SUNDAY 2ND OCTOBER 2022
It’s been a pretty good week. As of yesterday morning, I have now been alcohol-free for a whole 100 days and it’s always good to hit a milestone. I managed to run every other day throughout September, which was the goal I had set myself for the month, and I definitely seem to be less tired than I have been of late.
MY WHY
In recent years, I’ve become a great believer that things come to you when the time is right and that you have to be on the lookout for signs that will lead you where you need to go next. This alcohol-free journey has opened me up to all sorts of things and most recently it has been the Law of Attraction. I’d never heard of it before but some aspects of it, like the power of positive thought, were already familiar to me. Reading The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, has taken that to a whole new level for me. This past week I’ve really focused on what it says about the need to do things that make you feel good, things that bring you joy, and of course it begs the question: does drinking alcohol make me feel good? Obviously, the after effects could never be described as making a person feel good – that goes without saying. The actual occasion itself? Well, in recent years I’d say that, at the start of the night, it still feels pretty good but less so as the evening wears on. But what about the anticipation of a boozy evening? That has always felt good – the prospect of happy drunkenness in good company, unmarred by any quarrel or morose chat. I was surprised, however, back in 2020, to find myself equally excited ahead of an evening that I was going to be spending with friends that would normally have involved champagne and still did for them, just not for me. It was a complete revelation to me that my joyful anticipation of many an evening might’ve had much less to do with the promise of alcohol than I’d thought and more to do with the prospect of a happy time spent with friends. We were away from home this weekend and my husband had a couple of pints in a pub, as you do, and also a couple of glasses of red wine in the evenings – activities that I’d normally have participated in wholeheartedly. I imagined what it would feel like if I were to join him and was surprised to find that it was not an appealing thought at all. I knew I’d enjoy the taste of it and that initial buzz but I would have soon started to feel blurry and, as the high started to wear off, it would be replaced by that itchy need to have more, inevitably accompanied by a side of irritability. Moreover, we were with the kids and it would have separated me from them, both on the evening and the following day when I’d just want to be left alone to nurse even the slightest of hangovers. So there you have it – it would seem like the answer to the initial question is no, drinking alcohol does not make me feel good. Well, waddaya know?!
Theme Tune: I Feel Good by James Brown