So, I decided to give myself a break from alcohol at the beginning of October. I have been meaning to do “Ocsober’ the last two years, but I always seemed to find great reasons to break that pact with myself. To be completely honest when OcSober started this year, I anticipated it would go the same way. True enough, one week in to it came a weekend where I told myself I had to have a couple of tipples. I did too! That first weekend, I drank all weekend. Friday at dinner with family friends, Saturday at the rugby, and Sunday at Market on main with family. I was well within my rights to drink I thought. Besides, I told myself, I’ll just get back on the horse on Monday. I did that too. This time though, something felt different. It wasn’t the hangover either. There was just a feeling that said, no more for the next month at least. That was it. I was on the wagon. There suddenly was no good reason to drink. Whether it was braaing with some mates over the weekend, or going out for dinner with a beautiful new girlfriend (more on that later) or even Friday night drinks with mates from out of town. Nothing. There was no reason to indulge in a tipple.
I am writing this on November 15th, meaning I haven’t drank in just over a month, and I am absolutely loving it. This is the best I have felt in my adult life. I have lost a significant amount of weight though nobody seems to notice it... I am in the gym six days a week which was unheard of prior to this. I mean five days, sure, but Saturdays were for recovery from Friday nights excess. It’s quite fantastic really. Recently my mother asked a tougher than I expected question when I told her I'm likely drink over the festive period. Face deadpan she asked “why would you drink when you have demonstrated that you don’t need to? You still go out and have fun, you haven’t complained about sudden boredom as a result, why then would you start again ?” I have to admit the first thing that popped in to my head was “well because I enjoy it” but then I thought about it properly and realised that even if I do-and I’m pretty sure I do-it’s only for a fleeting moment. After that I’m hungover for two or three days. My hangovers are also characterised by semi-depressions, what my friendship circle termed “loser complex” or “LC” for short. There’s no feeling I hate more than that. My general battle with self confidence is a tough enough struggle, quite why one would want to heap that added pressure of a loser complex in to the mix as well astounds me. With that in mind, I had a serious question about returning to the bottle over the festive period...
My relationship with alcohol has actually generally been a good. There is no better ice breaker than sharing a tipple with someone. In my experience it is the greatest mood enhancer. When the times are good, they’re really good! I have always enjoyed it. Drinking that is. I enjoy the taste of beer, and I love a gin and tonic/Basotho Heart ginger beer when it's party time. These new craft beers have also taken a bit of my heart. Weiss beer is my thing. The issue is, I was starting to enjoy these delights with too much frequency. Even if I wasn’t dependent on alcohol-which I don’t think I’ve ever been-I had begun drinking too frequently. There was always a reason to drink. A Maluti draught at lunch, a couple of beers on Tuesday and Wednesday night watching Champions league football. A couple of GnT's on Thursday night. Many GnT's on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Repeating that cycle regularly. I would wonder to myself why I couldn’t lose weight when I was working so hard in the gym, yet the answer was right there in front of me.
Dutch courage... Most males I’ve encountered are familiar with this concept. Get a couple of drinks in you so that you might work up a level of courage that will allow you to speak to the pretty girl you might not have otherwise. That Dutch courage extends even further in that it might allow you to be a better version of yourself once you’ve broken the ice with whomever's taken your fancy... This is where the new gorgeous girlfriend comes in. Now that I have her in my life I no longer require Dutch courage nor do I require an amplifier of my personality. She seems to tolerate me as is. The highest compliment anybody could pay you in my opinion. Err, let me just say while I’m at it, that she’s been really awesome through this period, encouraging me to keep at it, and going so far as to even undertake her own sober couple of weeks. She’s great, and I could wax lyrical about her for hours. I won’t though. Not here at least.
So, I’m still not sure whether I will drink over the festive period. I probably will, but I will definitely drink differently to any festive prior to this. For one it’s not likely that I will drink on consecutive days. Nor will I indulge to a point where I can’t go to gym the following day. And one thing I’m pretty sure about, is that come January 2019 I will give the bottle up for good. I’m giving Maluti Mountain Brewery fair warning as this is likely to affect their bottom line! I kid... Do I?!
