Drinking Out Loud!

 Well, that's January done and dusted-or, as it has come to be known within some orders of British society, Dry January. For those of you not in the know, Dry January is an initiative that has been thought up to make us re-evaluate our relationship with alcohol by challenging us to give up the stuff for an entire month. Presumably, the hope is that if we manage to make it through to February without touching a drop of alcohol, we will realise that we don't need it to have a good time and will be much more inclined to drink in moderation in future. This may sound like it should be a fairly obvious and somewhat common way of thinking but let me tell you, it appears to be much less obvious and common than you would want to think.

As someone who has a very low tolerance for alcohol and by that I mean that it only takes a tiny amount of the stuff to make me ill, I am fed up of constantly having to justify my lack of indulgence to other people. I get that people are trying to make sure that I have a good time by insisting that I drink as much as them. I also understand that some of the best stories involve alcohol fuelled debauchery and that if you do not drink much you can be perceived as something of a geek. Look, I grew up in a provincial northern town where there was little more to do than drink, take drugs and have sex but I still resent the notion that it is not possible to have a good time without drinking enough to cause you to barf up your entire digestive system. I have battled against this assumption ever since I was old enough to go go out drinking and it is getting a little bit annoying. Like many other moderate drinkers, I feel resentful of the constant need to explain why my orange juice doesn't contain vodka or why I'm nipping off home early. Why must non-drinkers always have to state “not for me because I'm driving/ on medication/ tired/ working the next day” as though drinking to excess is somehow part of your day job that you're trying to shirk. By rights, we should just be able to say “no thanks” or “an orange juice for me please” without feeling the need to justify our choices all of the time. Come on guys, non-drinkers and moderate drinkers can be a laugh too (isn't it sad that I feel the need to point this out!), you don't have to constantly badger us to keep up pace with you if we can't/ don't want to. You must also stop assuming that we are not having fun just because we happen to be more sober than the rest of you. The chances are, we are sitting back and enjoying your garbled conversations and sordid confessions much more than you are. We will also enjoy repeating these back to you whilst showing you the grainy footage of your drunken antics whilst you're vomiting up your digestive system the following morning.

Suffice it to say that I didn't participate in Dry January because I didn't really see the point. I don't think that my relationship with alcohol needs re-evaluating. I do, however, think I need to learn how to upload video footage onto the likes of YouTube because this might just MIGHT persuade some of my clan to re-evaluate their relationship with alcohol.