It's been easy lately to not drink. Just as I had gotten into the habit of drinking every night, now I am in the habit of not drinking every night. Because of this it's not difficult to make the leap to thinking that my drinking problem was just that - a bad habit. It would be easy to do this, and it would be wrong.
These are the tricks alcohol plays with your head. But I am so early in, still floating gratefully in that so-called Pink Cloud, that sobriety to me really does feel like a gift, and to go and get loaded would be like switching off the sun.
We had dinner tonight with another family that go to our girls' school. You really get to see how normal people drink in situations like this. This is the kind of restuarant whose brand is about whiskey and Martini's. The bar is the kind a drinker feels was made just for them, with football playing on the televisions, the deep mahogany of the wood, and row after row of softly backlit bottles of bourbon, gin and vodka, many small batch and artisinal.
Our friend H, the husband, ordered a drink that was part lemonade, part vodka. No one else had alcohol. I had a Boylan's grape soda, with was my usual drink on Sunday afternoons when we came here during the summer for lunch. H. sipped his drink, his daughter on his lap, and when he finished towards the end of meal, he didn't order another one. Now if I was still drinking, I would have finished my first within 10 minutes, then the repercussions of ordering another would have been pinging through my head for the remainder of our time at the table (what would they think? Would A. be upset with me?). And of course I would have ordered another one, would have walked home with everyone in the slightly bitter November night, feeling lighter and heavier at the same time. I would have walked in the door with my family, fuzzy headed, and wondered how I would feel in the morning and if it would affect my cycling.
But tonight, I walked in the door and only felt full from the burger and the stolen bites of my daughters' cake lollipops. Full and happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment