This decision to seriously step back the drinking happened to a core group of our friends in a group chat after on a particular weekend a large group of us really went nuts on a particular sort of 4 day bender. Since most of us don't have a traditional job the timeline is going to seem pretty whacked out here but it is the truth.
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So it started on a Wednesday pretty early. There was a Wimbledon match on and a couple of my friends are really big fans of one of the guys that was playing. So we all went to the same pub and watched that. By the time the game was over and it took a while because it went to the maximum number of sets that it can go to, the bar we were in started to fill up because an important European Cup game was coming on in an hour or so that featured England. Since a great deal of the expat population here are English, I decided to support them. This took us well into the wee hours of the morning like until nearly daylight. I knew I was in trouble because I needed to go home and sleep a little bit in order to get myself prepared for our weekly bowling outings with the DUMBO organization. I did NOT feel great when I woke up so upon arriving at the lanes I was feeling a bit nauseous and someone handed me a beer.
Not being a noob to the sport of getting rid of a hangover, I already knew that one of the quickest ways out of a hangover is to start drinking again and well, I wouldn't use this tactic if it didn't work. It did work, and the next thing I know I was at the bar we go to after the bowling events and was having a good time. I wasn't tired because I had some really strong coffees as well - which are very easy to find and very cheap in this country - it did the trick but the next thing I know I had consumed 10 beers - which is a lot for me especially when you consider that it had only been 3 hours. I did manage to go to sleep at a reasonable hour on Thursday night, but then on Friday afternoon I was contacted by a friend who had been out of the country for days and he wanted to meet up. I am the kind of person that unless I am on my deathbed a friend coming back into town means that I am going to meet up and meet up did we ever. I would say we had 14 drinks each before I stumbled the 2 blocks home to my condo.
I had planned on taking days off starting that day but then someone contacted me and told me that today was the 5 year anniversary of my favorite local pub and well, I kind of HAVE to go to that don't I? Well, as you might expect that got messy including doing something that I almost never do: Taking shots. Let's just say that I don't remember the last parts of the night.
On Sunday, there were 3 friggin events going on but I only made it to one of them. There is a place that gives away free beers for an hour in the afternoon and I went to that but I think it was at that point that my body was like "what the hell are you doing?" and just didn't want to take anymore. I got some take away food and headed home and without any chemical assistance fell asleep by 8pm. Some of my other friends who are a lot more into sports than I am headed out to watch the Wimbledon final followed by the Euros final a few hours later. Some of those guys are alcohol champions and despite having gone through basically what I had gone through for the past 3 days, managed yet again to stay out until 4-5AM. Since I woke up feeling like dirt on Monday I am glad that I skipped all of that.
I didn't drink at all on Monday and just spent the entire day feeling terrible. It was at that point that I decided that I was going to take a break and lo' and behold several of the other people that had participated in the past 4 days felt the same. We didn't make a pact per se, but there is a competitive nature between myself and my friends so it sort of became one anyway.
While this might not seem special to people out there that don't drink at all or drink in moderation, for me to go the next 3 days without drinking at all is pretty special. Then on the next bowling day I only had 3 beers during the entire after-party. Friday I drank nothing and also exercised for 2 hours and yesterday was Saturday and I had 2 beers at our enchilada dinner and didn't really enjoy them so I switched over to soda water. I went home, went to sleep at a reasonable hour and got up on a Sunday at 7am. I am not a morning person I had just had enough sleep and got up!
Now the story up to now is one of someone overdoing it during a binge session and then decided to overhaul how he lives his life the next week. Here's the thing: I have a policy in my life that I do not drink unless there is an event. I never go meet someone for drinks just for the sake of drinking, there needs to be a better reason for us to be there other than that. That something needs to be a sporting event, a dinner, a party, or something special like someone's birthday to get me on the sauce. Last weekend just happened to have all of those things happening over and over and over. I am one of those guys that realizes that I am very capable of slipping into alcoholism and have done so in the past several times. I don't consider myself an alcoholic because honestly, I don't really even like the taste of it nor do I even have any alcohol in my house. I do understand that dangers though.
Now, to my discovery after a week of relative sobriety: I noticed when wandering around sober that most of the people in this area are a bunch of really drunk borderline lunatics. I am not judging them for this because they are me at times but when you are on the outside looking in, it seems colossally stupid.
I'm not saying that I am going to make a grand life change or anything like that but I genuinely have enjoyed the past week a lot more than I have weeks in the past where I was hammered 2-3 days in that week. Maybe it is my age, maybe it is just because I have spent decades over-indulging to the point where I am very fortunate that I haven't ever gotten into any trouble because of it. No matter what the reason is, I think that I am starting to enjoy a bit of sobriety in my life and perhaps it is time for me to start to view this with a bit of moderation in mind. There really aren't many things in life that are worse than a pounding hangover that lasts more than a day and when you stop to think about it, why would humans continue to do something like that when they are very aware of what the cost is?
So I am not going to make any promises here because I have made statements like this before in the past but I think it probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to kind of save the booze for special occasions rather than having the booze be the occasion. After 1 week of feeling a lot better than I would normally and actually getting some exercise in there as well, I can see the benefits already.