Still on the Wagon

Yesterday was Day 22 of my Summer Lent, and I'm still on the wagon.

It's more difficult to avoid soda than it is booze, to be honest. I just never realized how much soda I consumed. Even though most of what I had drunk were diet or sugar-free equivalents of the full liquid candy bars that are main line carbonated beverages, I had a sense that diet sodas weren't the answer to clean living.

The coffee / tea / seltzer / water component is growing a bit old, but at least I know that the liquids I'm putting inside of me were not manufactured by chemistry majors. (Although I did add milk into that equation when I began desiring cereal for breakfast...and lord knows what hormones they give to cows these days)

I am simply amazed at the social role of alcohol in the lives of (relatively) young Bostonians like myself. You meet people for drinks, you have a drink with dinner, you drink on the beach, drink at the game, meet friends for drinks after work - it's everywhere. That's what I miss the most. When "another round" includes your third club soda, that blows.

It's simply no fun being the furthest from drunk among a group of people drinking. And it's definitely not the physical feeling obtained from drinking alcohol as much as the connection with others while drinking.

Now I can (partly) understand how difficult life is for recovering alcoholics - people who have a dependency on the bottle but are able to kick that need must struggle through the social aspects of watching and interacting with friends and family who are drinking.