Before I finish the first sentence of this blog, I want to point out that this is not being written to persuade you to stop drinking. This is being written for the sake of understanding how not drinking has changed the way that my life works. It's not going to be a list of why you should stop drinking, or anecdotes about crazy nights of drinking. It's a self reflective look at how I used to live versus how I currently live. You may relate to something on here and find a reason to cut back on your boozing or stop all together, but just know, that's not why I'm doing this! Now stop making this about you and listen to what I have to say!
- I actually follow through on shit.
If you're like me. Following through on stuff is hard as hell. You get excited about something, learn everything you can about it, do it for a month, and then get burnt out on it. This issue is only exacerbated when you are hungover every weekend, and you don't want to get out of bed. I won't go into too much detail, but I will tell you that I have tried to start podcasts before. Looking back at all the hour long episodes, I realized that I recorded easily 30-40 hours of unusable material. It was unreleasable because I would derail every episode that I drank on, and I insisted on drinking on nearly every episode. Also, it would take weeks to actually edit a single episode because every weekend I was hungover, and when you're hung over, the last thing you want to do is stare at a computer screen for a few hours. Now I put out two episodes a week. Little to no editing required. Cowabunga.
- I have more money.
I don't know about you but being in your 20's sucks financially. Most people have a shit ton of student debt, credit card debt, car payments, and a bunch of bullshit. Once you add your alcohol bills on top of that, you have no disposable income. It all comes down to something I saw on the facebooks, There was a meme going around "I don't have enough money to go on vacation, so I'll just drink until I don't know where I am." I thought this was funny as hell during the time I was drinking; Now when I look at it, I think: "Well, if you didn't go out to a bar every weekend and spend $150, you would have enough money after one month to go on a road trip to another California, or buy a new gaming console, or start saving for retirement!" All I'm saying is now that I don't spend all my disposable income getting trashed, I have money to go do shit that I actually enjoy. Like buy comics, board games, go to the movies, you know...fun stuff.
- I don't do ridiculous things anymore.
Okay. Here's where I go back on my word and tell some drunk stories. There was one time that I thought it would be fun to sleep on a park bench, so I walked over to a park and took a nice nap, in a park, at 2 am. Another time I thought it would be fun to camp on my apartment roof, so I climbed on top of the roof and slept there. Another time, on a dare, while in my boxers, I invited a group of frat dudes to a slumber party as I held a bat in case they wanted to fight. I am sure you want to hear more about all these stories, but I'll save that for the podcast. But anyways, do you see what I mean? That shit is stupid, and all of those things could have ended really badly for me. I am just happy that I don't have the urge to go hiking up a flooded wash in Arizona at 4 am pretending it's the zombie apocalypse anymore...actually i take that back. That was tight as hell.
I think you get the point...I mean, I think I get the point. I'm happier not drinking, and I have accomplished more in the last 4 months than I did the last 2 years of my life. I could go into a lot more detail about the stories and the justification I had during that time in my life, but fuck that. I want to watch the next episode of Community so I'm going to end this diatribe here.
If you have similar stories, feel free to share them in the comments and we can exchange virtual high-fives!
