Six Weeks Sober

To coincide with my departure from TWOD (Toxic Workplace of Doom), I decided to conduct a little social experiment involving my alcohol dependency.

Not that I was really dependent as such. It was more of a habit. Have a drink or two at the bar at work before heading home, stop by the bottle shop on the way home and buy a bottle, etc etc.

I wasn't what you'd term an alcoholic, but I certainly drank more than the recommended weekly intake.

And I realised that ever since I began drinking regularly at the age of 18, I'd never gone for any considerable length of time without drinking at all.

Hence, I thought I'd give it a go.

I also wanted to see if I enjoyed the company of some of my friends when I was sober and they were not. I suspected some of them may well drive me to distraction with their level of obnoxious-ness.

My first night of experimentation was at the combined birthday bash of two lovely mates of mine who have both appeared in this show and are currently appearing in this show.

Their birthday parties are always huge and go long into the night and involve lots of things probably best not mentioned here.

Perfect place to commence the experiment. If I could remain sober and sane here then I was going to go well.

And I did. Stay sober and sane. Until about 3am, when I decided it was time for me to go home, or else one of my friends (who is what could be called a "two pot screamer") was about to be on the receiving end of a slap due to her obnoxious-ness.

Needless to say, I haven't been hanging out with her much in the past few weeks.

And there are one or two other friends whom I haven't been hanging out with much either, which leads me to believe that a relationship based on shared alcohol consumption is not a healthy relationship.

But I'm learning that you can just as much fun without getting smashed and, in fact, there are several bonuses to remaining sober. Such as:

1. Not spending ridiculous amounts of money every weekend. I'm saving a huge amount. Which I will no doubt blow on alcohol when I go to Europe in August, but that's ok.

2. Feeling healthier. So far I've lost 3kgs without reducing any of my food intake. This is very good, as my favourite jeans were just that little bit too snug for comfort.

3. Improved skin tone. Its still not completely back to its smooth self after last year's bout of rosacea, but its getting there.

And there are probably others, which I can't think of now.

But its been an interesting six weeks. Let's see how much longer I can keep it up.

x