Tag Archives: Alcohol

by

Goals

I have this goal. I want to be a 150 average pin bowler. Last night, I crept toward it.

I bowled 170 in this first game and then had this hideous wrist twisting, side hitting game wherein it was 122. My final game was 147 only because I finished strong. Averaging 146 is flirting toward my goal, and I’ll take it.

Like everything, as soon as I get in my head, I can’t do very well.

That quality affects my climbing too.

The last topic to consider in this entry is that only one of our teammates wasn’t drinking at all. I am the only one of us four who completed a dry January. The thing is that it’s not a dry January for me. I just don’t drink anymore.

The main art museum here has a children’s friendly show, and I noticed driving home from work yesterday that it’s in its final weeks. I called my girlfriend so we can all three go together. I had planned it and it was going to slip away if I didn’t get tickets. We talked for half-an-hour last night.

Her ex-husband, who used to be my metamour, can’t wait until Saturday to have a drink. I told her that I’m looking forward to going to a beer garden on Lake Michigan that her best friend recommended to me in June. What’s been derivative for me having my last drink on December 30th is that alcohol is an easy substance to get dependent on.

I wouldn’t even really call my lack of drinking except once in a Blue Moon (That beer mostly sucks.) a goal. I’ve just had a change. And it was time. LA now has a gout flare up and is limping around.

Do you play sports? What are your sports goals as you age? Have you ever set a goal and it turns out differently than the one that you set?

by

Moderation

I haven’t had a drink in 15-days. I didn’t crave beer at bowling last night, and I think it’s largely because the beer there is just ok. It’s also massively overpriced.

I’m not a sommelier. I don’t make beer. I can’t drink hard alcohol, because I almost immediately fall asleep when I do so.

I realized last week that I largely drink because I’m hungry. It’s quick sugar for me.

Since the pandemic, I would have one more beer if I had a stressful day. Otherwise, I was simply getting some calories into my system, which one knows are simply sugar.

I am still very funny without an ounce of alcohol. I don’t need it to be me. And last night, I was realizing that I am louder when I’m drinking because I was a quiet bowler and celebrator.

However, I’m wondering which of my friendships are beer friendships.

I can imagine that I will have some shifts…

It’s not that I judge what others are doing. I am just waking up. I saw LA as a vacation alcoholic and probably solo alcoholic when she met me at the end of my birthday trip last summer. Then, I am still in the planning stages of how we’ll intervene with my former colleague. I just don’t want to have my own clouding right now.

I am super close with five sets of my neighbors on my street. Two came over Sunday night to drop off a New Year’s gift and we talked. The man in this DINK couple is doing dry January… His wife told me about 2 intervention conversations that she had to lead with two friends.

Alcohol suspension and disuse is all around me.

I read this article today and a few points were similar ones that I’ve made when I entered this period of non-drinking. I will drink again, but I don’t know when. I know that I won’t be drinking excessively ever. I never did that much anyway, and was simply dependent.

I also finally have a plan for beginning psychedelics.

Before it was legal, I spent about 18-months to a couple of years smoking marijuana. I completely stopped when I was in a suite with friends and was convinced that a helicopter was landing on me and that dominoes on the table were going to crash and break. I don’t even care to try strains of it that friends recommend to me. I don’t like it. I hate what it does to me personally.

What do think dependency is? What is an addiction?

by

Normalized

I have a list in my Netflix, but didn’t have the bandwidth last night for starting a new series. As Google is always monitoring and listening in, I saw a Harrison Ford movie article on my phone. I realized that I’d seen it as soon as it started streaming. I think I saw it when I had a DVD subscription to Netflix. However, I couldn’t remember how the premise tied everything up, so I watched it with my cell phone handy.

My girlfriend has Flu A. Because I was sick over Thanksgiving week, which is a week that I never work, I didn’t get a flu or COVID shot. That means that I have Flu A too, but I’m not running a practice or raising a toddler, so I simply have a sore face and jaw today. Yesterday sucked and I slept 11-hours in total. She ran a fever of 107 at one point last night and that’s so scary. She’s taking her daughter into the doctor today.

I texted back and forth with my girlfriend and few other folks and watched, “The Age of Adaline.”

This post isn’t about suspending disbelief.

It’s not about medical miracles or neurology.

It’s about alcohol.

I’ve had nothing to drink since 12/30/24.

I go back to work tomorrow, and there will be reasons that I justify for myself to have 1-2 beers.

I won’t though.

Alcohol usage is so normalized.

Let’s get back to this movie.

