs at least once before i'm old. yerac's posts reminded me that this is still a goal i have.

i also have another goal to run a 7 minute beer mile though

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.

― how's life, Thursday, August 10, 2017 9:50 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I had my first drink since March 2017 last month. Two Johnny Walker Blacks at a work function for my wife. It was fine. The alcohol tasted worse than it used to back when I drank daily. Had a mild hangover the next day, which was a big surprise with such little alcohol. Haven't had a drop since, but I think enjoying one every 20 months or so will be fine.

In the meantime, with reflection I've really come to realize that in addition to my reasons that I outlined before, I really was not as good of a husband or father when I was regularly using alcohol. Not like, a raging monster, but in ways that were too subtle for me to notice at the time. Brought it up with my wife the other night and she was like "yeah, you were kind of a dick."

― peace, man, Tuesday, February 12, 2019 1:58 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Back in early lockdown, gave up and started drinking wine regularly with my wife to self-medicate for all that "end-of-the-world" anxiety. Stopped and started again a few times, but also began buying myself bottles of hard liquor and drinking by myself on nights that she worked. I've been doing that pretty much every night for the last few weeks, and added to the edibles I've been consuming, it has not been "moderate" amounts of intoxication. Need to dry out and quit again. This hasn't been good for me, mentally or physically.