I love alcohol. I love a quaffable and creamy 3.5% mild as much as a heavy 9% tripel with several different flavours to it, as much as a peaty 40%+ whisky, as much as a special treat cocktail. I have a drink more nights than not, and most nights it's a drink. Every few weeks, maybe even less, I'll have two drinks. Three in a day's something of a bender for me, even if it's one at lunch then two after tea, well-spaced out. I seem to end up getting drunk once a year, usually Christmas or New Year's.
Two or three units, ie. most pub pints, and I'm happy. Two in quick succession and I'm more sociable, but getting a little frustrated with mentally slowing down, and in the middle of one and two beers I'm at that peak where I can play pool reasonably well. Three and I've no choice but to stick to the social occasion at hand before getting back to my room as gently as possible and getting a bed to sleep in. Three-plus and I'll probably feel it the day after to some extent, and even if it's a tiny mixture of guilt and nausea it's still set me back for an entire day. The drunk days, six or so drinks, and I will get hungover, and will spend at least a day trying to counteract it and will repent by not having my drink with my tea and by training more often. I can usually feel it after one, which isn't terribly surprising when I'm relatively small and slim.
I've never lived with an alcoholic, thank god. Lots of sort of hell you can go through with them, especially in formative years. I've been drinking since I was a baby since I've been given it since then. It's from my family's shared belief that alcohol is a social thing. It's a delicious accompaniment, but it's never the reason or the centre of the occasion (unless exceptionally, it's a tasting session or a beer/cider festival in which case it's the tastes that are up for discussion though I'll admit intoxication comes part and parcel with it). But for a party occasion, something else is the reason for the occasion, and not alcohol. I was first hungover aged two, but stopped drinking shortly into secondary school. I'd been put off by those I looked up to in the years above smoking so much marijuana, and how it seemed to take from them rather than give to them. It wasn't too long before I heard about the straight edge movement and independently the grimness of being a drunk. If alcohol came into it at that point I was out and I hadn't even seen the worst of it then.
Although I wanted to forever keep a clean record and to never risk being victim to alcohol's evils, I eventually gave in to a glass of red wine with a meal shortly before 16. I guess I was the classic case of a slightly self-righteous kid discrediting straight edge by not even keeping it up into legal drinking age. I got drunk aged 17, then several further times in sixth form though still nowhere near as often as peers. I've never knowingly harmed anyone in those times, thankfully as that's what I resent, although I get harmlessly rowdy and at one point I brought it all up before passing out in my own vomit. My last time was last Christmas when I was simply being offered drink after drink of champagne, and after a while I didn't notice or care when the champagne was being topped up with ale or orange juice or what. I fell asleep for a few hours in the kitchen and felt crap for two days afterwards. I don't want to feel like that again though I probably will end up that way at some point.
I still hate the idea of going on a bender as fun. I wish the first pint on a night out, the froth on my lips with the first, most delicious sip to finishing off the dregs half an hour later and feeling very content having kicked back a little, would last from 7pm to 1am but to me the first drink can't be replicated. The two biggest excuses for getting mortal at my age are house parties (slightly growing out of that age bracket now though) and night clubs. The latter are one of the worst things on earth that have ever been advertised as "fun," but that's a whole new thread. They confirm what a waste of life that world is.
A great recent development in some of my friends' maturing has been their loss of reliance on alcohol for a night out. At our end of year do I had one drink all night from the evening to 7am, my friends seemed not to have much more, and we partied down. One of my main drinking pals from university went teetotal. We like to be in control.
They're missing out on a whole world of fascinatingly-crafted beers, whiskies, wines, alcoholic cocktails, ciders etc but I have nothing but respect for teetotalers. My vices are alcohol and fat/sugar, and I won't add any other wastes of time & health to that list, especially as I've largely kicked video games for the past five or so years. Keep fighting the good fight, just let me keep what's left of our pubs.
20 Jul 2014, 9:05 pm
