Question #15

[fbhjr]

This is in answer to the frozendoll meme I started earlier.

#15) How much alcohol you drink?

That’s easy.  Zero.

In highschool I also drank zero.  Not one drink in all that time.
I remembered that my grandfather had died of alchol and drug addiction and
didn’t want any part of it.

In the fall of my freshman year of college I attended the 200th anniversary
of the end of the American Revolution.  The group I was with broke out some
champagne.  I had some.  It was OK, but I didn’t see what the big deal was.

After that girl
broke up with me just before Christmas my freshman year, things
changed.  I had some friends who drank a lot, and I started joining them.
I went from zero to lush in about 2 weeks.

Over the next 4 years I drank a whole lot.  Did a lot of stupid things:
smashed my chin, broke 4 teeth, threw pies at people in the middle of the
night, dating Attila the Hun and annoying a lot of people.

My grades went from OK, to staying in school by the skin of my teeth.

I also met my (now) wife in the middle of that time.  And, that was the
real peak of my drinking.  Once I met her it started to drop again.  By the
time I finished school I had about a beer a night and that was it, except
for parties where I still got drunk.

Then one day my (now) wife said to me: “When you drink you become a
different person.  I don’t like the person you become.”

I had my degree.  I was about to start my first job as an engineer.  It was
the perfect time to change the person I was.
So, I stopped.
May 16th 1986 my friend Ted stopped by after school with a pack of wine
coolers.  He offered me one.
I said no.  I kept saying no.  And, it’s been 26 years so far.

There is only one exception I make to my saying no.  At weddings I will at
least put the toast to my lips.  I’m not sure if it cheating or not, but I
don’t think so.  (There have been a few weddings I haven’t done this, but
that’s a different matter.)

There are times I listen to P!nk’s song Sober to remind me.
The lines that really strike a cord are:
Night is calling
And it whispers to me softly come and play
I am falling
And if I let myself go I’m the only one to blame

We keep some alcohol around the house.  There have been times I’ve gone and
looked at those bottles.  Nights I couldn’t sleep.  Days I was upset.
I think back to January 1982 and how much pain I was in then and how those
bottles I drank from made me not care so much about it.

In less than a year I will be the age my grandfather died.
Died in an asylum due to his alcohol and morphine addiction.
Addictions that started to get through the pain, in his case physical, in
his life.
So, I still don’t drink.