Just when I thought it was getting easier, this weekend rudely disrupted my growing sense of complacency to remind me that you cant break the habit of 12 years within a few weeks. I had thrown myself into training so much during the week that I hadn't bothered making any plans for Friday night. I decided to go to the cinema by myself to see 'Tyranosaur', a rather depressing, yet fantastic, British drama film. I left the Angelika Film Centre feeling pretty low, but fortunately I discovered a message on my phone from a friend inviting me to a bar which, coincidentally, was only a couple of blocks away. When I arrived I was pleased to find that the bar served a variety of non-alcoholic fruit tea cocktail drinks, which made a welcome change from my usual diet coke or water! I would love to report that I had a fun filled night out until the early hours, but unfortunately this was not the case. In fact, the evening left me feeling confused about my own attitudes towards the relationship between socialising and drinking.
To put it simply, I can completely understand why I don't want to stay out when everyone else is drunk. It just isn't fun when everyone is slurring and repeating themselves, that much is obvious. However I didn't understand why I seem to have less and less appetite for going out even during the 3-4 beer 'pre-drunk' phase. To use Friday night as an example: my friends were slowly drinking bottles of fairly weak Mexican beer, and in the hour or so that I was there they only had 2 each. Both of my friends are fairly experienced in the ways of drinking, so 2 bottles of beer are not going to have any noticeable effect. Therefore, for that hour we could say that all 3 of us are on a more or less equal terms, yet I found myself feeling fairly restless and wanting to leave. Why should this be the case? In the cab on the way home I pondered this question, and I think I came to a conclusion that makes sense to me. I have always been someone that gets genuinely excited about the 'what if?' of a Friday night. The anticipation, the build up, the endless possibilities that a weekend night in New York (or London) open up to those that are willing to explore! Where will we go? Who will I meet? Will I go home alone? All of these questions fly through my mind every Friday evening. I genuinely love the feeling of not knowing where the night will take me, simply knowing that I am going 'somewhere' is enough. For better or worse, the reality is that most of these evenings are fueled, or at least the cogs are lubricated, by alcohol. I realised that in knowing I have a certain 'cutoff' at which point my night will end, that 'what if' feeling is taken away from me, and the night seems pointless. As I stood in the bar with my 2 friends, the motivation for my departure had nothing to do with alcohol, but simple jealousy. Their night was just beginning, and mine was nearly over. If I couldn't go on the journey with them, I had no interest in accompanying them halfway. Reading this post back to myself (aside from noticing that my writing isn't really 'flowing' tonight, I apologise) I am struck by how obvious this sounds, but once again it is something that it has taken a sober perspective to understand.
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