Big Claims, Little Action

[This is a backdated post] 

So a few months ago I made some stirring declarations that I was going to start trying chocolate and alcohol again.

It has so far failed to evolve into a concrete plan.

Probably the furthest I've actually gotten is not scooping some foam off my decaf latte when some of the chocolate powder from someone's cappuccino got on it.
Oh and going completely off the chain and dipping my sushi in soy sauce that I haven't cooked to make sure the 6% booze has been neutralised.

I've always thought I had a bit of a contradictory personality in that I feel like I'm both a bit prone to addiction AND completely incapable of it.

I suppose addiction might be the wrong term and incapable probably ain't exactly accurate either.

If there's something I'm enjoying doing (reading) and I'm supposed to be doing something more productive instead (studying/cleaning/talking to flesh and blood people) I am very likely to let myself get carried away and read until 3am even knowing that I will feel like a sleepy idiot at work the next day.

If I want something and I can't muster up a compelling enough argument against it, I tend to let myself have it.
I'm self-indulgent like that.

But proper addiction is when your doctor looks you in the eye and says 'if you don't stop drinking you won't see 40' and you keep drinking anyway because you need to/you can't stop/you can't bear yourself/your life without it/you're sure it won't happen to you/fuck you, that's why.

If the potential cons outweigh the more probable pros I am really good at going cold turkey.

What I don't seem to be good at right now is looking at the statistics/likelihoods and making that gamble that I'm not the 0.005% of people who will be adversely affected by giving it a go.

The other thing that makes it tricky is that being nervous gives me a bit of a funny tummy at times.
So being nervous about trying alcohol and caffeine because they might give me a funny tummy might give me a funny tummy, aka a false positive.

Seeing as my brain is rigged to automatically plot out a range of possible consequences for everything I think about, way too quick to head off at the pass, I generally just sit through its mental powerpoint of 'shit you should consider'.
Even if I can dismiss 95% of it as 'as close to impossible that it makes no mind' considering it and running it through the 'hmm-o-tron' is quicker and ends with less worrying than trying to clamp down on the behaviour entirely.

At the moment I'm balancing on the teeter point of 'how long will it take for the idea to be less nerve-inducing so that I can accurately judge if it is throwing my system out when I have this stuff?' and 'seeing as life has been pretty well fine without this stuff is it worth the fiddling and fussing to get back on it anyway?'

In addition to that I have the previous experience of absence not necessarily causing the heart to make that much of a fuss.

A few years ago I went on the Liver Cleansing Diet with someone else as a sort of moral support.
You gave up dairy, red meat and alcohol for 3 months to allow your liver to 'bounce back to full operational strength after all the terrible strain that is put on it by our less than natural modern diet'. I honestly thought it was a pile of bulltwang but seeing as it wasn't telling you to drink your weight in cucumber water or anything ridiculous I was OK with giving a few things up for a while.

I wasn't really drinking that much alcohol anyway so that wasn't really a strain but cutting out dairy and red meat meant I had to think a bit harder about how to prepare meals and what to have.
And I really like red meat and dairy, they're two of my favourite things!

In any case after three months of abstinence I assumed my first mouthful of beef or cheese or chocolate would have my tastebuds rejoicing, my mouth flooding with joyful saliva and a choir of angels singing above me.
Nope.
I mean it tasted nice but just in the usual way.
Its absence in my life hadn't made me realise that it was more glorious than mere mortal tastebuds could comprehend fully on a daily basis.

So when I get back to booze and caffeine (chocolate etc) I'm not anticipating a 'oh sweet lord how I've missed you' moment of sensory bliss, just a 'hey I can do what I want without having to double check ingredients, huzzah' which will allow me to relax a bit about food and indulge a bit more.

Eh, I'll get there eventually.
Or I won't.
Whatever, they both work.

Unlearning Learned Behaviour

Well bloody hell, now what?

OK, a while ago I got sick with a particularly nasty virus, my doctor told me to stay away from caffeine and alcohol for a while and warned me that I may need to avoid them for the rest of my life in order to avoid a possible relapse or developing a permanent condition.
So for the last two years I've had no tea, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, soft drinks or beverages that contain caffeine, or anything of the sort.
At all.

Around last June she told me that I was no longer sick with the virus and when I asked she said I could think about trying little bits of alcohol and caffeine but I got the strong impression that she didn't think it was advisble and she wouldn't nominate safe amounts or intervals.

