Not Drinking and Me Part 2

I should perhaps clarify that my main objection to drinking isn’t so much the odd beer here and there, but feeling pressured into doing it when I don’t want to. However in an effort to be consistent, I’m going to try and eliminate all drinking. After all, it wouldn’t look very good if I made a big fuss about not drinking at the school parties, and then was caught buying a beer at the local convenience store.

Actually, left on my own I’m really not much of a drinker. There are a few stories of indiscretion and excess with my name attached to them, but that’s the exception, not the rule. School drinking parties aside, it’s rare if I drink twice in a month.

I don’t really like to drink. Don’t like the taste of it all that much. After the mandatory youthful experimentation, I decided that I don’t like being drunk. And I really don’t like the morning after. So giving up drinking entirely is not something that is very difficult for me. In fact one might wonder, school drinking parties aside, why someone like me would even drink above given my above preferences. So I thought I’d enumerate all the situations in which I’m most likely to have a drink.

1. Without a doubt the most common is when I’ve made the mistake of drinking too much coffee late at night (which, by the way, drinking coffee is next on my list of things I’m going to cut out). It’s 3 AM, I’m wide awake, lying in my futon, staring at the ceiling, and promising myself this is the last time I’m going to drink coffee ever. Then I decide to go to the convenience store and buy a couple beers (or more likely a bottle of wine) in the hopes that it will counter-balance the caffeine.
It seems to work. Maybe it’s just the placebo effect. Or maybe in the hour it takes me to get up, get dressed, drive down to the convenience store, buy the wine, drive back and drink it, I would have fallen asleep eventually anyway.

2. This is going to identify me as a major geek but…
In the above example, I often find myself drinking alcohol at 3 or 4 in the morning waiting to get sleepy. Since I don’t have a TV, I’m frequently reading during this time while I’m munching on potato chips and drinking. And I’ve found that whatever I’m reading seems a lot more interesting after a couple drinks.
After a while, on nights when I didn’t feel like going out and doing anything, staying home with a book and a couple of beers sounded really appealing. Like I said, I guess this identifies me as a major geek. Most people associate drinking with going out and partying and picking up girls, not reading history books.

3. Another time I might want to have a drink is when I’m out with friends and I want something to slowly sip throughout the evening. Usually I order juice or tea at the bar, but then I down it really quickly, and I’m left holding an empty glass and feeling a bit awkward.
A beer doesn’t go down quite as easily, at least not for me. I couldn’t gulp a beer down quickly if I wanted to. So one beer will last me a good twenty minutes or so.
This works particularly well when I’m talking to girls. Usually if I’m talking to a girl I get nervous and drink whatever is in my hand very quickly. And then when there is a pause in the conversation, I look awkwardly into my empty glass.
On the other hand with a beer, I always have something nearby to take a sip of. So the pauses in the conversation seem to occur not because I’ve run out of things to say, but because I’ve just decided to take a little break to drink my beverage.

4. And speaking of talking to girls, another time I would be tempted to drink beer is to try and gain some “liquid courage.” I don’t do this often because it tends to backfire on me.

I’m not sure why that is. I think it may be because I’m a naturally introverted person anyway, so my natural state is not to talk to other people. Talking to other people (unless they’re good friends) requires an effort and concentration on my part. And so if alcohol dulls my senses slightly, I find myself being less sociable.

But every once and a while, when I’m in the right mood and am feeling outgoing and have a lot of energy, a beer or two really seems to do a lot to boost my confidence. Maybe it’s the placebo effect, I don’t know.

In this respect I liken beer somewhat to drinking coffee. Sometimes when I’m really feeling tired in the morning, a couple cups of coffee will do wonders for me. But sometimes it doesn’t help at all. In fact I’ll feel worse because now I’m tired and I’ve got this black sludge swishing around in my empty stomach. But when I walk into the office in the morning and see the coffee pot brewing, I tend to only think of the times it has made me feel better.

Drinking can be the same way. In spite of the fact that more often then not it makes me less sociable, if the night isn’t going well, I sometimes only remember the few times it seemed to perk me up.

Often though, even if a few drinks do help me make it through the night, I tend to regard it as cheating. If there’s something I’m nervous about doing, such as going out on the dance floor, or singing karaoke, or talking to the girl next to me, and then I do it, it’s a victory of sorts. But if alcohol was involved, it somewhat cheapens the victory.