Ten Observations on Abstinence from Alcohol.
I am nearing the end of dry January. I’m not really a fan of dry January as a term, or a thing, but now I have experienced it I do understand why it is called what it is. It’s so called as then there’s an end date.
10. Nothing tastes like alcohol. You can have a lemonade, a really posh one from Waitrose or Sainsbury’s or the Co-op but it just tastes like lemons and sugar.
9. On the reverse, taste-wise, a glass of wine poured reverentially into a glass, smelt, swirled and sipped, soaks every tastebud like it belongs. Apple juice does not do this, it twangs on some forcefully and then leaves a sweet taste. I like my aftertastes to burn. Or so I now know.
8. Time. Every hour is 60 minutes long and every minute 60 seconds. There is no relaxing of this rule when sober.
7. My shoulders are up by my ears. Stress is not relived in the traditional way. How now to relieve it?
6. The Wind In The Willows effect. There is a chapter towards the end of Wind In The Willows when Ratty and Mole walk out of the Wild Wood and through a human town. It’s Christmas and families, people, humans generally are gathered indoors. The endless dark of the winter months means the glow is from within, never from without. I am on the outside looking in. I am Ratty, or Mole.
5. I still can’t get out of bed. Everyone talks about a lightness suddenly aiding their step, the abstinence aid. I have not experienced this.
4. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Well, I think I did. I was really ready for a break from booze. I have learned to love drinking for the taste, the chat, the mood heightener and deepener. On New Year’s Eve I was so fed up of the stuff that I had to think practically about what I could drink so I would enjoy it, nothing too sweet, nothing too heavy. This was not much fun, and neither do I miss the days where anything went, 'yeah I'll have a glass of Perry' (translate: bottle of Lambrini.) I like that I have learned to enjoy stuff I can and cannot afford and that I could happily share my iota of knowledge about wine and beer with anyone that cares to listen. (Hence the mention of an unoaked chardonnay, not being a ponce, the stuff tends to have a smell of old socks. I quite like that.)
3. Health. I’m not sure my liver knows what’s going on. I definitely am more aware of bits and bobs, but this is frightening. In House they are always hunting the mysterious factor that has caused some mystery debilitation, or Lupus. I worry they will now search for my debilitation and realise that my body requires alcohol to function. Red wine to keep the blood stirring, beer to keep the muscles relaxed, unoaked chardonnay to keep my vision clear, gin to remind me to feel, whisky for a really good debate about nothing. Cider, well, I feel like I could give or take cider having drunk so much apple juice.
2. I really have no idea what everyone is talking about, this being a good thing. My skin is not any clearer and not all my ailments have magically cured (I don’t really have any ailments but y’know, that’s what clearing out the alcohol is supposed to do.)
1. We’ve all seen that image of the chicks in a nest, their whole bodies existing to stretch their beak and neck higher over their siblings to get the worm when it flies in from above. That’s my tastebuds. They know something’s missing. I can feel them, jostling and vying for the best position should something glorious tumble past my lips.