My uncle is a doctor and I kept intending to ask him about it but put it off for months because if he concurred with her then I'd have to face the unadorned truth that I should stay away from alcohol and caffeine for the rest of my life.
I know it's silly seeing as I was already doing that day by day but having it confirmed makes it official.
And once it was official I would start hearing sad songs in my head and seeing slow motion, soft focus memories of delicious chocolate thingies and cups of coffee and cool refreshing beverages*.
Anyway just before I went away in December I finally sent him an email with the relevant results attached and less than an hour later I got an email back saying 'I don't know what she's talking about, nothing you eat should impact on your blood test score'... 0_0
Right. OK.

The particular blood test score that I've been left with does mean that I'm more likely than someone without it to develop certain conditions later in life but I'm not guaranteed to develop them and unless I lead a life of Bacchanalian excess I'm unlikely to negatively influence that likelihood.

This was a relief but as I was about to go away to another country I wasn't about to start trying things.
After two years of no alcohol I would be guaranteed to be the world's cheapest date as the booze went straight to my head, and after two years of no caffeine it would likely whip through me like a hurricane.

That plus after two years of avoiding anything containing either of these things diligently because I thought it could make me permanently ill...  I couldn't quite wrap my head around it.
I mean I've even been avoiding uncooked soy sauce, just to be safe.
Did you know that many types of soy sauce have up to 6% alcohol in it? Well they do.

When I came home from Nepal with a persistent cough I went to see my usual doctor and found she was away and I was seeing the new doctor at the surgery instead.
So I thought 'what the hell' and asked her as well.
She said that there were perfectly healthy people who had these scores and there was no scientific link between caffeine and alcohol and negative impacts on health as a result of this blood test score.
I asked some pedantically specific questions to be sure and yep, after two years I can start introducing chocolate, coffee and booze back into my life.

And I have no idea where to start.

I mean obviously I'd start off slow, small amounts at staggered intervals but...

I am going to be nervous as hell.

This is going to take a while.

But I am determined that by the next time I visit Italy I will be able to have a coffee or a glass of wine without a thought.

Well, not entirely without a thought, I will appreciate them more than I ever would have believed possible a few years ago.



*Can't liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive, if living is without yooooooooooooOOOOOooouu!

Health Update

It's been a bit over a year since my body betrayed me with all of my various composite bits staging seemingly independent but actually interconnected rebellions, and since then we seem to have arrived at a truce.

As a result of my immune system and other various bits agreeing to end the strike combined with the healthy eating habits and sheer amount of walking I've incorporated into my life, I feel pretty normal for the most part and consider myself to be exceptionally lucky.

Recently, I've had another round of blood tests and the news is decent.

Various scores that were up and shouldn't have been are continuing to head downwards in an orderly fashion, and are almost where they should be, and the most important score has taken a step in the right direction so I'm no longer right on the borderline where relapsing into an inflammatory condition seemed like a question of which way the wind was blowing.

Of course, the most important score is the one my doctor has warned me may never completely recover. She described it as being like a marker that shows something has happened to me, much like an X-ray will show a healed fracture.
As a result, barring some Wolverine-esque recovery it looks like I'm a teetotaller and decaf drinker.

I'd be more upset about that if I hadn't decided right from the start to treat the situation as if it were permanent.
That way if I was wrong, rejoicing!
And if I was right, well then, I'd be used to it.

I don't have to miss coffee and tea too much as I've found some tasty decaf versions and have a whole range of hippy-dippy herbal teas available to me.

I know carob in no way replaces chocolate but I've always had a bit of a Stockholm Syndrome for carob thanks to my primary school canteen and I've recently discovered that you can get caffeine-free chocolate, no idea what it tastes like yet but we'll see.

So the big'un is alcohol. Alcohol-removed wine smells like wine but mostly tastes like grape juice so it's not the replacement that decaf coffee/tea is. I can cook with alcohol as when you cook things properly the alcohol evaporates off leaving you with tasty foods.
Of course, considering I didn't start drinking until I was 19, I was late to the game and leaving it just makes it feel like a phase I was going through :-P

I do miss alcohol and chocolate but thanks to my scare I have absolutely NO TEMPTATION to have any because if I got sick again I'd probably get RSI kicking myself at which point I would hire other people to kick me. Forever.

