Sometimes I forget how much alcoholism the ABC Stores (in AL anyway) encourage until returning to my old haunt to eye the vodka prices. From a "more for your money" standpoint it's a crime to leave with anything less than "the Big Bottle" aka Skyy vodka 1.75 liter. You Skyy drinkers know what I'm talking about.
More
on this in a minute. But first, a quick recap:
In 2016 I started a blog called:
Quitting Alcohol in 2016
That is the very blog you've stumbled onto. (How did you get here, btw?) This effort was intended to document my successes and stunning failures to quit alcohol beginning in 2016. Quitting drinking has no finish line, of course. So, it became about the journey.
It became a record of me trying to rectify years of Skyy, Saturday Fundays and
my poor gf dating a functional alcoholic. For a time, I was journaling fairly
regularly and somehow built up a semi-following while doing so.
How much was I drinking?
A
lot. Well, let me back up. Is consuming one big bottle of Skyy vodka 1.75
liters every three days considered a lot? If so, I was drinking a lot.
I should add that my vodka drinking was always combined with Pellegrino or
Perrier (after graduating from Red Bull several years prior) and freshly
squeezed lemon juice. So I was a high class drunk, I told myself.
Slowly, I became a fixture at Big Lots in San Diego (rotating stores of course).
I would buy a new Big Bottle every 3-4 days, and would buy literal cases
of Pellegrino. And of course, lemons - always bags of lemons.
Why Drink So Much?
Because
I loved it. That was the very simple answer. Some people drink and turn into
dicks. Some people drink and become insanely abusive. I considered myself a
happy drunk. It just...relaxed me. Alcohol elevated my mood and got me out of
my own head - if even for a moment.
The thing is, I had a job. I had a girlfriend. I didn't live with said
girlfriend, but I did work with her. Alcohol became my decompression time. My
"escape from reality" and it slowly became my obsession. Not
stay-home-from-work-so-I-can-drink obsession, but not far removed either.
Saturday Funday
Every
serious drinker knows "Sunday Funday" is for amateurs. Rookies.
Greenies. What even is that? Bro, you work tomorrow. Saturday Funday is where
it's at.
I
began living for Saturday. Scheduling my weekend time around Saturday. That
glorious day where I could do whatever the fuck I wanted and not pay a price,
because that's what Sunday was for.
I should add I had the incredible luxury of living alone and having no kids, so
I could get away with this lifestyle. Not everyone can and I fully acknowledge
this. Then again, it seems like a lot of people try
anyway.
This of course cut into what normal people live for - weekends w/ the
girlfriend. But honestly, I had my fill of her from the work week and
weeknights where we spent a lot of time together. This arrangement worked...for
me anyway.
Dating a Functional Alcoholic
But
of course, this was incredibly selfish and completely unsustainable. At the
same time, I consider myself an introvert who needs to recharge my batteries at
some point or I become a real crank. So, weekends became me-kends.
As for my girlfriend, she was a rock star, given the fact she basically was
dating a functional alcoholic. WTF kind of schedule was this to keep? She was a
normal girl who wanted normal things like spending Saturday night w/ her
boyfriend. To be clear, this did happen - a lot. But I usually managed to carve
out my me-kends somewhere.
This schedule somehow worked during my longest job stint ever - half a decade.
(Incidentally, my shortest job stint ever - 3 1/2 months in a "permanent
position" - happened during stone cold sobriety. But that's a post for
another day.)
Like all good things, they have a way of wrapping up. If they don't end, you
take your habit on the road. More in Part II of The Recap.
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