Who's The Daddy: Four months dry and missing the idiot I used to be
It seems you can’t open a paper or click on a news website without stumbling across a first-person piece from a journalist in their 50s who has given up drinking. And this is no exception.
Four months after the hangover to end all hangovers and yours truly hasn’t touched a drop since the fateful evening of Saturday April 12. A laughably small amount of what used to be known as “Lady Petrol” and three cans of light Italian beer.
While there are a lot of perks to being off the sauce in all that time - loads more energy, a focused mind, stable weight and mood, no hangovers (obviously), five gym visits a week, the ease in which a diet filled with protein, fibre, few carbohydrates and no sugar feels incredibly satisfying, sleeping like a toddler, brighter skin and eyes, having noticeably more money in my pocket and feeling like myself again for the first time in nearly 40 years - there are a couple of downsides.
The main one is boredom. Being fit is a lot of fun, but that fun almost exclusively happens in the daytime. At the gym. Usually between the hours of 7am and 9am. Before work.
The hours when most people are having fun, five pints or a bottle or two in, are on Friday and Saturday nights, which now feel like hammering on the front door of your own house while there’s a party going on inside.
Here’s a weird thing that I only noticed after a few months sober - there comes a point in the night when your drunk friends tune into a different wavelength. While a party may well be going on in their brain, they stopped making sense to you about half an hour ago.
While I don’t miss being drunk, The Boss said she sometimes kind of misses the old idiot me. Turns out there’s only so much diet and fitness, personal finance and dog ownership chit-chat that anyone can take. We have been out for dinner and drunk alcohol-free red wine. To be honest, it felt like we paid £25 for a bottle of Ribena. I don’t know about you, but I never started drinking for the taste of it, just for the effects of lowering inhibitions sufficiently to have the confidence to talk to women.
Also, drinking is a lot of fun. Well, right up until the point where it isn’t. The first 20-30 minutes while your blood alcohol level is rising is phenomenal. Cold beer on a hot day, the first two glasses of a lively Rioja on a winter’s night. I can actually taste it just by reading it.
As far as downsides go, that’s about it really. A buzz for half an hour of a weekend versus feeling about 30 years younger and friends coming up to you and asking you how you did it.
The next big challenge is a college reunion at the end of the month. It’s a big ask to walk into a room where the ghosts of your youth are in there with a glass of something nice in their hands while you try to rawdog your way through it. But at least I’ll be able to remember every awkward conversation that runs dry after three minutes because 1991 was a very long time ago and we’ve all long since turned into our parents. Wish me luck!
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