Sober Again

I absolutely hate alcohol.

I hate how seductive it is, how readily available it is, how acceptable it is, how cheap it is, how good the first beer tastes, how it comes in gently then crashes down violently.

I hate the drinking culture in this country, where getting hammered as a teenager is considered normal, where turning up to work hungover or still semi drunk is generally tolerated and sometimes approved of, where many are still completely fine with drink driving.

Where there is no stigma against being drunk in public, and very little against drinking more nights of the week than not.

I hate the fact that the first several times I got drunk, everything clicked into place, the world made sense, I could talk to people, talk to girls, talk to guys, get laid, relax, stop worrying. Act like a human being. The above is probably the source of my current issues with and sentiment towards alcohol, It gave me just enough rope to start hanging myself with.

As I write this, I am 23 days sober again, having started drinking again about 4 or so months ago after a period of 6 months not drinking. I have been going sober, on and off, for the last 5 years.

I think the longest period of sobriety in that 5 years was around 18 months, immediately after I decided for the first time that I wanted to give it a rest for a while, to lose some weight.

Losing some weight turned into feeling so good about my direction of travel, that it turned into just not drinking, until there was a reason to start again, some family event I was invited to, the usual peer pressure I was stupid enough to pretend to give into. Really I just decided I wanted to drink again, yeah it had made me fat in the past, and yeah even then I had started to realise that alcohol really caused me more grief than it ever gave relief, but I was changed afterall, I wouldn’t make the same mistake again, surely?

Stupid right?

The same pattern has played out without major variation since, that first period of sobriety was the longest, with the next being the shortest, and I have slowly seesawed between progressively shorter periods of drinking and progressively longer periods of not ever since.

I guess eventually I’ll pitch all the way over into teetotalism, which’d be nice, I’d like to fit into my good jeans again, I’m not fat right now, but I certainly don’t have a 29" waist anymore.

I would not describe myself as an alcoholic, but definitely somebody that has problems with alcohol.

I’ve never done anything dangerous as a result of drink, nor have I drank to the point of seriously endangering myself¹, nor drank for weeks on end, none of the soap opera stuff.

I never got angry because I couldn’t drink, I never spent money on beer that should’ve been spent on something else, I never got told I had a problem with drink.

So not an alcoholic, as most would define it. But I drank more than I should’ve, more often than I should’ve, for idiotic reasons, even when I knew that I didn’t really want to. So definitely a problem of some description.

Really I think most people that drink have problems with alcohol to some degree, especially in Ireland, I think half the reason I never got told I had a problem is because most everyone I know is a heavy drinker.

There is a taboo around talking about average drinking levels in Ireland, which despite having some of the most expensive booze in Europe still has absurd rates of alcohol consumption.

Maybe if I’d been born somewhere else somebody would have made mention, but then again maybe not, maybe I never would have started drinking, maybe I’d be lying in a gutter with a bottle of vodka right now, who knows?

If you don’t drink, don’t start, not worth it, anyone who tells you otherwise is an oxygen thief. If you drink, and are wondering about stopping, do it! Its great, genuinely excellent, how life should be, you won’t regret it.