It actually worked out to be 23 days, since I was planning to party at the Spring Fling Sedona gathering, and had proved my point to myself. It was the longest time I have gone without a drink or a smoke since senior spring in college when Clockwork Orange looked to contend for Nationals. Still clean on the party hats, and will be for the foreseeable future. I’ve picked up a cold from lack of sleep and allergies, and I’m coughing worse than if I’d just played a marathon game of Bong Pong while watching Half-Baked and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Its really pissing me off that my throat and lungs are aching and I’ve had no fun getting them into this state. 
The reasons for my abstinence were several and multi-layered and complex, but cumulatively boiled down to this: I’ve had alcohol and pot as part of my social fabric since I’ve been about 16, and ever since then a very mild slightly slippery slope has developed where I’ve stopped respecting them, and what they mean to my health and my mindset and my legality. A change was needed, a reset, a midlife midstream correction, a step back to get some fresh perspective and reflect on my tendencies and reevaluate some notions.
Taking a break was not hard, really not hard at all, cold turkey snapped my fingers and trusted that I had the strength of will and character my self-image relies on; confirming that I was all the sweet nothings I whisper in my own ear was another reason I set about doing this. When I took breaks in college for Ultimate season, i was young and new to drinking and needed to convince myself I was not an alcoholic. That was never a question this time around, but at the same time, the question did nag quietly at the back of my mind, fueled by all the “adult” notions that hard partying is something you are supposed to leave in college. The first few days were…awkward. Not physically or in any sort of dependent sense, just that some items had become a routine. And like changing any routine I felt a little lost — don’t I need a one-hit before going for a ride, just as surely as strapping on my helmet or bringing my MP3 players? Shouldn’t I have a beer after work on Friday, and then a few more? After I got past that, it was nice to have one less thing to worry about, and one less complication, one greater degree of simplicity. Really nice, and I think I will be drinking less moving forward, as the view is refreshing from over here. I’ve got far too many complexities in my life, and since G was born I’ve worked constantly on whittling them down.
This bit of forbearance helped jump start a little weight loss that I have been struggling to accomplish. I like food, and i work out a lot, and i’m addicted to grazing on leftovers in the cafe at work during a dull day sitting in my pod when deli trays and pizza cast a bright shiny sheen over the doldrums of cube-life, and there was just not a lot of calories to be squeezed out of that. Cutting out beer itself trimmed some fat, but not having the munchies and overeating helped even more. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have done this any time, I just really needed a motivation and shove to change some routines, and this was a beneficial overlap. I’ve dropped about 4 lbs, and hope to get another 3. The last 3 will be tough, since the easy one-time hit of no beer has had its effect, I’m due for a bump back up a pound or two, and I think I’ve put on some muscle in my chest since settling on this baseline of 153 that I’ve had in my mind for about 5 years. But nothing is better for motivation than success, and 4 lbs in 23 days off my already fit frame may just give me the momentum I need to drop the next 3.
Beckie having beers or wine didn’t bother me at all, and even if it did, I sure as fuck wasn’t going to make my issue her problem after she had gone 9 months twice without any beer, while I took her restraint as a challenge to drink for 3. I just wish we went out or on a trip during that time, so I could repay her for all the rides she’s given me the last few years. But I’m comfortable in saying that will happen, and it won’t bother me. Going to the Somo Spring Fling Party was the first real test, and was no big deal. I was a little worried I’d feel uncomfortable with everyone else partying, not much worried but just a little, but it was easy and smooth and i didn’t give it a second thought once I was there. I was doing my thing, saving up for a big day on the bike the next day, and enjoyed my Diet Coke and water and had a few guilt-free chocolate chip cookies instead. As expected, none of my friends gave my beverage choice a moment’s thought.
I didn’t feel any bullshit about how “the real me” was now available and on display. Princeton was a serious drinking school; I’ve been holding my liquor for a long time and probably do it better than most. More fundamentally, what you see is what you get with me, and it always has been, and that aspect of myself is so central to who I am that its never been much affected by any substance. If you don’t see a lot, or if you do, that’s telling you plenty, and i don’t need to hide behind or in front of a bottle to stand behind my behavior. Comfort with myself and comfort with my vices are not at all related. Besides, I’m a happy drunk and a funny stoner – what’s not to like! But it was nice to rediscover that I don’t need anything to have fun or enjoy what I’m doing, to simplify and streamline, and that my talk and my walk were one and the same when it came to the personality I exist in. When I finally did have a few drinks, they felt really really good and gave me a nice warm buzz like I haven’t had in a long long time. Ahh, nice to have lost some tolerance.
The most important part of my attitude adjustment deals with my driving, as I have vowed to never drive over the limit again. This shouldn’t be anything new for me, I shouldn’t be a 39-yr old responsible employed father-of-2 and be waking up to this, and its not like I was getting stumbling drunk and driving across the city at rush hour. But having some beer and feeling fine and getting in the car before critically reviewing the BAC charts and my location on them has, like the rest of my relationship to alcohol, become too casual. In talking to some friends — responsible, intelligent, balanced friends — its comforting to realize I was not the only person who has not had a rigorous attitude on this subject. I’m not some pariah with a problem, I seen to be very normal. It does make you see the point of the zero-tolerance, flag-waving MADD advocates who are convinced every other driver on a Friday night is drunk. Sort of…if they just weren’t flag-waving extremists. They have dictated the nature of the dialog and turned DUI into an oversimplification for the many many risk factors that come into play when driving, politicized an issue beyond its actual effects, and fed our pasty-white need to have a convenient scapegoat for all the evils in the world. A sensible amount of beer is no worse than texting, or dealing with your kid in the back seat, or being an idiot in a too-powerful car for your too-sedentary ass and untrained reflexes, or being 75 and having no restrictions on your license, or having had a beer and had someone else cause an accident that suddenly becomes an alcohol statistic. As a libertarian, the entire concept of DUI seems flawed to me. But as an Arizonan, I live in a state full of Mormons and dimwitted law-and-order MidWestern dolts, and we have about the toughest laws in the nation, with statutes granting almost no capacity for mitigating circumstances. Its not good enough in AZ to be under the legal limit, as we have a charge for “Impaired to the Slightest Degree” where having any alcohol in your system could land you a DUI charge, with discretion resting in the hands of cops who could never be unbiased on the topic. I’ve read that realistically this makes the limit .05, or 2 drinks, and I was pretty upset to realize that last weekend despite my very conscious efforts to be responsible at the Sedona party and my very calculated steps to be well under the limit, I could have gotten myself in trouble. I bet the Sobriety Nazis don’t realize how much more attractive this makes smoking weed, since short of reeking like a skunk or driving out of control, your level of impairment pretty well can’t be determined by a blood or breath test and you kinda can’t get caught.
Committing to never being over the limit, and setting that limit at .05, is harder than just curtailing intake, as its a big restriction on top of any other restrictions you place on yourself. You pretty much can’t drink without paying complete attention to what you are doing and where you need to go. Until you stop and think about how big a barrier this is to your otherwise doing just exactly as you please, you don’t realize how drifting over the line is very easy if you don’t pay attention. The flip side, and the part that actually makes me pretty optimistic with all of it, is that drinking less and drinking legally kinda makes it all more fun, and makes saying no a lot easier since I’m leaning on my new habit just like any other. Fresh perspective is a good thing. I’m not going to start preaching or pointing fingers, I have no high ground to stand on, but for me this is a place I want and need to be now.
rant over. I will now return to happy thoughts about the bike and the shop 
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