Day 4 - Thursday 3rd November

Just got home, its about 12:30. Tonight was a test but I passed it with flying colours! I met up with a friend from London who I havent seen in a couple of years, and her boyfriend who I've never met before. We met in one of my favourite pubs. I had diet coke, they had beer. Once they arrived I felt fine, although it had felt a bit weird when I was sitting there by myself for 15mins waiting for them to arrive nursing a diet coke. We went for dinner at a really nice place and I have to admit I was a bit jealous of his 'old fashioned' cocktail, but I stuck with water. We then went to another couple of bars. It was hard to gauge how I found being in a busy bar drinking water, as they were both a bit tired from the jetlag so its not like they were up for a riotous time. As it was, I found it easy, however I'm not kidding myself that it'd be so easy to sit there with a glass of water if they'd been up for doing shots and having a wild night. For some reason I suggested going to another bar even though they were clearly both tired, so that is something odd that I've noticed about myself, even without alcohol I still have a tendency to try and stretch the night out longer than is necessary. It sounds funny, but I feel like a detective discovering clues and noticing things about myself that I havent noticed before in a bid to work out why I am the way I am.

I have to say that not drinking is actually pretty liberating. It's now approaching 1am. I need to be up for work at 6:30, so I might be a bit tired but its a good feeling to know that I wont be hungover. Often I'll be pretty pissed by 10pm so I'll constantly be checking the time trying to strike that balance between staying out as long as possible but getting enough sleep to mitigate my hangover. Not drinking gives me the freedom to stay out late and not have to worry about how I'll feel in the morning.

A big test tomorrow. Dinner with a large group of friends at a mates restaurant.

Edit on 11/5/11 - Something I forgot to mention, I was walking home at 12:30am and my instinct was to head to the pizza place down the block and get a couple of slices, but then I realised that I wasn't actually hungry and didnt want anything. Again, I'd gotten so used to 'drunk food' and the super human eating abilities that drunk people develop late at night that it felt really odd to simply go home without the obligatory 2 slices of pizza!