Have you seen the movie The Wolf of Wallstreet?

There is a great scene in the movie, where the Belfort character is sitting by the pool, fresh as a daisy, and his buddy asks him how his sobriety is going.  He answers, “Fucking sucks.  It’s so boring I wanna’ kill myself…”

That, my friends, is the crux of the matter.

Although the ghastly, inebriated scenes depicted in the movie should be repulsive and cautionary (the wrecked car, the public masturbation, the police and FBI run-ins), there is a guilty pleasure in watching what happens when someone has had too much of a good thing.  I’ll say it – the most compelling stories are drinking stories.

I have been sober for nine months now, and to tell the truth, sobriety is kind of boring.  I quit drinking because I was beginning to see the tell-tale ravages of thirty years of overindulgence, and I’m vain.  I also quit drinking because I finally realized that like the old Roberta Flack song, it was Killing Me Softly.

Mind you, everyone I know drinks.  A lot.  My ex-husband is English and those people drink gallons of tepid beer at pub lunch, and go off to drive postal vans and school busses.  I lived in the Bahamas for eight years and they call booze in the morning: Bahamian breakfast.  My son Jonathan is a college student…

Suffice to say, even though I’m sober, I have plenty of fodder for some good drinking stories.  I also have some things to say about Barbie dolls, hiking, non-alcoholic drink recipes, slobbering dogs, hair extensions, movies and art, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Out Islands of the Bahamas, and most of all – how I’m staying temperate in a tipsy world.

Wish me luck, people.

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No woman is an island…

 

Today I’m not drinking because: although I often feel like it, I’m not alone (tell me, right out of the gate, I’m not sounding like one of those lame, obvious Pinspirations…)

How come you’re not drinking?