2nd January and my second day sober!
I actually had a corny idea this morning to go with the 100 days Alcohol Free challenge, to line up 100 empty booze bottle on the wall, and every day sober to shoot a bottle off the wall with my catty (slingshot). I use little iron ball bearings with which I'm very accurate, Goliath wouldn't stand a chance if I were David. There's a neighbourhood cat that sneaks into mt property and terrorizes my budgies, I zapped it on it's arse with an iron ball at high speed that made it jump strait up over a meter with a surprised yeooowl and bolted off out the yard with no doubt a painful butt-welt to remember the experience. That was 2 weeks ago, the bastard hasn't been back since!
But I won't do that bottles on the wall thing, I'm guessing the wife won't appreciate shattered glass all over the back yard!
So here's a brief story about my journey into the new year from being a raging drunk to my first day of my 100 days plus of life without alcohol... As mentioned in my previous diary, the day that first post was written I did not drink because I got the family up at 4am the next day to head into the city for a sunrise rave type dance on an open field. It was an awesome experience, only an hour long from 6am to 7am, where all participants are given a set of headphones and dance to the direction and music of the DJ. Fantastic workout to dance hard early in the morning, I met a lot of interesting people, though some sections of the morning were quite awkward, it was kind of a small hippie love fest, lots of touching and group hugs encouraged at certain times of the event. In all it was an unusual experience, we will certainly do it again. No alcohol involved (though clearly some folks were tripping on goodness knows what). Have a look here at the photo's I took.
Thereafter we drove through to Somerset West to join my mom and brother and co for lunch at an incredibly fancy upmarket restaurant on a wine estate called Idiom. My mom's boyfriend is rather wealthy, thus the choice of venue. The food was fantastic, beautiful venue on a hot summers day in the Cape, and the wine was flowing. However I did not drink any alcohol! I had a non-alcoholic beer and lots of soda water, the reason being I had a long drive to our next venue after lunch, was not prepared to risk it with the holiday season roadblocks all over, the local traffic cops are on a mission to make final year end quota's.
The highlight of the lunch, however, was the rather dramatic arrival of supermodel Naomi Campbell with her entourage rocking up in a helicopter! After she had eaten her lunch my sister-in-law took my daughter to meet her and get a photo. My kid of course didn't know who this person is but she has been raving ever since about meeting somebody so famous!
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| My princess Tammy with supermodel Naomi Campbell. |
After lunch I loaded up the family and we headed off up the West Coast to meet up with some friends for our New Years celebration. We met them at a beach bar in Saldanha, I had two wonderfully refreshing cold beers after a long day, much enjoyed, I must be honest. Thereafter we headed to my friends house in the next town of Vredenburg where we would be staying. As we settled in for the evening I had a few stiff whiskeys while we were talking and dealing with some family drama my best mate was going through at the time. It was by no means a pissup, just a few social drinks, deliberately holding back because two of us were running the next morning.
New Years eve:
The morning of New Years Eve my running friend Carmen from that side of the world and I went to join a group of her running crew for a 15km run from Vredenburg to Paternoster on a tough hilly route in wet & misty weather. Perfect running conditions, the run was awesome, the company made the run feel much shorter. We ended off with coffee and breakfast pizza's in the quint fishing village of Paternoster. Last run of the year was well worth getting up for!
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| NYE morning run group, I'm in the orange top at the back right. |
At around 6pm we started at another beach bar on the Atlantic for the opening round of my last night of drinking, then headed off to a house party near by where all hell broke loose in terms of drinking! First time I met those people, who were awesome, some great new friends made. Jagger bombs, tequila, other shooters, whiskey, beer, brandy, etc was flowing copiously. Just before new years we headed back into town to a massive nightclub at Club Mykonos for a fun and festive send off into the new year with a lot of drunk and jolly folks.
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| Happy New Year! My wife Liezel on the left, running friend Carmen on the right. |
And no, I did not drive back. That was never the plan, the plan was that Carmen's dad and uncle who live in Langebaan would drive us back. Instead my mate decided he would do the driving, and the rest of the group thought he should drive. He had as much to drink as I did but he "seemed" less pissed. I was too drunk to contest the decision coherently so my seemingly less drunk friend drove the 30km or so through rural back roads to the town we were staying. I do recall saying quite clearly that if there was a police road block and we got stopped I would not be taking responsibility for the decision of my friend driving. My wife knows how furious I was about this yesterday morning, my friends do not.
This is just one of the many reasons I am choosing to go full alcohol free! That situation of the least drunk of the drunks being "voted" to drive MY vehicle full of people, including my sleeping daughter (she stayed at the house with other kids and a babysitter when we went out in Langebaan) will not happen again! I will rather be the designated driver and remain responsibly sober to do so, and honestly that idea is quite exciting, to get into a vehicle after a night out with friends and drive home sober and clear minded without fear of traffic road blocks and subsequent jail time, I'm quite happy to play taxi in that scenario.
I realise it's only the second day on this AF adventure, but already I feel like I'm in a different head space about this compared to the last serious attempt which was really difficult and dramatic with all the cravings and desire to drink. Now I don't want to drink, I don't want to be drunk anymore or behave like an idiot, waste money, damage my health, endanger my family and others; I need to get my life and my health and my confidence back and learn to enjoy life clear headed and sober and alive!
I think it's going to be the same as when I quit smoking. The first time I wasn't ready, I craved cigarettes and missed the taste and smell of the smoke, envied my friends smoking until I would sneak a puff here and there and steal cigarettes to smoke on the sly behind the house, etc, before long I was openly a full blown smoker again. The second time I quit (2 years ago) I was ready, I wanted to quit that shit, I had had enough and the day I killed that last cigarette my mind was in the right place. I have never smoked again, I didn't crave smokes or envied my smoker friends. Now the smell of cigarettes is actually revolting, I have no desire to inhale that deadly dirt into my lungs, even when I'm drunk. I'm hoping the same attitude towards drinking alcohol develops with my current mission and that I will simply not have the uncontrollable desire to drink without reason as before, that the cravings will be manageable and I will not miss drinking alcohol in social situations where others are drinking and feel uncomfortable not participating in the boozing, hopefully my friends accept the "new me" too without feeling awkward around me or giving me a hard time for not drinking.
My new challenge now is to find alternatives to alcoholic or sugary drinks at pubs, bars, restaurants and social events. Soda water gets boring after a while and I'm not going to order milk, tea, hot chocolate, milkshakes or other children's drinks at adult socials, unless it's for my 10 year old. But this problem is trivial compared to the bigger picture.
For now, I have a restless daughter and god-daughter running around, I'm going to take them to the beach to expend some of their overflowing energy!
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