From Beer and Binges to Just Being
Today I am grateful for sweat and endorphins to help center my mind and body to start my day. I am also grateful for some morning conversation with my husband Darcy.
Beer. It was my drink of choice. Cheap for a high school and then college student. I pretty much would drink anything with alcohol in it, but beer was the most readily available so it was my go-to. It also fit the way I liked to drink. Once I started, it was continuous and in significant quantities. That wouldn't have gone well with more highly concentrated alcoholic beverages.
Pause. Plenty of gratitude that I didn't succumb to alcohol poisoning. There were certainly times I could have.
Now, in today's culture, there is such a trend of microbreweries. The community we live in has a new brewery downtown. Even in the rural area where I grew up, Winneshiek County, Iowa, there are three breweries. One is already internationally known.
Part of me is a bit jealous of this and the popularity of trying all these brews. But they don’t typically drink at these breweries like I would drink. They encourage tasting and enjoying the complete experience. Play some trivia. Eat some food. Share some conversation.
I was about the drinking and binging. My behavior back then would be unwelcome in these breweries now. So the jealousy passes and I partake of some root beer or brewed tea.
Binge drinking is defined as consuming 4-5 drinks in a two-hour period. By this definition, most of my drinking was binge drinking. Drink to get drunk. Or else, why bother?
Beer and binging, and the disease of alcoholism, took me down a painful and dangerous path. Recovery has brought me to new places I never could have dreamed possible. Namely, this place I reside in at least some of the time. This place of being comfortable in my own skin. Just being.
Today's "Word for the Day" at gratefulness.org seems fitting and is from one of my favorite word guys--Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Beer. It was my drink of choice. Cheap for a high school and then college student. I pretty much would drink anything with alcohol in it, but beer was the most readily available so it was my go-to. It also fit the way I liked to drink. Once I started, it was continuous and in significant quantities. That wouldn't have gone well with more highly concentrated alcoholic beverages.
Pause. Plenty of gratitude that I didn't succumb to alcohol poisoning. There were certainly times I could have.
Now, in today's culture, there is such a trend of microbreweries. The community we live in has a new brewery downtown. Even in the rural area where I grew up, Winneshiek County, Iowa, there are three breweries. One is already internationally known.
Part of me is a bit jealous of this and the popularity of trying all these brews. But they don’t typically drink at these breweries like I would drink. They encourage tasting and enjoying the complete experience. Play some trivia. Eat some food. Share some conversation.
I was about the drinking and binging. My behavior back then would be unwelcome in these breweries now. So the jealousy passes and I partake of some root beer or brewed tea.
Binge drinking is defined as consuming 4-5 drinks in a two-hour period. By this definition, most of my drinking was binge drinking. Drink to get drunk. Or else, why bother?
Beer and binging, and the disease of alcoholism, took me down a painful and dangerous path. Recovery has brought me to new places I never could have dreamed possible. Namely, this place I reside in at least some of the time. This place of being comfortable in my own skin. Just being.
Today's "Word for the Day" at gratefulness.org seems fitting and is from one of my favorite word guys--Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"Be silly. Be honest. Be kind."
I may have had some silly moments in my drunken state, but either too much or not enough honesty, and certainly not much kindness toward myself, and eventually not toward those around me either.
You can have your microbrewery beers. I'll take sobriety and recovery today. Just being beats just being drunk.
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