To announce or not to announce? (by Pip Doyle)

If I decide to give up on cheese (perish the thought) do I announce it? Not really.

If decide to get a mortgage, yeah, you might kind of announce it.

If something seriously life-changing like having a baby or getting married, an official annoucement is usually expected.

But booze?

I’ll let you in on my secret. I’ve just started a new job this week & it’s kickass, I loved my first 5 days. Until today. It’s Friday, and you know what that means – Friday drinks.

But here’s the kicker – they don’t know me very well. They don’t know that Im a heavy bingey drinker. They don’t know that I use alcohol as a deserved pat on the back for a job well done for working so hard. I’ve earnt that binge. And Im known for it.

But not here. We were told that there was $200 behind the bar & to help ourselves to it. Without a word, I simply ordered a couple of diet cokes & a pint of half and half water & lemonade (my favourite non-alchy drink, sounds awful, but try it, subtle lemony bubbles with the actual quenching of water in a big pint with lots of ice).

Just as I thought, no one said anything about why I wasn’t drinking. Why would they? Im the newbie.

Tomorrow’s a different story. A Father’s Day thingo has be organised & I know Im seeing immediate family. Perhaps I’ll get away with it as it’s a morning get-together, but who knows, soon enough, someone’s going to find out that Im abstaining for a bit.

Mum’s reaction is going to be the most cringeworthy. While I appreciate a general curiosity, she’s going to over-react – in the most supportive way.

As soon as I say this I want to immediately retract it. She would want me to be successful with this, she would even make changes that would accommodate the ease of me doing this – such as breakfast get-togethers & the like. But that’s just it. Right there. While it’s her way of showing support & love, I feel like I’ve put everyone out, awkward, in my ‘not having fun’, no one can have fun.

I don’t want to give this an announcement. It’s just a simple decision. I don’t want to feel awkward & would be mortified if anyone was going to change their lives just to accommodate me – I’ve given up on the booze for a while, I don’t have leprosy. We can still all go to the pub.

I LIKE THIS ‘NO HANGOVER’ BUSINESS (By Sean tomalin

Of my HSM ‘yesses’, the one I have been focussed on so far is to read more and to learn more about myself.

‘Learn more about myself’

Interesting concept… How do I learn more about myself? Look to my past? I first thought that I have been doing too much of that lately, but I stumbled on this passage about happiness, written by Henrik Edburg.

‘Tomorrow isn’t here yet. Yesterday has passed. Now is the present moment. And all three of them are always the present moment when we are living in them.
So there is no real space where you and I can change or live in except the one you and me are in right now; And now; And now.
But still we insist on spending much time regretting yesterday, or fearing tomorrow. That’s normal. But it isn’t so useful.’

I realized that I haven’t been looking to the past, but dwelling on it. There is a big difference. I have been dwelling on the things that have gone wrong, the mistakes I have made and the turmoil that has ensued, and I have been getting caught up in that very turmoil, reliving the events over and over. What I should have been doing is assessing the situation from a different perspective and then learning from it. If there is something for me to take from it, take that and leave the rest behind; if there is no lesson I can learn from, leave the experience in the past, where it belongs.

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SNAKES AND LADDERS (introductory blog by Lou Vickers-Willis)

So it’s the First day of spring and the start of Prohibition in my life for 3 months. I am looking forward to challenge.

The biggest question I have right now is, does lemon lime and BITTERS, count as an alcoholic drink???

The next few months are going to be an interesting game of snakes and ladders, or at least that’s the way I am going to be tackling it. The YES’s will be the ladders, and the snakes, are the ones I will be avoiding. Alcohol in animal form. No roll of the dice though, my own choices and wanting to do my best will dictate how this will play out.

Drinking and I have not been friends in the past, and I know this isn’t about the past, but I need to explain why I don’t drink a lot already, as it has to be an aspect of moving forward. Sliding down the snake to when I was 20-21, and I was drinking every week-end, Friday, Saturday, and going to work hung over, or sometimes still drunk on Sunday. It got to the point that I would drink to numb the pain of any drama or stress in my life, and by the end of the night, I would be self harming in the toilet, not pretty, but the ugly scars of the past.