A lucky feature of my weird memory and my adaptive personality is that it's been a year since my last drink and I just about can't remember what being drunk/tipsy feels like. I have this vague impression but it just doesn't seem to actually have anything to do with me. Booze still smells delicious but as far as taste* and effect go it's almost like thinking about something that I've read about but never experienced.
Thanks, weirdo brain! That's actually a huge help!

I'm going to keep taking care of myself and appreciate every day that I feel good because worrying about what might happen later down the track is just a waste of what I have now and I am certainly not about to take that for granted.

All in all, things are going well, so hooray for that!



*As long as I don't actually stick my nose in a glass or bottle of something and take a big sniff at which point my tastebuds start excitedly explaining how they remember it tasting and getting nostalgic.

Goodbye, Sweet Ambrosia

I have now been a booze-free zone for over six months.

This isn't due to excessive party times or a dearth of funds, but because when I got sick at the start of the year I came dangerously close to developing a permanent and very uncomfortable inflammatory condition.
My doctor has told me to stay away from caffeine and alcohol for the foreseeable future (possibly forever if a particular blood test score never recovers) to avoid getting sick again, possibly for keeps.

Being booze-free has been easier than I expected it to be.

Part of the ease comes from knowing how I could feel if I decided to risk a tipple and that tipple sent me on a trip to Relapse Town.
Relapse Town is not a place I wish to visit. I drove by it briefly in June thanks to a small amount of chocolate and this reaffirmed my commitment to stay as far away from the poxy place as possible.

Yes, I definitely miss booze but for the most part I think I miss the ability to choose booze more than I miss the booze itself*.

I miss the idea of being able to have a glass of wine at dinner or when travelling. There's something wrong about not being able to have some red if you find yourself in Tuscany or Catalonia** or try the local liqueurs or cocktails of wherever you happen to be.

Anyway, in order to 'celebrate' my six month No Drinky Drinky I've decided to list some of the nice things about being booze-free.

Some Of The Nice Things About Being Booze-Free by Ricochet, aged 28

• You save a bunch of money.
• No hangovers.
• When they put out articles like this you breathe a sigh of relief and when you stumble across articles like this you feel like less of a social pariah.
• You can drive yourself and your friends home at the end of the night instead of having to wait forever for a taxi or having to crash at someone's house when you'd really rather be curled up in your own bed.
• You never accidentally tell a deeply personal story to someone and then spend the rest of your life wondering if they were sober enough to remember it but not willing to ask them in case they'd forgotten or repressed it and your question brings it back to the forefront of their conscious mind.
• You drop a few kilos.
• You don't spend your entire party night ducking to the bathroom to tinkle after 'breaking the seal'***.
• You realise that 'breaking the seal' is a myth after you see how few drinks you actually feel like drinking when they don't have booze in them. You don't need to go the toilet because you broke the seal, you need to go to the toilet because you've imbibed over a litre of liquids.
• You know that the friends you have or keep are the ones who you genuinely like and who like you as a person and aren't just 'OK to hang around with/interesting after a few drinks'.
• You remember everything you did at parties.
• Less photos of you looking like you're a half-melted Madame Tussauds mannequin will exist to haunt you.
  

And as a bonus here are my tips for avoiding or minimising booze nostalgia.

Tips For Making Being Booze-Free Less Painful For The Previously Appreciative Drinker by Ricochet, aged 28)

• DON'T decide you should check if that bottle of Baileys that's been sitting in your fridge for the last six months has gone off before offering it to your parents to take home. DO NOT sniff that bottle of delicious Baileys.

Actually that's pretty much my entire tip. Don't sniff booze, it'll smell delicious and you'll get sad.

I guess if you have places that you went out to drinking with friends and they're boring if you're not boozing or if going there will only cause you I'm-missing-out sads, you should avoid those too.

But apart from avoiding sniffing booze and checking the ingredients in desserts and some foods that aren't cooked at high enough temperatures to evaporate all the booze, that's about it for me at least.

They smell like the ghosts of Christmases past, the Christmases when you could guzzle Baileys.



*Always nice to find out that you don't have a chemical dependency that you've been in denial about.

**As we often do, amirite? *Pops on monocle*

***Breaking the seal = peeing for the first time during a night on the booze after which you'll have to go to the bathroom over and over again. I have no idea if this term is used in the US or UK, it probably is.