Is it ironic if your post on sobriety is repeatedly delayed due to drinking events? I say yes.

Despite it being 8 PM on a Friday, I am sober now, so let’s do this thing.

Back at the end of July my doctor asked me to take two weeks off from drinking in order to get some blood work done. I realized that it’d probably been ten years since I took that much time off, so I started to look forward to it. In fact, given the hangovers that some Marshall-s inflicted upon me, I was downright excited about it.

I was also curious to see how much weight I’d lose and how much money I’d save. (Spoilers: due to issues with scales, I don’t know, and due to forgetting to look at my bank account, I don’t know.)

Here’s what I did learn:

• Without a significant other or pets, it’s very easy to get quite bored. My usual solution of “go to a bar and read and be social” wasn’t quite as applicable.
• Not drinking wasn’t the annoying part. Not having the OPTION to drink was.
• Sparkling water + flavorings = fun.
• Related: I need a new SodaStream.
• Milkshakes have more calories than one beer and less than six. Just sayin’.

I’m really glad I did it and I think I’ll probably try to do this at least every six months or so. Even better, it helped me break some of the default habits and such that I had where I’d just grab a beer or something without thinking about it. For instance, coming home from a cookout last weekend, instead of grabbing more beer, I switched and drank water. That’s a much better habit to have.

(Of course, post-hiatus my drinking habit went: Passenger/Hogo night, day cookout for Dad’s birthday, evening cookout with brother and sister-in-law, American Cancer Society event at Passenger, company suite at a Nats game, fantasy football draft, fantasy football draft, and now tonight a birthday party at Hogo, UVA game watching tomorrow (and perhaps experimenting with hops infusions in liquor), day cookout on Sunday, more birthday shenanigans on Monday…my next hiatus can’t come soon enough!)