Well here we are, the fourth Friday of 2013, and the year without beer is still going strong. It is also one month since my last "binge" (Christmas day when I stayed up until 4 am drinking).
But I'm so glad that I won't be drinking tonight, or waking up with a shocking hangover tomorrow. Partly because I am thoroughly enjoying NOT drinking, and partly because at the time of writing this I am loaded with
man flu a slight cold!
Not so very long ago Friday was a favourite drinking night of mine. It was actually the only night (with the exception of the odd Saturday or holiday) when I took a drink. I never drank on a "school night" due to the nature of the work I do and the fact that I need to drive early the next day.
At 33, I've never been an alcoholic (at least not in the commonly understood sense) but I could be one hell of a binge drinker, and I think I was addicted to habitually drinking beer on Fridays.
With the whole weekend stretching out ahead of me, Friday was all too often my drinking night of choice. Not
every Friday, but a significant proportion of them. I'd start by calling by the supermarket or off-licence to pick up a box of beer. I'd get home, carrying my box, and if I saw my neighbour (a kindly elderly gentleman with an addition to tobacco and horse racing) I'd offer him one too.
Late afternoon and I'd finally get in the door and head for the kitchen. I'd start the proceedings by carefully stacking the bottles sideways in the fridge. Budweiser, Miller or Coors Light were all favourite tipples. I'd even put one in the freezer - to cool quickly so I could drink it sooner.
Then the first sip! So refreshing I thought after a busy week of work, brain cells firing, and with no work the next day there was nothing to stop me drinking the whole box - if I wanted.
Then some music, usually pretty loud, then the next bottle. Then the next, the next and so on. Discarded beer caps multiplying on the work tops. Drinking, I found, helped me appreciate the music better and the more I enjoyed the music the more I wanted the buzz of the alcohol. How could anyone enjoy music without alcohol I used to think?
My wife enjoys a glass of white wine but she would always stop after one or two. I on the other hand often became a super power drinking alcohol guzzling machine. I'd drink well into the night and even into the early hours, so under the influence that I didn't even mind drinking on my own.
So I'd sit there at one, two sometimes three am listening to music with my headphones on dreaming up all sorts of plans. I'd think about how it was time to move my career on to the next level or how I'd quit my job and do something different. However these particular drunken musings were never destined to come to fruition because the next morning I'd rubbish my ideas and put them down to the "alcohol thinking".
Another weird drinking thing I did was that when the music came to a "good bit" I'd repeat the same thirty seconds of the track over and over without seemingly getting bored.
I wasn't absolutely plastered and I wouldn't fall around drunk. As a fairly big guy I could "handle" lots and lots of beer. I use the word "handle" in the sense I could physically consume a large volume without really getting too full, or even particularly drunk. In reality I couldn't "handle" it at all, because all I was doing was all manner of unseen harm to my cells, tissues and organs.
When you are drunk you cause your body to malfunction. Sometimes, with the beer gone and my brain and body in this state of blowout I'd go to bed. But then other times when the beer was low I'd move onto whatever other alcohol was on hand. Half a bottle of white wine, house measures whisky and coke, whatever was lying around the fridge or in the cupboard. Often when I was on to my second last beer or so I'd move on to whisky, so that I could enjoy the last few beers as a "chaser". Usually I'd end up being sick in the bathroom. Nice.
When I finally hit the sack, a short, uncomfortable, dreamless sleep would follow. Interrupted, erratic episodes of sleep through the long restless early hours. I would wake early and at intervals five-thirty am, six, seven... The waking, the slow realisation that there was something "not right", my body in pain. The whole grizzly ritual repeated again and again throughout the course of the early morning.
When you're sober and well it is difficult to remember exactly how absolutely dreadful an absolute stinker of a hangover can make you feel.
Sometimes I'd even let out a groan upon waking, because of the pain and also because I'd feel bad about what I'd put my body through. And then there was the anxiety. Even though the rational part of me
knew deep down that I hadn't said anything silly or do anything embarrassing, I would still "feel" that nagging feeling - what if I did? (See my post about
Hangover Anxiety). I once woke up feeling so anxious that I had to walk round the room repeatedly because I couldn't lie still. Not good!
So very early morning would turn into morning, with me still in bed, feeling exhausted. Occasionally I'd feel sick, and the sickness could last well into the day. I'd put on my headphones to take my mind off it, some music, or an audiobook. I'd perhaps rise about ten thirty am and head straight for the couch. Saturday in ruins, the optimism about the weekend in tatters...again, my wife pissed off intensely.
So a day on the sofa, not being able to eat much, or even drink the fluids my body was craving in its weakened state. I'd stay in most of the day, not leaving the house if at all possible, looking forward to the evening so I could go to bed again. I'd also be no company to those around me.
When early evening came the hangover would start to subside. I'd be eating again, but would very rarely turn to the booze for a "hair of the dog" - my stomach was in far to sensitive a state for that! I'd watch a movie, maybe eat crisps and drink coke. The evenings of a hangover were not all together terrible - but the memory of waking up feeling dreadful would be too fresh in the mind to really enjoy it.
That's it! No more! I would say, and it would be, at least for a week or two. Then eventually it would happen again.
So that is my story of a drunken Friday and hungover Saturday, I've probably experienced a hundred of these over the last ten years. Writing this enforces in my mind why I am going a whole year without alcohol. And who knows after that - I might give it up for good!
