Three days off the booze!

Enough to make me realise that sobriety has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever, except to allow you to announce Three days off the booze! smugly in the faces of your hung-over friends.

So far it’s caused insomnia (probably due to the fact that I’m so bored in the evenings I just go to bed), which in turn causes me to lie there thinking about M, which in turn makes me feel hopelessly empty and sad.

It’s caused almost complete cessation of my studies, as only a mind numbed by alcohol can begin to contemplate the bullshit contained within academic textbooks.

I don’t feel any better physically, emotionally or creatively. So what’s the point?

I went off it because of a bowel-loosening piece of propaganda I read in the doctor’s earlier this week. It stated that by regularly exceeding the advised 21 units of alcohol per week for a woman, I was almost certainly going to contract a hideous, if not terminal disease. In fact, as a long-term abuser, it was a foregone conclusion.

I totted up my weekly unit consumption according to their calculation of 10 units equalling one bottle of wine. You do the maths.

Immediately after M died, I was positively encouraged to get shit-faced – and the earlier in the day the better. Red wine for breakfast? Why not? After all, I deserved it! Now, 16 months on, it seems there’s less of an excuse.

My abstention ends tonight, however. I am visiting a friend for the weekend and we have to get drunk because it’s Father’s Day on Sunday and how can I possibly cope with that when I’m sober?

Any excuse…