Today is my 60th day without alcohol. That's two months, more or less. Also, that's crazy. I'm kind of surprised I've lasted that long, and I'm even more surprised that this has been super easy. I rarely think about drinking, and on the occasions that I do, it's easy to just stop thinking about it.
I kind of marveled at the idea of getting through Printers Row without having a single drink. Every year I show up hungover, and every year I drink at least a six pack of Alpha King each day while selling books. More often than not I'm also nipping away at a flask of cheap whiskey. By the time we get to the usual live reading (which we didn't do this year, sadly) I'm pretty drunk. This year the only time I thought about drinking was discussing detox with my friends. The only urge I had to drink was very brief. I went into 7-Eleven to get something to eat. I'd forgotten that in the city it is common for them to sell whiskey behind the counter. I saw Jim Beam and Jameson, and I thought for a second that buying some booze would be a good idea, but the urge died pretty quickly.
The only time I truly felt like I might give up and drink came the weekend before last. I'd gotten dinner with a friend, and we were going to see a movie, but we were in the dead zone where all the movies had just started, and the next round would start in a couple of hours. Usually we stop at a bar to drink that time away, and I very seriously thought about doing just that. I think my friend might have seen those gears turning in my head and said that we could call it a night instead, which is what we did. But that was the closest I've come so far to drinking again.
It's weird because I had every intention of drinking on my 44th birthday. That would have been a few days out of detox. Even when I was still at RCA I knew to a moral certainty that I would get a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 and drink my birthday away. I also told myself that I wouldn't drink again after that for a long time. Which I meant, but who knows how that would have worked out?
But I didn't drink on my birthday. Earlier that day I'd reminded myself to stop off at the liquor store for that bottle, but it just slipped my mind. When I realized I'd forgotten, it didn't bother me all that much.
Living without booze is pretty crazy for me. Then again, I've made friend with lunacy many, many times, so . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment