Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Tue Sep 20, 2022 7:04 am
There’s some really interesting stuff here and two things particularly struck a chord with me - tolerance and escalation.
Reading through and considering this is a rugby bored I have a suspicion this may be related to the company that a lot of us keep.
How much I drink has been on my mind for a while but Saturday night brought it into focus. We had a largeish party where we had a smattering of all our combined friendship groups. Everyone there drinks but it was very much evident that the guys I know through cricket and rugby were drinking at probably double the rate of everyone else. A few of my fiancee’s friends stayed over afterwards and they absolutely could not believe that after the amount I had drunk I was up at 8, cleaning up and with barely any ill effects. I’d have probably considered that a badge of honour at 21, but now it’s a bit of a wake up call.
Again, these people drink, but they don’t ‘drink’. What’s considered normal in men’s sports environments is actually not normal at all. Probably obvious but it never really occurred to me before.
Like a lot of people on here, I’m perfectly capable of not drinking or having a casual drink or two. My challenge is that if there is any potential for escalation I am the first in line and am capable of *really* escalating.
Tolerance comes in at this stage. If bad things happen when I drink too much I’m sure I’d have stopped. I drunk drove once when I was 19 and hand on heart have never done so again. I got beaten up once on a night out and again, it was absolutely not my fault, I was wearing the same shirt as someone who had got too close to a drugged up man’s gf and he decked me from behind.
Broadly, I’ve never had to worry overly about being very drunk because I’m a happy drunk and once I’ve had way too much I go to sleep. So a confrontation with this has never been forced.
Other reasons for looking at this? As alluded to earlier I’m getting married next year and the future Mrs PB deserves better than being married to a heavy drinker. A significant chunk of her family are Glaswegian and probably unsurprisingly there are some absolute horror stories from there with drink. So when I’m waking up on a mate’s sofa Sunday morning as we’ve decided to drink whisky and watch the ‘03 World Cup final/‘05 Ashes back on youtube after the clubhouse has closed, she’s reminded of people picked out of the Clyde, bankruptcies and parallel lives.
I owe it to her to sort this out and am attempting to start now.
My aim is to reset my relationship with drink. I enjoy a pint or a glass of wine but would like a couple to genuinely mean that, with a rare exception. My aim is to not have a drink until I go to Twickenham in the autumn, there’s zero danger of me not drinking there but my hope is that managing other social events and a holiday without alcohol in the mean time will allow me to not give up but be able to genuinely drink in moderation. Maybe, as a few have alluded to on here, that will prove a forlorn hope.
