SUNDAY 7TH AUGUST 2022
I woke up back at home today after a great week away. My first alcohol free holiday as an adult! To be fair, it was really easy given that our hosts in London are tee-total and there was really very little occasion to drink the rest of the week anyway. On the odd occasions when I could have had one, I asked myself if it would’ve enhanced that experience and the answer was always “no”. I was aware a couple of times of how agitated I get when things don’t go according to my preferred schedule and I was a bit disappointed in myself – that’s clearly something I have to work on – but, all in all, it was a great week and pretty stress-free, despite packing loads in.
MY WHY
Something that I first came across in This Naked Mind and have read about elsewhere since is the concept of how alcohol works and how you have to keep drinking to try to maintain that feeling of elation you get from the first drink. If you just have one, you get the high but, when the effects wear off, the depressive effect of the alcohol brings you down to a lower level than you were at before you started. It totally resonated with me and brought to mind all the occasions where I’ve felt compelled to keep drinking, switching to shorts when I could no longer stomach any more wine or beer if I was out in company and didn’t have the option to just go to bed. On the odd occasion where I have had to admit defeat and stop drinking when the party is still going because I have pretty much drunk myself sober and I know there is no getting the high back, the feeling is pretty grim. I always felt the need to keep drinking until the end of the night to try to maintain the feeling of elation I had at the start of the night, not knowing that it was a pointless exercise because of the cumulative depressive effect of all the drinks I was having. Now I’m glad to be off that hamster wheel of chasing the party feeling. This week, even on the occasions I could have had a drink, it would only have been one or two and I was acutely aware of how those would have affected me. Enjoying that first one and then craving the second only to be left with the inevitable comedown when a third wasn’t an option. This observation does, however, leave me perplexed about the future once this year is done. If I don’t want to drink to excess and I know that just having a couple is going to leave me feeling worse than if I’d had none at all, what do I do? The very obvious answer is to just carry on not drinking. What a scary thought! I am not even 2 months in so there’s really no need to ponder the way forward at this stage but I can’t deny the simplicity of the perfect solution to my dilemma.
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