Pull of the fuzzy buzz


My partner and I have always struggled with the pull of the booze.

If the booze is in our life, it's pretty regular. If it's in the house we will drink most days. We aren't getting smashed and partying till the early hours mind you, we are just getting a buzz on. Which is nice. I love the buzz!

The alcohol doesn't make us become bad people or do bad things, we have a bloody fun time but amidst the hangover we became a not so great version of ourselves; making our way through life in a bit of a fog and not committing to things like eating healthy or doing exercise or being creative, all the things that make us feel great.

We get to a point where we're sick of feeling the fog and go on a health kick that lasts a few weeks and then we get pulled back in to the allures of the fuzzy buzz.

For as long as I remember I have dubbed myself an 'all or nothing kind of person'.  I always feel like I need to stick to something 100% or I 'fail'. Really Indiana?! (This is something that I am working on in regards to many aspects of my life, but thats a whole other blog!). Last year when Al and I tried having a year off booze, lasting four months (not the best but hell, props to us!), we found ourselves back in the habits we were trying to avoid. We did pull ourselves out, had a week or a few weeks off here and there. But the underlying feeling was that we really needed to find a way to balance this in our lives.

This year when talking about our New Years resolutions drinking was a big point of discussion for us. We do enjoy drinking, but we wanted to eliminate it from being an every day thing. So we decided that we would allow ourselves to drink 6 times throughout the year. This means that we have to actively choose the times that we are allowing the booze in our life. And we know that we can't fix the hangover the next day with the hair of the dog because that would technically be using another of the 6 times. We are also really aware of how we feel in the days after the booze, so this affects the decision and the amount also. This obviously won't work for everyone, but it sure as hell has worked for us (so far!) enough to want to write about it.

A few weeks ago was my first drink of the six. We went out for a fancy dinner which we don't get to do very often and we thought this might be a nice night to have some wine to go with the delicious food. We had equivalent of 4 glasses of wine (but you know, fancy restaurant glasses of whine where they stop at 100ml's and don't fill them to the brim, like an Indiana glass of wine) and we had a lovely evening. At one point I leant over to Al and whispered 'can you feel the claws sinking in?!' and he looked up from his phone where he was searching the closest bottle shop and said 'ah yep.'  We couldn't help but laugh! We decided to not get anything to take home; we had a healthy little buzz on and it was a Monday, so work for me the next day and it felt weirdly great to make a sensible decision. SUCH ADULTING.

It took a few days to get back on top and through the slight fog that trails after putting the drink in the ol' bod bod. 

We are back into our non booze time and will periodically say 'oh my god I love not drinking!'. It really is really great. It leaves more room to connect with all the things that make us feel good, and wake up to face a new day sans fog head.