At 600 days, I still thought about drinking every day. Back then I wrote this:
I thought I’d forget about it, but in fact I think about drinking or smoking every day. I don’t get tempted every day, but somehow getting drunk or high crosses my mind every single day.
At almost 1000 days, I realized that I go days and maybe weeks without it occurring to me. It came out of nowhere. I think two years is the turning point. Not only do I not think about it, but I don’t feel temptations at all. You build up the muscle memory. You stop craving it.
Overconfidence may be risky. Some people fall off the wagon when they’re riding high. But I almost never have fond memories or longing for it.
I recently learned about people who continue going to bars or dance clubs after they’ve sobered up. Probably not a “best practice.” You don’t have to avoid those places, but don’t go out of your way to be in them. Apparently there are people who do.
I’m having a hard time getting my head around that: Who in hell quits drinking and continues going to bars regularly? Maybe it was easier for me because I quit going to bars long before I sobered up.
I was getting drunk at home with the wife and children in the background. Not being abusive or anything. Maybe annoying with the music, or getting animated. Definitely being hung over in the mornings. I was drinking in a bar maybe five times a year toward the end, and without the wife that number would get down to one or two.
I used to have blowups with my wife in which I’d split the house for a few days. I’d sometimes hole up in a cheap hotel, and other times I’d head straight to the tourist district to party. Take my mind off my problems for a minute.
I’d flee the house in a dash and leave all the money and bank cards with my wife. I would just take credit cards with me. Being cash poor isn’t ideal in Latin America. I’d get an advance from a friend and score a small pile of coke to sell to tourists for pocket money. I know it’s easier today to go cash-free in Latin America.
I imagine it was weird for my expat pals to have a friend who drinks and goes hard, but only at his own house amid family women and children. But they’d never see me out at night … until they did. With no advance notice, I would all of a sudden be out every night drinking, smoking and snorting. Until I went back home.
After one of those long nights, temporarily estranged from the home front, drunk and wired and alone at 4 a.m., I thought about all the people I had met that night, partied with, laughed with. Sometimes they were interesting, educated limeños who, in another life, could become great friends. But I would never see them again.
And I thought, what was the point of all that? How much money did I spend on bar tabs, and how much damage did I do to my body? All for cheap laughs to pass time, to be lost into oblivion. Total waste of time and attention.
Maybe I’m just getting old. You can see that in my opinions about bachelor parties. So I quit doing that while I was still getting drunk, so it’s baffling to me why somebody would do that sober. A special kind of hell for sure.
The one situation that might make sense is if a guy (or girl) is like 21 when they sober up, and they’re looking to sow their oats … in quantity (not quality). Then I could see it. But I think they have apps for that now. Nobody looks for satisfaction in bars anymore, do they?
One activity I used to engage even after I quit drinking, not a best practice, was serving lots of alcohol at my children’s birthday parties. I got into the habit in Lima, where Peruvian fathers usually skip their children’s friend’s parties. But I wanted them to know that the gringo’s house was a safe space for getting mad drunk.
The beer would never run out, and there was usually pisco or other hard stuff. And not only would I serve beer, I would push it on people. I continued to do that in the States, but less pushy. It feels a little more normal to serve beer at a children’s birthday party.
When I moved to Philadelphia, maybe out of habit, I wanted to let the neighborhood dads know. I bought a lot of beer for the first birthday party. I took great care in icing it down in the cooler. I buried the craft beers at the bottom, the Budweiser in the middle and topped it off with ciders and seltzers. Somebody looking to get mad drunk would go on a gastronomical tour, starting with light and sweet, and progressing through the flavor spectrum to the bitter.
I don’t do that anymore. Most people don’t care about alcohol that much.
Some sober people avoid nonalcoholic beers. They make nonalcoholic wine now too. I don’t think that’s a big deal. They just don’t taste great, especially the wine. The beers are ok.
Obviously I’m thinking about it today, but I don’t think about it every day. And half the time when I am, like today, I’m not actually thinking about it. I’m thinking about how often I think about it.
Expat Chronicles 