The sober days are over. Time to raise a glass (or bottle) again.

Ah, we never did tell you how  Micky’s sobriety challenge ended. That’s right it ended, since he came to a rational conclusion that it was actually not that hard not to drink, but only very, very boring. At the start of the fourth week of abstinence he decided that the upcoming Friday the streak would end. Here’s the third and final chapter of his challenge.

As I also stated in my first update it was actually a lot easier than I thought to keep total abstinence. Because for the record in 26 days I didn’t drunk a single drop of alcohol. This was the rule, no matter how many people said “a few beers wouldn’t matter”. It wasn’t really tough to say no at these moments. Sure when watching football with the lads it was weird to have juice, while they had beers, but my curiousity about how my body and mind worked was way stronger than my thirst for booze.

I have to say that during this period I learned a lot about myself. Mainly that I don’t feel I’m depending on alcohol mentally or physically at all. There was no time I was close to  cracking. But okay, what did I really do? Not even a month without alcohol, big fucking wow. I don’t want to make it sound like a huge achievement or something. But the fact that it was so easy to turn down many tempting offers to grab a drink was surprising to me. When I finally did, it was my own initiative since two friends came to check out my renovated place and well, can’t celebrate that with apple juice.

You know it’s time to start drinking again when you start making your own Christmas cards.

It sounds rather idiotic but during my short period of sobriety I accomplished a lot. It was an eye-opener how much free time I had left without drinking. The extra (recovery) hours of sleep I could now use to fix my home, overdue work, handmade Christmas cards (that’s right, not drinking turned me to crafts) and plenty of other stuff. I was actually so productive that many people asked me why I didn’t maintain this streak. Well, for the same reason that I don’t want to work in a Chinese iPad factory. Life is also about enjoying yourself.

But let’s throw the moralists a bone. Even after drinking again I still didn’t return to smoking. That was a bit tougher than expected. Way harder than the total abstinence before. But still I can say that for the last 37 days I haven’t had a single shot of nicotine. All together I can recommend this experiment to everyone for two reasons. I believe it’s important to get to know your own body and a period of abstinence taught me a lot about mine. Also when living a rock and roll lifestyle a major cleaning of the organs is probably a smart thing to do.

All together it was an interesting experiment, but it’s also good to be able to raise a glass again. So let’s do it: cheers guys, it’s good to be back!

Micky Bumbar

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Related posts:

Start of the sobriety challenge

First update: ‘I don’t have cancer, I’m staying abstinent’