I’ve been becoming far more aware of the toll alcohol has been taking on my body for at least 5 years now. In that time, I’ve cut back considerably. Both in the days I drink any, but also doing a much better job at stopping after a couple or a few even when out with friends and they get to keep drinking.

It’s a really hard thing to do. But I had to. They weren’t paying for it the next morning, or even that evening, like I was.

But despite all my progress and improvements into lower levels of “moderation”, it was still to much. My body has continued to tell me so. I became very aware of how it actually made me feel, e.g. I don’t enjoy having headaches so I can no longer justify doing something willingly that so often results in one. Even when I’d been being very “good” and very “successful” at my moderation, I could no longer ignore the honest observations of body heaviness, fatigue, and headache that typically correlated. (Despite how desperately I was trying to rationalize them away).

I think part of the reason that I’ve held onto alcohol for as long as I have is … to fit in. When you’ve already given up gluten and dairy and all sorts of things, it basically removes all processed food from the table. Which means when your social group is all connecting over a shared experience, you are excluded.

This makes you feel excluded from ‘the tribe’, socially. But also makes you feel you are missing out … there is a REASON people eat pizza, it is so damn good! But the convenience and connection of enjoying communal pizza has been lost to me for ages… As with so many things.

Alcohol is something at pretty much every gathering. So, if I can at least have that, then I am at least participating in that. If I remove that TOO… well, it kind of makes you feel like a pariah. But worse, I fear that some could see it as a “snobby” one who is “too good” to eat or drink anything – when the reality is that I’d LOVE to, but I can’t. I can’t if I want to still have a functional, capable body to explore the world in twenty more years. Which I do. I really, really do. More than anything else.

Sacrifice. Sacrificing what everyone around you gets to enjoy. And you get to watch it for all eternity. It sounds bleak and it frequently FEELS bleak. And THAT I think is part of what has made this last addiction so very hard to really give up. They say willpower is finite, and sometimes it certainly feels that way.

But other times, it feels like acceptance. It is what it is. Sometimes, it feels like peace and indifference. I long ago decided I wanted to do what is best for my body, and this next experiment is undeniably what all the signs point to. And if I realize that a lot of that fear from being ‘excluded from the tribe’ is just primal, subconscious programming, then I have options. Like making mocktails and SHARING them with others who are interested. And you know what? I’d expect a lot of people to be interested. Because even though pretty much everyone I hang out with drinks alcohol, it is ALSO true that pretty much all these people are also trying to drink LESS alcohol. To slow their roll. To moderate. So I don’t have to be excluded if I take action not to be.

That doesn’t solve the other problem of the simply wanting it and missing out. But, my diet is already so far removed from “mainstream”, that, in reality, what is one more thing really? I’ve already become numb to fast-food advertisements and establishments. I barely react to them, they don’t exist to me. What if alcohol could get to the same level? That it is just “noise” put on by society, and to acquire muted indifference because I know that I’ve always been off the beaten path. 80% of the “suffering” of “missing out” seems to come from the focusing on the absence of it. If I spend my time wallowing and salivating over wishing I could have it, then the suffering is amplified. I guess that is where mindfulness and meditation training and practice pays off – if you’ve developed the ability to become aware of your thoughts and to drop thoughts and to redirect elsewhere, then you have a chance to be at peace. It’s not “easy”, nor is it something that is ever “checked-off and done”. It is a practice, a maintenance habit, something you keep up on a continual basis.