Surviving a booze free weekend

‘A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk’ – Charlie Chaplin

I’ve never been a fan of dry January (even though I participated myself this year), I mean, I get the concept, give your liver a bit of a break after you’ve had too much to eat and drink over Christmas, however it’s so badly placed. January is so dull and cold and boring that it’s the time of year you need booze the most; if only just to get through it!

Anyway, a while back I found myself having a boozy afternoon lunch with some friends which turned into a boozy evening consisting of a purely liquid dinner. It didn’t end well for me. To say I caught the chunder train is an understatement, the train I caught was one of those local ones that stops every 4 minutes to offload it’s passengers. It was the most drunk I’d been in a really, really long time and it didn’t feel good as the 4 day hangover proceeded. When it came to the following Friday night I still wasn’t feeling all that up to drinking again, it seemed that the thing I feared most in life had happened. I’d finally sickened myself of wine.

So since I’m in a never ending battle of trying to be more healthy, I thought I’d use this  to my advantage and have a weekend off the booze.

First of all it’s amazing how much drinking alcohol passes the time. Many a time we can sit listening to Absolute 90s pouring glass after glass, chewing the fat and the night goes over in a flash.  So, if I wasn’t to be drinking, I needed to amuse myself. I tried to busy myself with all he things I mean to do but never quite get round to; I tidied up some blog posts, edited some photos, finished watching Riverdale on Netflix and downloaded some 90s films neither of us have seen.

Wine was replaced with coffee and cake…

Of course a dry weekend meant I had to replace those wine calories somehow so when we did the food shopping on the Friday night after work I was all about getting my favourite foods to see me through the weekend; honestly you’d think I was a heroin addict trying to go old turkey as I piled the Millies Cookies and Haribo Starmix in the trolley.

With the evenings catered for with crap TV and 90s films (how didn’t I know how good Single White Female was until now?) I needed something to fill my days too, which to be fair didn’t vary too much from my drinking days, mean I like a drink but It’s not like I’m drunk at 3 in the afternoon. Often.

Embracing my new sobriety I took myself off for a good 10K run on the Saturday morning and spent an hour in the gym on the Sunday. I also got a load of washing done, cleaned the bathroom and tidied the spare room. The ironic thing was after being so super productive, I felt like i needed a well earned glass of wine come 6pm. Doh.

So how did I really find my sober weekend, let’s take a look:

The Pros:

• I slept SO well on both nights; it’s not unusual that I fall straight to sleep after a couple of glasses bottles of wine on a Friday or Saturday night however more often than not it’s not good quality sleep, and I wake up at 6am gasping for a glass of water and some ibuprofen, by which time I’m wide awake and can’t get back to sleep
• My skin looked better. I don’t have great skin anyway and the difference is probably only obvious to me because I have the misfortune of having to look closely at my face every day. But it looked less grey and washed out. I even took some make free pictures for a different blog post that only needed half the amount of filters than normal
• I didn’t crave stodge as much. I mean don’t get me wrong, ‘stodge’ is probably my favourite of all the food groups whether I’m hungover or not so whereas I may not have eaten the healthiest, I certainly ate less with no alcohol in my system that needed soaking up.
• I got loads done. Although technically I’d still be sitting sitting on the sofa on a Saturday night whether drinking or not, I got loads of life admin done; which I wouldn’t have had I been on the wine. I’d have been making Dave rate  Backstreet Boys album tracks out of ten (our house is a riot on a Saturday let me tell you)

Cons:

• Not to put too fine a point on it, it was boring. Having a glass of wine on a Friday night is what sets a Friday apart from the rest of the working week. Without it, Friday night just felt like any other night of the week and I was in bed by 10pm
• My instagram feed was full of people taking pictures of their glasses of wine and cocktails that weekend, which I’d never noticed until I wan’t drinking and I found myself with serious FOMO.
• Being super productive in my bid to stave of just getting utterly wasabied only made me want a drink even more to celebrate my achievements. A glass of diet cherry pepsi max didn’t quite have the same kick as a glass of prosecco

I’ll admit getting so drunk the weekend before scared me a little bit. I can just about manage the hangovers as long as there enough bread and cheese in the house. However I didn’t like being so drunk I’d temporarily misplaced my dignity (if only in front of the hubby) by being so ill. I also like celebrating life’s little successes with a glass of something tasty and relaxing so I think really the answer is somewhere in the middle. It was a sobering experience (fnar fnar) and a wake up call that it’s not good to have too much too often. Maybe I don’t have to be so drastic as to stop drinking all together.

I mean, what else am I going to do when I’m happy. Or Sad. Or Bored. Or Hungry. Or it’s Tuesday.