Let's Drink to that...

For someone who has to drink all the time, it can become quite routine and, frankly, tedious, so there is a whole book of socially acceptable ways to legitimize drinking for each particular day.

Like saying "Let's drink to that" when a life event happens and you are with people who are looking for an excuse to drink - that's what you do - drink.  Even though pretty soon the actual event you are drinking "for" becomes completely secondary to the actual end of drinking.

The drinking cues and prompts in day to day life are everywhere, it is no wonder that alcohol has become so blurred with the whole concept of having a good time and relaxing.  I'm still not sure if I can categorize a gathering as 'fun' unless there is alcohol or the chance of alcohol, even though I'm not drinking. They even call it Social Drinking, or say, when everyone is drinking it's a "Social Event" or she's not addicted, she's just taking drugs "socially"! 

*

Only stopping drinking altogether has given me the space to see these officially sanctioned drinking times, (like Fridays, or Sunday afternoons, or when the game is on, or around a barbeque), for what they are, insidious triggers to get drunk.

Sure, the romantic ideal of having a frosty glass of beer after toiling in the garden is almost erotic to me, but being an alcoholic the sad reality is me slinking around the tree ferns glugging from a bottle of red wine first thing in the morning.  And smiling that pathetic merlot mouth grin before any work has been done.

*

Now we have months like Dry in July and Sober October and Feb Fast where it is a novel challenge to go without alcohol, and a slew of media personality types writing about how challenging it was, or how mundane it is. But whilst these promotions advocate abstinence, the underlying implied message is that everybody drinks all the time, and we're just stopping "for fun" cause we could stop at anytime anyway.

"Like it's not a problem or anything," they reassure themselves,  "just for charity, you know?"

*

I Might be just starting to see some financial effects of stopping drinking - you know how sometimes money just gets sucked up by other 'needs' when it is sitting in accounts?  So just checking the other day and noticing that I haven't spent anything on alcohol for over 150 days adds up to around about a month's mortgage repayment.  Which is nothing to sneeze at, or wait a sec, should I be saying, Let's drink to that?