5989/19009
It’s approaching one third of a year since my last alcoholic drink and I show no sign of wavering. Tonight we went into town for a friend’s birthday party in a trendy bar in Dalston and we were offered Prosecco on the way in, but I didn’t even hesitate and think about it. I just had a glass of delicious soda water (it was actually mildly rank) and stuck with that all night. Did it make the party less enjoyable - I mean, possibly. I am not the most sociable of people, but a few glasses of booze can lower my inhibitions, which isn’t always a good thing. And most people were drinking, so I got to watch them become gradually sillier and in some cases duller. But at the start I’d been chatting to two of my friends from approximately the same generation, one of whom hadn’t drunk for 5 weeks and the other for 18 years. We admitted that parties were harder without alcohol but also that we were all fairly happy to never have to go out anyway.
It was actually good to meet some people old and new and we’d dressed up a little bit and I’d shaved and everyone commented on how good we both looked. They expect it of Catie of course, but people seemed surprised by the transformation in me.
The music got louder as the night progressed and my old ears meant that I couldn’t hear what most people were saying anyway. My throat was sore from shouting.
But I was out of the house and talking to adults (though a lot of the chat was about children, because I have nothing else in my life apart from stones and dog shit and I need to meet a special kind of person to discuss those). There were boxes and boxes of pizza but I managed to restrain myself and only have two (large) slices. The second one almost felt like too much though. I haven’t been consciously not eating pizza this year, but I think these might have been my first slices of 2019.
I am having quite the life these days.
It was a really good bunch of people though and unusually I wasn’t crushed by tiredness or trying to hasten our departure. We stayed out til about 10pm!
Pizza, 10pm, soda water. Don’t get jel.
Perhaps the last hour dragged a bit because I was sober and others were not, but basically I felt comfortable enough to have a good time without any more stimulant than two slices of pizza and some bubbly water. I would have struggled more in the olden days and had to run away with party anxiety, but to be fair that might well have been exacerbated by the booze.
Am I never going to drink again? I haven’t consciously given up, but it’s going to take something to send me back, at least in the short term. What if I never do it again? What then?
