HairyFish

I decided in October that I was going to give up the drink for the month of November, no big deal right? You don’t need drink for a good time surely? I enjoy a pint, I like going out, I’m young (I am!) and why shouldn’t I? But of course it shouldn’t be hard to just leave it off for a month, ‘save a few quid too’ I told myself.

Back in generations past they used to give up the drink in November ‘for the old souls’, probably a clever ploy by the Irish housewife to get her husband to stop drinking so they could afford Christmas.

So after a hefty October bank holiday weekend session in wilds of the west or Ireland I said that was that. To much pass remarks of ‘you won’t last a week’ I dug the heels in and tried to think of anything but having the first luscious gulp of a creamy pint of cold Arthur!
Instinctively I looked at the weekends in November, four of them, four challenges to decide what I could do that didn’t involve the sweet nectar, the 4.3% holy water. These were going to be the main hurdles to success on this mission. Things you realise when you are not the one drinking:

1. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, that is drinking and pissed when you are supping away at your 5^th pint of lucozade is an arsehole. Of varying degree but an arsehole none the less.
2. You may as well have installed a meter and applied for your P.S.V. licence because you just turned into a taxi.
3. The above mentioned arseholes will ALWAYS insist at after 12 oclock at night pointing out that you are a bore and try and convince you that you should start drinking NOW, to catch up.
4. Abrakebabra is no longer viable substitute for actually proper food.
5. Arseholes, as mentioned above, do not like to relive their actions from a previous night, especially from a sober asshole.
6. Any point you raise whilst sober in a pub is null and void, assholes are always right.
7. Some assholes will spit on you when they talk but the fact that they are pissed makes them completely immune from the awkwardness this would present in a normal conversation. Your spit detection levels increase with the sobriety.
8. Eight is the number of pints of Budweiser I would have now and be having a fuckin’ whale of a time.

You begin to think, ‘am I really this boring’? The answer is probably yes, yes I am. There is nothing worse than a sober asshole coming out with the ‘oh I don’t need drink to have a good time’ mantra. It is nearly up there with the other assholes who don’t get hangovers. There’s another thing I don’t miss. Waking up and a decent vomit is the only thing you can look forward to. Knowing as soon as you open your eyes that you won’t feel any way human until it’s time to close them again. When you have to think about new and improved excuses every week why you don’t feel you are up to visiting that little farmers market or do a quick dash around IKEA. Fuck off.

When people ask you why you aren’t drinking and you just casually declare (with a small sense of pride) “Oh I’m off the drink…” it immediately conjures up images of you cracking open a can of Harp at 9.15am on a normal day. ‘He must get violent…’. No, no I don’t…FUCK OFF. I am not Shane McGowans twin brother in this scenario.
But on the flip side of that argument I realise *I* have turned into that arsehole who goes around telling people I am not drinking. Like its rubbing it in with all the other fuckers who can’t comprehend it. I know a handful of people who have also given up the drink for November who have lasted days. I am beating them. Fuck yeah.

I am on the final lap, the last stretch. One week to go, one weekend left. I have done the cinema, the farmers markets, the zoo, fuck I even went to the Aras visitors centre in the Phoenix Park. I’ve gone as far as to take up that stupid past time called jogging (pronounced with a soft ‘j’) and I have lost a decent bit of weight and I have been that annoying prick to tell everyone about it too, ‘Sure Jesus, I’ve lost over half a stone…”. I have an app on my phone that updates all my friends on facebook how much I am running and how quick. What a wanker I have become.

So it is with this same passion that I can have my first serious session in December planned already. With the money I have saved, and it was a fair few hundred, I can now piss it all away in the name of festive cheer. I am that kind of asshole.

This entry was posted on November 21, 2011 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.