The love interest tells the protagonist that lovers and glasses of wine should never be counted when she says that she doesn’t want another drink.

The protagonist and her love interest split a bottle of wine in a 1950s convertible that is sitting in a warehouse. They’re not eating.

The characters eat a little bit of dinner and drink two different wines and then have cognac at night.

I don’t think that without my choice that I’ve made, I’d ever have given these scenes a second thought. However, watching the copious amounts of booze that’s consumed in this movie about never aging is alarming. Alcohol is the normal backdrop of every evening shot in the film.

What is your favorite series or movie? Do the characters drink? How much? Why do you think that drinking is a “normal” part of our collective habit?

by

Sober

My metamour is doing a dry January.

I have decided to not drink until after Groundhog Day, and I may stop for 60 or 90-days.

My colleague who almost died is probably 80-pounds again. We got her out of the house moving her walker so she wouldn’t fall on her face on Christmas Eve. It took us 3-4 minutes to get her into my colleague’s house. Everyone had to tend to her.

Her neuropathy is so bad that she can’t bare weight on her feet really. I didn’t know that neuropathy is related to having liver disease.

She smelled like Listerine after my son got her into my car on Christmas Eve.

Then she was drinking a glass of white wine. She fell asleep right after gifts and she bitched about her gift.

I can’t do a dysfunctional relationship.

I can abstain from alcohol at bowling, karaoke, after I’ve had a hideous day and I am cracking 1-2 beers while I cook.

I am doing some of it because I promised my colleague that I’d do 30, 60 or 90-days dry with her. When I said that she said that she didn’t know which she wanted, because that was “a big question.”

I also am engaging in this activity because no one can ever make me do something. I have enormous willpower. My son said, “Mom, you’re going to want one beer,” and I said that while that was true I don’t need one.

I’m toying with the idea of becoming a social-only and special occasion-only consumer of alcohol. I’ll write about this journey here.

How much do you drink? Have you lost family or friends to alcohol abuse?

by

Booze

My current girlfriend doesn’t drink.

I think that I drink if I’m bored mostly. I also sometimes drink with a few of my friend groups. I typically drink when I’m bowling and usually do so at dinner. I have fun at beer fests and did one solo recently. I have had wine with holiday dinners since I was born.

I learned from being with one of my previous partners, who now has a new liver, that it is anger-provoking to be with someone who is tipsy, drunk or loaded when you’re sober. In fact, I remember when she didn’t even acknowledge that I had landed, was swimming topless in a pool, and I had to drag my suitcase to the place where she was because I didn’t know the name of the complex where our room was in Key West. She was either drunk or was edgy and pissy all the time. If she hadn’t been drinking (yet), she’d snap at you.

Batman and I nearly split a bottle of wine once during dinner that we’d cooked together. We had drinks in a bar one time. Another time when we were doing book planning, she and I drank tequila and ate taco soup. Otherwise, she and I hung out sober. In fact, the time that we made out for almost four-hours we had been drinking tea. When I’m with women, I don’t drink at all unless they are too.

I had a hideous day at work yesterday and was tapped out too because the day involved my being away from the house just over 12-hours and the petsitter’s boyfriend came over after I’d gotten home. (He was supposed to be there 5:30-7:30.) I didn’t quite understand all of his explanation; however, I told him that I’d make two different arrangements while his girlfriend is abroad. I accepted his apology.

I low key wanted a drink. Instead, I made a potluck invitation and waited for my girlfriend to text me so I could connect with someone who I care about before I went to sleep. I would’ve made up my cardio given that I missed Monday because I was with my girlfriend and her daughter in a canyon, but I was too tired. I would’ve had a beer if I wasn’t thinking.

LA was either drunk or nursing a hangover by drinking when I she flew in to meet me in NYC after I turned 50. There was a time period that I wasn’t sure that the nature of our friendship would survive. However, when I was talking with my girlfriend about it, slept on it one night, and then when I awakened I realized that it was more about her sleep apnea that she doesn’t take care of that upset me. (My son was born with enlarged tonsils and by the time I fought with the HMO long enough and they removed them, his adenoids had formed plaques blocking his airway completely.) I don’t like that drowning noise. It scares me.

When I was pregnant with my son, I missed coffee. I had an even more heightened sense of smell then– and my sense of smell is strong anyway–but when I would smell coffee, I wanted a cup or five. It was only when I was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and so miserable that I would have four tablespoons of red wine and take a bath. I didn’t miss alcohol for my pregnancy.

What’s your relationship with alcohol? When have you had more of it than other times in your life? What do you see with your friends and family when they’re drinking?