Quote Originally Posted by miles View Post
I have been imbibing alcohol for for about 14 years. Typically once a week, sometimes more. I started drinking as a social thing with friends and we would get drunk together. Later we found we could get served in pubs and would then drink there. This behaviour continued through university and into my early years in Korea when I was a very social being. Socially I began to calm down as I met my future wife. The transient nature of friendship here and one year contracts mean that whenever you make a friend it is time for them to go home, so in the end you care less about making new friends. My very best friends now live in different countries where they too have developed lives somewhat like my own.

After marriage I would still venture out for a beer every few weeks with other friends like me who had become settled down and were less inclined to the newbie party lifestyle, but more and more I found myself enjoying a beer at home, listening to music and just posting some random stuff on here. Same old habits, but just less physical company. Usually once a week, sometimes I would go mad and do it twice, but that was dangerous as that kind of behaviour was frowned upon.

My relationship with alcohol is a strange one. If I do drink I tend to drink too much and sometimes in the recent past, I have decided to start drinking, ignoring the frowns of the wife and once I have started realise that I have no idea why I am drinking. There is no sense of fun. It is lamost like a ritual that I have forced myself to go through until the bitter end. And then of course you wake up with the hangover and the wasted day where you are hardly able to do anything.

It came to a point last tuesday night where I slipped into the routine. The wife was back in the other city finishing her work and I was alone at home with no class until 1 the next afternoon...what was a man to do? Drive to the supermarket, buy some beer and then drink it! Ah what a splendid idea! And so that is what I did. I didn't drink a tremendous lot at about 7 pints, but I was drinking it and there was no enjoyment, no sense of satisfaction. Just a case of "let's drink this before it gets too late and you wake up too late for some lunch". So, I drank it and then I woke up at around 10 and then went into work and did my classes. Nothing went wrong, but I felt like shit and I knew within myself that my teaching wasn't as good as it usually is. I got home and felt like a wreck. And it was at that point when I decided "I cannot do this anymore".

I have said this to myself many times before, but usually disregard it within a week. I've had my teetotal wife say to me "Why do you drink?" and oftentimes I have been unable to come up with a valid reason. It isn't fun, doesn't taste particularly wonderful. Just maybe I am one of those people with a predisposition for alcohol, my father liked to drink and my grandfather before him did too. My wifes father also died after rotting himself with soju. I have all the danger signs around me and my wife gets it, she doesn't drink and there is me ignoring everything and pretending I am immortal.

Well, no more. I am resolute. Alcohol means dead time and headaches. Alcohol is a waste of life and it really is time to cut it dead. I don't even want one glass of wine with dinner because I will want to polish off the bottle and then open another. It is a pointless habit and the only way to treat alcohol is to avoid it completely. If that means being one of these teetotal types counting the days since his last drink then so be it. I don't want to drink anymore.
And that is the reason why I have never taken an keen interest in beer/alcohol at all. I just never liked the taste and don't find it particularly fun. In the past ten years I've taken maybe 5 or 6 sips of alcohol total and it was usually champagne at weddings. The only time I've actually drank was probably my 1st year in college and drank a few beers for the party and thought, "Is this it?" So from there I just thought drinking was just overrated. I guess it just wasn't my thing. I mean if I want to get a buzz, I'll just smoke some weed.