No Proof
My Drinking Habits
Introduction
I thought I had published in every Facebook Community. In the Vocal Social Society, we are exploring every community on Vocal over a period of eight weeks.
This week Proof is one of the five and I found that the story I thought was in Proof was actually in Potent. This was it. Potent is more about weed while Proof is about alcohol so I actually misplaced it, but I will leave it here and create this story for Proof.
No Proof
Due to the onset of Cirrhosis and Diabetes probably caused by drinking too much, I gave up drinking about twenty years ago, because I started to get bad headaches after the first pint or glass of wine.
I love Guinness, Southern Comfort, Cava and Prosecco, but I don't like the effect they have on me. I was recently pleased to discover alcohol-free Guinness as I love the taste of stouts and porters.
I never liked most ales and lagers and always found the alcohol-free a pointless exercise. What is the point of making an awful drink worse by taking away the only reason for actually drinking it?
Memoirs Of A Drink Driver
I probably started drinking around the age of fourteen. I remember always expecting to get a child's fare on the bus but to get a pint in a pub or get into an 18 Rated film at the cinema. I remember my brother asking for his first pint in a pub as "a pint of beer" and was flummoxed when the barman asked him "mild, bitter or lager?". He was fourteen.
In the late sixties and early seventies, the racism and misogyny of people I was around never sat well with me and I was continually slapped down for questioning those attitudes, but when I started drinking I was OK with also driving.
Today that attitude appals me but then it was the norm. The only thing was don't get caught by the police and breathalysed, you never thought of the potential consequences of drinking and driving.
We didn't wear seatbelts either, with people arguing that if you didn't wear a seatbelt you would be thrown clear from a crash (seemingly ignoring the steering wheel and windscreen that you would somehow have to negotiate to get thrown clear.
In my first job, one of the guys used to regularly drink seven or eight pints a night and said that if he got really drunk he always managed to park his car perfectly, but if he didn't drink enough the car would be badly parked. He wasn't bragging just reporting what he did each night and his parking was a gauge of how much he had drunk the previous night.
I never drank myself into oblivion like some people and I often had to drop people off but my worst experience was coming home from a rock and roll night in Morecambe one Saturday night with three of my mates as passengers.
When I was coming into Garstang, thirty miles south of Morecombe I knew there would be a lot of police about, I woke up!!! I was the one behind the wheel!!! I remembered nothing of the journey and that really frightened me and made me realise how out of control alcohol could make me.
We negotiated the streets of Garstang slowly and quietly to not alert the police to our state then on through Broughton and Cottam, dropping off my friends, and finally parking up at home.
Conclusion
I still like stouts and porters and still dislike most ales and lagers, but am so pleased that the alcohol-free Guinness is here, which does taste good.
I cannot believe that as a youth it did not occur to me how much control you could lose by drinking. Alcohol is a social disinhibitor and may make it easier to be in a social situation, but you should never drink where you have to control something like a vehicle.
Keep reading
More stories from Mike Singleton - Mikeydred and writers in Proof and other communities.
A Love Story from my Past
As I sat in my dimly lit apartment, surrounded by the echoes of yesteryear, my mind wandered back to a time when love was new, and the world was full of wonder. It was a era of vinyl records, cassette tapes, and mix CDs – a time when music was more than just a background noise, but a soundtrack to our lives.
By Isra Saleema day ago in Proof
Comments (4)
Interesting insights Mike. I have never been a big drinker, having only really found beer in my 50's. That doesn't make for good socialising here in Australia, but growing up around heavy drinkers, I saw the worst of things as a sober observer. I got drunk every now and then, I just wasn't any good at it. I hope you're enjoying your sobriety.
Sobering thoughts, every pun intended quite seriously.
Yeah, I also did stupid stuff in my younger years, never thinking of the consequences. Good article. Oh, I still don't like Guinness.
I have met three people whose lives were changed by alcohol. The first hit a telephone pole and was jailed. His wife told his children he was on a business trip. Thankfully for them, he never touched another drop. The second lost his wife and two of his children to a drunk driver, who lived. The third hit a tree and demolished a stone wall. He fled the state as it was not his first offense. He had to come back for a court case during which his lawyer struck some sort of deal. Eventually his wife threw him out and the last I heard he was living in his car. Sobering, as the pun goes. Thanks for the story, a reminder.