Tired Sober…

I’m not tired of being sober. I am just tired. I was talking to Lisa last night over some sort of fried green tomato with indefinable bits of deliciousness on top at Medure, and I said to her, “When I was drinking I used to have more frenetic energy – sweeping the front porch at 4 a.m. Now I feel tired, like a deflated beach ball – all that potential, but no oomph.”

I wonder if my friends are sick of the subject of my sobriety? Here we are sharing our body weight in ridiculously amazing food and Lisa wants to talk about her Fitbit (nestled in her bra) and how it actually alerts her when she is heading for a diet fall (I’m sure it was sending “MAYDAY!!” messages during dinner). Which is a more interesting subject than sober living, because her Fitbit is kind of a nudge and it reminds her to eat a healthy breakfast and the worst thing a person can do for their diet is what we did yesterday – consume only coffee and sugarless gum all day, and then eat everything in sight at 7 at night.

But it’s true, I did have more energy when I was drinking (I’m sorry I’m like a dog with a sock on the subject…) and I miss it.

So I did what I always do – when I got home I Googled “Why did I have more energy when I was drinking than when I am sober?” and the best article ever came up – so good in fact I checked to make sure it wasn’t one of those Onion send-ups or a joke like the photograph of the dead Triceratops with the hunter that a bunch of people looked like idiots for posting, all mad about on Twitter…

Here’s what it said: A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation finds that heavy drinking boosts levels of acetate in the brain that translates into extra energy for the body, and may help explain why kicking an addiction to alcohol is so difficult.

Yale University researcher Graeme Mason, the co-author of the study, looked at people who consumed at least eight drinks per week and found that they received more energy due to high levels of acetate in their bodies than those who drank more moderately.

Ah Ha!! I am tired for a reason. Read this article with a long title,: Bottoms Up! Heavy Alcohol Consumption Gives Brain Extra Dose of Energy! and weep, my sober friends.

And I promise to talk about more interesting things over dinner next time (although I do want to talk about acetate supplements…). You can invite me. And our cute waiter told us the thing that made the fried green tomatoes so insanely good was peanut sauce and chunks of lobster…