A Significant Anniversary : 5 Years without Alcohol.
5 years or 1826 days ago I went cold turkey on alcohol. I drank my last bottle of vodka the night before and then we hopped on a plane for India and that was that. I had attempted many times over the years to stop drinking but even though I lasted for several months at times I’d always find an excuse to hit the bottle again.
I am a different person now in many ways, far more disciplined, far more healthy and fit and certainly a lot happier. The journey over the past 5 years is all documented in my blog.
I don’t think about drinking alcohol anymore, ever, zilch nada. I still consider myself as an alcoholic, although I am an alcoholic that does not drink alcohol. Nothing is finite so I’m not going to kid myself.
I’ve never once been tempted to have a drink. If somebody offered me $1000 to knock back a glass of vodka I’d laugh at them and tell them where to stick there money.
But, yes …. There is always a but. There has been one unknowing transgression that was no fault of my own. It’s a funny story, one that I’ve told many times but it still has legs. So here goes. One more time.
It happened on June 3, 2023 while we were staying at Lake Como in Italy. Here’s what I wrote in my blog back then.
What unfolded at Lake Como is funny and tragic all at the same time. After a long day of walking Georgie and I stopped by at a small cafe close to our apartment on the outskirts of Bellagio. It wasn’t open when we arrived soWe decided to sit down anyway and wait for the kitchen to open, Georgie chose a Prosecco and I got carried away and decided to have a gelato. Georgie suggested that I have a mineral water as well but I said that I’d just have a water. I had been talking to the waiter who I thought spoke good EnglishAt this moment Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” started playing on the radio station that they had on, this being one of my favourite pieces of music of all time I got excited. I said to the waiter “It’s OK I don’t need anything I have this perfect view and Jimi Hendrix, what more could I want?”. Then I said “Oh, OK I’ll have that water.” He bought out a glass full of ice and what looked like a mineral water but turned out to be Tonic Water something I don’t normally drink because of the sugar content. I thought to myself that he was being very generous to give me such a big glass almost full of ice.I started to pour it and sure enough I noticed that it had tonic written on the bottle but I poured it anyway and started drinking it. Now it had been almost 4 years since I had drunk tonic water or alcohol and I said to Georgie that it reminded me of when I used to drink a Gin and Tonic and that it was weird because it made me feel a bit strange, I thought it was psychosomatic. To cut a long story short I finished the drink and said something to Georgie and felt like I was slurring my words at which point Georgie asked the waiter what was in the drink. He answered that it was a Gin and Tonic exactly what I had asked for, oh shit! I started making loud noises of shock and horror and he said that I asked for a Jimi Hendrix which was either what they call a Gin and Tonic or it sounds a lot like that, later I realized that there is a gin called Gin Hendricks. He started profusely apologising and saying “Oh, fuck” over and over again as I did as well. I was feeling half pissed by now and walked out onto the street where Georgie joined me to walk back to the apartment where I promptly ate some food and lay down on the bed to sleep off my first alcoholic drink in over 4 years. That was 7 hours ago now and I have survived. I’ll be OK but what I take away from this experience is to double check what I’m asking for in a foreign country. I had no desire to keep drinking or to justify having any more alcohol, I just chalked it up as one of those moments in life that weren’t meant to happen but did.
