Giving up the booze: my year on the vino d’abstinence

[barryqwalsh]

Four or five years ago I started giving up alcohol for November, mainly to give the body a break before the festive season and to try to get into better physical shape. It was surprisingly difficult. Thirty days and nights. It seemed to go on forever. There was always something – dinners, birthday parties and, of course, the autumn rugby internationals.

The comments were of a piece: What’s wrong with you? Are you on antibiotics? No! You’ve given it up for a month? Jaysus you’re going to the match and you’re not drinking. What a waste of a ticket. Going to be a long day lads. Right, same again and a fizzy orange for Matt Talbot there in the corner . . .

Matt generally slipped away before the mayhem.

Back then, you could short-circuit the conversation by saying you were on antibiotics. Which tells its own story about attitudes to abstinence.

Giving up the booze my year on the vino d abstinence

 

[Luddly Neddite]

"Natural high was fantastic"

If one is drinking so much that one misses out on "natural highs", one needs to do what he has done.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

If you need help drinking less, or not at all, you only have to watch any COPS, or World's Dumbest Partier type shows to see examples of what alcohol does to people.