The Purification (#2)

2. Reduce alcohol consumption. "I love scotch. Scotchy, scotchy, scotch. There it goes, down my belly."

This seems like a simple and obvious one. But my thinking about it is somewhat more complex than just doing your average, run-of-the-mill, New Year's Resolution or Lent-style sacrifice. Any boob with a healthy fear of a vengeful god can convince themself to swear off booze for a month or two before hopping back on the wagon. I, however, am a new-age boob. Maybe it's the Buddhist in me, but I loves me some good old fashioned balance and harmony. My personal opinion is that extremes can be harmful, or are, at the very least, much easier to accomplish than finding "the perfect balance", so therefore, a somewhat empty gesture. What's the point of giving something up for an arbitrary amount of time if you know you're just going to pick it up again, and more than likely do it the same way you've always done before?

The point of the Purification is not to deny myself pleasure at all costs, and not to excoriate, castigate, or berate myself either (I did that already and yes, I used a thesaurus for that). The point of it is to break old habits, to have to think about "the why" of decisions I might have previously taken for granted, and to exact LASTING change. So in a sense, I feel like giving up alcohol completely for an arbitrary length of time would be pointless, to some extent. I don't want to learn if I can do it or not. I don't feel the need to get all 12-steppy about it. I have, in fact, done it at various other times in my life, so there's not a lot of mystery there for me personally.

What I want to change are those moments in our drinking careers when we feel a little too indulgent....when the Reason we are drinking just "feels wrong". There are a million reasons why we Bomb Jaeger or Shoot Purple Hooter, but some are "good" and some are "bad". At least, that's how my brain works. Maybe yours is different.

Examples:

Good - Bachelor Parties, Weddings, Happy Hour with friends, Holiday dinners, Lagavulin 16 or Caol Ila 18 anytime or place (they're that good), etc...

Bad - Proving manhood, PR'ing, Revenge, Sulking, Putting a good keen edge on that depressed state you've been working on...

Let it not be said that I didn't give those "Bad" ones a fair chance, because I have. I have accumulated quite a bit of data about them, in fact (I'm a scientist...this is seriously the kind of thing I say...weird, isn't it?). There's a period of my life that I now jokingly call "The Haight-Ashbury Days", in homage to a phrase coined by a local radio personality, and during that period I was having a raucous good time during the 4pm to 4am shift, and pretty much hating myself the rest of it...which caused me to want to drink more, more self-loathing, body shots, disgust and shame, etc....ad infinitum.

Don't let it happen to you, brother.