Turning my back on bacchus
I'm thinking of giving up alcohol.
Wine has always been my drug of choice. The history-soaked terroir of France, celebrated in labels tapestried with breathless tales of five hundred castles; the velvety chocolate mudslides of Italy and Spain; the fat burgerlike reds of Australia and California, packaged and consumer-friendly as a Ready Meal. I even drink the bad ones. I especially drink the bad ones. From dust-bedecked single-Euro-specials sold in litrepacks of cracked plastic on Iberian roadsides, to the scratchiest nails-down-a-blackboard Bulgarian capable of killing cows at twenty paces, I've drunk them all. In a drinking career spanning at least a thousand bottles, I can remember only three I found undrinkable.
But while there's no addictive trait in my behaviour patterns - I could no more become an alcoholic than someone scared of needles could become a heroin addict - I'm a 'finisher'. Once that 750ml of joy is uncorked, it gets emptied whether I'm alone or not. I never (well, rarely) feel the need to open another, but it's equally hard to leave half an opened bottle in the fridge. So in other words, given 21st century alcohol levels and those glasses that hold nearly half a litre, my standard hit is approximately half a week's Recommended Maximum Dose.
And if I'm still a finisher when I hit my forties (OK, it's some years away) it's likely to be affecting my life in other ways. Pouring a hundred millilitres of solvents down my throat every 48 hours or so has biological implications way beyond a headache the next morning. 75 trillion cells in the human body and every one of them can be melted, mutated, ripped in two, or straight killed off by alcohol. I think the only way out for me is to give up. Totally and forever. On the wagon like some first-time AA member. Hello everybody. My name's Chris, and...
My 1500m pool time sinks by over four minutes if I down a bottle the previous evening. My face goes puce (whether spelt with a 'c' or 'k') with the juice of those sinful vines if I do it more than two days in succession, skin drying to a husk like fallen fruit on a Saharan morning. The working day starts later and finishes earlier when my blood's been seasoned with booze and left overnight. And as I start down that long slope towards 40, it can only get worse, even if it might feel better.
So perhaps it's time to set a calendar. Slow down, slow down, stop? Or maybe just stop straightaway? Like the way I didn't have Y200 once in a Tokyo supermarket, and the pack of sugar I didn't buy led to unsweetened tea from that day forward? Whatever. I've got to rid myself of this British disease. I wouldn't go swimming in a poolful of pus; why am I sluicing it into my veins three times a week?
I dunno, it's enough to drive anyone to drink.
Wine has always been my drug of choice. The history-soaked terroir of France, celebrated in labels tapestried with breathless tales of five hundred castles; the velvety chocolate mudslides of Italy and Spain; the fat burgerlike reds of Australia and California, packaged and consumer-friendly as a Ready Meal. I even drink the bad ones. I especially drink the bad ones. From dust-bedecked single-Euro-specials sold in litrepacks of cracked plastic on Iberian roadsides, to the scratchiest nails-down-a-blackboard Bulgarian capable of killing cows at twenty paces, I've drunk them all. In a drinking career spanning at least a thousand bottles, I can remember only three I found undrinkable.
But while there's no addictive trait in my behaviour patterns - I could no more become an alcoholic than someone scared of needles could become a heroin addict - I'm a 'finisher'. Once that 750ml of joy is uncorked, it gets emptied whether I'm alone or not. I never (well, rarely) feel the need to open another, but it's equally hard to leave half an opened bottle in the fridge. So in other words, given 21st century alcohol levels and those glasses that hold nearly half a litre, my standard hit is approximately half a week's Recommended Maximum Dose.
And if I'm still a finisher when I hit my forties (OK, it's some years away) it's likely to be affecting my life in other ways. Pouring a hundred millilitres of solvents down my throat every 48 hours or so has biological implications way beyond a headache the next morning. 75 trillion cells in the human body and every one of them can be melted, mutated, ripped in two, or straight killed off by alcohol. I think the only way out for me is to give up. Totally and forever. On the wagon like some first-time AA member. Hello everybody. My name's Chris, and...
My 1500m pool time sinks by over four minutes if I down a bottle the previous evening. My face goes puce (whether spelt with a 'c' or 'k') with the juice of those sinful vines if I do it more than two days in succession, skin drying to a husk like fallen fruit on a Saharan morning. The working day starts later and finishes earlier when my blood's been seasoned with booze and left overnight. And as I start down that long slope towards 40, it can only get worse, even if it might feel better.
So perhaps it's time to set a calendar. Slow down, slow down, stop? Or maybe just stop straightaway? Like the way I didn't have Y200 once in a Tokyo supermarket, and the pack of sugar I didn't buy led to unsweetened tea from that day forward? Whatever. I've got to rid myself of this British disease. I wouldn't go swimming in a poolful of pus; why am I sluicing it into my veins three times a week?
I dunno, it's enough to drive anyone to drink.
posted by chrisworth at 5:20 PM
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