I find myself in a curious predicament this morning. Late yesterday afternoon, I was suddenly overcome by an overwhelming desire to drink beer. But being so incredibly close to my my first ‘Thrice Lucky’, I felt the need to push through what I believed was another temporal Drinkie ambush. Little did I realize at that moment the failure was imminent.
1(7) ; Thrice Lucky??? ; M: 171 ; C: 133 ; P/U: Rest ; W: 4 mi
No Weigh In – Mountains
Bobbing and Weaving
In an attempt to fight Drinkie off, I turned to my normal playbook of addiction transfer and non-alcoholic, yet hoppy, Athletic IPA.
With non-alcoholic IPA in hand, I kicked back by the fire table and tried to relax. I sipped the hoppy drink slowly in hopes that it would do what was required, but in this rare instance, it simply didn’t scratch the drinking itch. Not this time. This was failure numero uno.
“No problem,” I thought as I tossed the empty can into the recycling bin, “I got this.”
Walking over to the fridge, I grabbed the half gallon of Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream, a can of whipped cream, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, and the pan of homemade brownies my sister-in-law had baked for Thanksgiving. Armed with these ingredients, I proceeded to build myself a giant sugar laden ‘Addiction Transfer‘ sundae.
I wolfed all that sugar down with vigor! But this giant ice cream bomb did little to fend off Drinkie, who by this time was wildly clamoring to hook my attention. Sadly, my addiction transfer tactic was abysmal failure number two.
As if on cue, my wife’s partying family arrived. And once they settled in, the beer, wine, whiskey, and weed begin to flow. Failure was upon me.
The Quantum Calculation of Failure
Seizing upon the mounting momentum of the free flowing ‘good cheer’, Drinkie cleverly hooked me.
“You’re practically there, to you’re ‘Thrice Lucky’, I mean. Think about it. You’re just couple hours away. In my book, you made it! Congratulations! Time to celebrate!”
“You may be right,” I reflexively replied, “Let’s check to make sure.”
With that, I pulled out my phone, opened the calculator app, and did a little arithmetic.
- 21 x 24 = 504 – e.g. the total number of ‘hours’ comprising a ‘Thrice Lucky’ is 504.
- 504 – 3 = 501 – or the number of hours I didn’t or wouldn’t drink of the total
- 501 / 504 = 99.4% – Total sobriety time of the 21 days in question
Yes. I actually sat down and calculated that I had made it 99.4% of the way to my goal. If that’s not some sort of crazy alcoholic logic, I don’t know what is.
As I stared down at the numerical 0.994 on my phone screen, one part of me fought to push through.
“You only have 0.006 left to go. You’re so close. Don’t blow it now. You’ll blink and it’ll be two weeks from now and you’ll still be beating yourself up over this decision. Stay the course!”
Drinkie, ever the clever one, responded, “Just round it up! 99.4% is basically 100%, right? C’mon!”
Drinkie Wins :/
As I’m sure you already guessed from the 1(7) above, Drinkie pulled off an upset. As a result, I’m feeling like a bit of a failure this morning knowing that:
- The ‘Thrice Lucky’ was so close at hand
- I drank 2-3x what I’ve been drinking per sitting. Worse, I lost track at seven drinks, I may have had more. It pains me to think this.
Since I’ve been drinking so much less and so much less often over the past few months, my tolerance of alcohol has declined noticeably. For the first time in a long time, I felt really buzzed. I wasn’t drunk, but I was close.
I know this because I fell asleep without brushing my teeth (yuck!!), suffered from cottonmouth all night, and woke up exhausted with a headache after a restless night’s sleep. Wow! I had almost forgotten how fun drinking is! Silly me…
“Thrice Lucky”?? Absolutely not!!
I’ll have to settle for a ‘Double Dime’ as my new sobriety record. While I’m disappointed with my failure to get to 21 full days, 20 days is six better than my previous record.
Smokie Fails
Despite easy access to marijuana and multiple offers to partake, I did not smoke or otherwise consume any pot. Smokie, apparently trying to capitalize on Drinkie’s success, made a tangential attempt to wreck my marijuana sobriety.
The presence of a strong alcohol buzz brought with it a familiar feeling that I hadn’t experienced in some time: Buzz chasing.
Fortunately, I recognized this pernicious feeling immediately and RAINed it right out of my head. Thus, my alcohol sobriety failure was not repeated by a matching loss of self control with weed. If I had f*cked up and blew my pot free streak, I’d be in a truly miserable state this morning.
Close But No Cigar
No joint or vape pen either, but that’s a good thing!
Today is a new day. And I am compelled to admit that 99.4% of anything is 100% of nothing. Close still means no cigar, so the goal of a ‘Thrice Lucky’ remains ahead of me.
How does all this make me feel on this sunny and cold Saturday morning? The single word that comes to mind is: Disappointed. Failure never feels good in the moment, but it may in hindsight if you can take lessons away from it.
Let’s face it, we’re all imperfect and we’re going to fall short on occasion. But we must learn from failure and that will enable us to avoid repeating our mistakes. Through adversity, we learn, grow stronger, and become better people.
– John Wooden
Looking back at last night’s drinking, now that I am creating ever more space between each drinking event, I have noticed a ‘meanness’, a shortness of temper, that emerges in me after just a couple of beers. This angry feeling passed with the consumption of a few more drinks, but I find this alcohol induced negativity to be concerning and have taken note of it. There’s no doubt that undesirable emotions of this kind further dull whatever shine there is left in binge drinking.
The remainder of my drinking experience was lackluster. One could describe it as unfulfilling. The whole experience took on the aspect of quenching one’s thirst with saltwater. And I realized this as I was sipping my last drink. It’s what caused me to stop and switch to non-alcoholic beer for the remainder of the night.
Was last night’s submission to Drinkie worth it? Was it everything he promised? No. Not at all. Not even close.
But, I’ll chalk it up as a lesson learned and an experience examined that will ultimately leave me far better off in the long run.
Now, having reflect upon it, it is time to let it go and leave it to the past where it belongs.
There’s so much great and practical advice in this book. It’s classic Wooden!
