Adventures in sobriety

[mkarim]

Originally Posted by christinedaae

If you think your life ends becuase you can't drink, you could not possibly be more wrong.
.

+100000000000.

I've been alcohol-free, smoke-free and drug-free my entire life. I did try beer a few times in college and hated it. Why would anyone want to drink something that tastes like crap, is not good for you and can be deadly?

I drink some wine at wine tasting events but for the most part, alcohol is neither the cause nor the reason for my happiness. Come to think of it, neither are women

 

[mm84321]

Luigi Cornaro's Discrosi della Vita Sobria is worth reading if you are looking for reason.

 

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Alter

(...)
It is now coming up on three weeks and I am still feeling cool about it...definitely going to extend this to two months and thinking about making it three. The last week was a little tougher as I went out with my best friend and watched him drink about ten beers as we chatted away. I went for a fake beer and some iced tea. I also went out with clients a couple of times but they were not such heavy drinkers so it wasn't so bad.
I haven't weighed myself at all but the belt buckle feels a little looser...but just a little. I need to make some changes to my eating habits too.

 

[gamelan]

hmmm...maybe time to do another week. been averaging 2-3 drinks a night for the past two weeks so nothing too major. travelling next week to visit clients. that could be difficult. we'll see...

-Jeff

 

[Alter]

So...I passed the one month mark without any difficulty but did have a glass of wine with lunch. Not that I really felt I needed it...but the lunch just seemed incomplete without it. I blame it on the pate de foie.

 

[socialdtk]

I've been sober for 3 days now. It all started when I received a DUI after hammering 2 beers in a 4 hour stretch of time. I made the irresponsible decision to drive home and ended up sitting in a cell for 7 hours waiting on my parents to pick me up. It has really opened my eyes to the danger of alcohol and the seriousness of drinking and driving.

 

[Lane]

dat vodka dont get me fat

 

[gort]

Originally Posted by socialdtk

I've been sober for 3 days now. It all started when I received a DUI after hammering 2 beers in a 4 hour stretch of time. I made the irresponsible decision to drive home and ended up sitting in a cell for 7 hours waiting on my parents to pick me up. It has really opened my eyes to the danger of alcohol and the seriousness of drinking and driving.

2 beers in 4 hours? did you leave out a 0 or something?

 

[Alter]

Originally Posted by gort

2 beers in 4 hours? did you leave out a 0 or something?

I was wondering the same thing. Pretty sure that two beers in four hours does not fall under the category of "hammering".

 

[samblackbones]

Been sober just over 2 years here, in a 12 step program after I sort of fucked my life up with your run of the mill liquid/pill/powder combo. . . . .
In sobriety I do some quality adventuring - running/snowboarding/reading/meditating and all sorts of other cool **** out in the woods. I have the life I always wanted when I used to party, but never new how to get.
That being said if you don't have a problem, don't bother with the sobriety thing, I just had 0 life skills.
I just cannot see what it would add to my life these days so I stay sober.

 

[BlackToothedGrin]

I'm checking into this thread. At 28, I've decided that alcohol does more harm than good for myself. Since 10th grade, a large portion of my social life has revolved around binge drinking. It's something that should have been left in college, but my friends and I never stopped. While it's easy for me to say no to the first drink, I've never been able to consistently moderate my consumption after starting. For instance, I didn't drink for two weeks until Friday night, when I started with a glass of whiskey, telling myself I wasn't going to get drunk. This predictably progressed into another, then a margarita, then shots, vodka, and several beers. Saturday was spent feeling terrible physically and mentally.

I'm going to quit for 12 weeks to give my brain time to adjust to a life without alcohol, then reevaluate.

 

[impolyt_one]

binge drinking man, is something else entirely I think. There's the work week where you're working diligently and then Friday rolls around and you're out getting your drunk on, and then feeling hurt all weekend, but ITT there's a style of drinking where you find yourself drinking a 6 pack (at the minimum, if not a whole bottle of wine or two, or a good amount of liquor, or combo thereof) to get to feeling sleepy every single night and not really being fazed by a huge recycling bag all the time at home, or the sizeable expenditure.
I guess both styles are dangerous, but the former because chances are higher that you're gonna send your body into shock or poisoning immediately or hurt someone else, and the latter is dangerous because it's full-blown alcoholism and well, yeah.

I have the latter problem, I'm 29. I am kind of =\\ about it (my level of concern and motivation right now is probably proportional to Alter's OP) because it's been a few years now and I find myself still drinking about the same, doing the same routine. I can feel the effects slightly, once in awhile.
I spent a few years in Asia during college, where binge drinking is routine, but it wasn't that I got so much into binge drinking but really enjoying drinking with dinner and always having a beer. I'd drank before occasionally from the time I was 14 or so (goes hand in hand with other activities you find yourself doing with too much free time) but that was probably the breaking point, where I decided I really liked beer and drinking in general and it became transcendent for me. I developed a 6-pack a day habit within a couple years and have had it since. If I take a break for a day or two, my body clock usually flip flops about 12 hours.

We get piss ass beer here though, so what I've decided lately is that I'm going to cut out all beer until I can drink a decent beer I know to be worth it, and in the meantime, if I feel like a drink, I'm going to drink from my whisky collection (which I do very moderately, just a little splash in a Glencairn at a time) or take my lady out for some good wine or champagne with food. I count my drinks and sit and enjoy the taste of each one, and in the end I make it out of the night with only a few drinks in me.
I think just dropping the idle drinking of beer I do at home would knock out 60 or 70% of my total consumption, and I may even crank back to just a couple nights a week, of a few drinks per. That is my goal, not to stop drinking completely, but to cut out the needless drinks. I have been treating beer like water for a long time now.

 

[socialdtk]

Originally Posted by Alter

I was wondering the same thing. Pretty sure that two beers in four hours does not fall under the category of "hammering".

I was being sarcastic. Even though I wasn't drunk, and the police officer has no evidence proving that I was drunk, I'm still going to have to end up paying $2,000+ to win the case. It's made me realize how much bullshit some DUI charges can be.

 

[gort]

Wouldn't 2 beers in 4 hours put you under the legal limit? Thought the rule was one drink per hour and you're roughly good.

 

[socialdtk]

Originally Posted by gort

Wouldn't 2 beers in 4 hours put you under the legal limit? Thought the rule was one drink per hour and you're roughly good.

I refused to blow into the mini breathalyser opting to use the more accurate machine back at the station. The officer sat me in the holding room and disappeared for 30 minutes. When he returned he said the time in which I had to take the test had expired. At this point he charged me with a DUI and refusal to submit chemical analysis. If I'm found guilty I lose my license for 2 years, pay an 800 dollar fine, and have to sign up for an alcohol assessment class. I'll also be known from that point on as the irresponsible drunk asshole that rides his Vespa to work.