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There’s got to be an answer (By Brooke Pye)

So since starting my HSM I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading other people’s journeys to get a sense of how doing this has impacted other people. And by the way there are some pretty amazing writers on here!! I haven’t come across any other blogs specifically about what I want to discuss but I’m sure it’s probably here somewhere… So I apologise if I’m repeating someone else.

Last Saturday night I spent some time in the emergency ward at a hospital in the city. It wasn’t anything too serious but I still didn’t get out of there until a bit after 2am. We predicted it as we were walking out but 2am on a Saturday night made for a very busy emergency room. There were people with blood pouring out of their head, there was vomit on the floor, and girls in their tiny dresses with 50-inch heels were messy… It was a pretty gross sight. I left the emergency room and waited outside while my boyfriend picked up the car and just couldn’t stop thinking about those people I had just seen. I would put my life savings (which isn’t that much) on the bet that none of those people went out that night planning on putting themselves in emergency. I would bet that none of them planned on waking up Sunday completely hung-over. It saddens me a bit to think that most of them probably won’t learn from Saturday night and will instead joke about it with their friends as soon as the hangover wears off.

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HELLO SUNDAY MORNING (PETE MERCURIO)

Hello Sunday Morning,

Well, I never thought I would become involved in one of Chris’ many projects but especially this one. After many discussions with Chris after midnight in St Kilda – while sober – I have decided to try it out. Why not? I’m 24, studying a Master of Environment and have always resisted becoming super fit as a result of drinking.

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Headaches & Pockets (by Pip Doyle)

I have written, rewritten & re-rewritten this post. Then I figured, we have at least 3 months. Im not going to rush this.

Why am I doing this?

My stepdad put it pretty simply a few years ago, ‘you’ll wake up without a headache & money in your pocket’

I have two friends that don’t drink booze. One is kind of a ’straight-edge’ type & the other has been sober for nearly a year. Im obsessed with thier rationale. They  just stopped. Just like that.

Suddenly, it happened to me. I want to stop the boozing. Among many, many other reasons & rationales, I want to wake up without a headache & have money in my pocket.

The End of the Beginning (by Alex Jones)

I have decided to finish my Hello Sunday Morning a week early. My plans have changed quite a lot recently and I am now overseas while I come to the end of my journey. To mark the occasion I feel I needed some kind of significant event, a bookmark in my HSM and life timeline, a reward for hard work.

The perfect event for this bookmark was my cousin’s wedding in Belgium. I hopped on the plane on the 17^th of August to travel with my family through France, Belgium and Great Britain.

This sign towards one of Paris' top tourist spots, looks like it was written on a piece of cardboard with a Sharpie. Very French.

Geuze, can only be brewed in a specific region of Belgium where the yeast is naturally occurring in the air, delicious.

The not so perfect hotel

I have managed to say no to the famous French wine and no to vast range of Belgium beers for several days, but I have made the decision that I will finish my challenge on the 20^th of August, the day before the wedding and approximately 1 week before the end of my 3 month period.

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Hello weekend (by Clare Wade)

I planned to start my 3 month HSM by jumping right in, scheduling 4 parties in my first weekend.  I liked the idea of facing my challenge and finding out straight away what I was in for.  Alas, the world had other ideas for me…boycotting the parties for vitamin c and early nights trying to get my voice and health back.  Alcohol was the LAST thing on my mind.  Instead of shotting vodka or sambuca I was shotting wheatgrass, with my chaser of choice, camomile tea.

Moving on from my first week (yeah I missed my post that week guys)…

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Goodbye Sunday Morning… (by Pete Furst)

It’s my sad duty to let you all  know that I fell off the wagon. I  wasn’t sure if I should admit it or  not, but I figure my conscience  will last with me much longer  than your disappointment. Who  knew that going from drinking  everyday to not drinking at all  would be so hard? I expected a  challenge but it goes beyond that.  You need to develop whole new  ways of socialising, relieving  stress, enjoying meals,  everything. My advice to anyone  about to start HSM would be to  go a couple of weeks just drinking once a week to prepare yourself for the three month marathon. I’m now going to start again at the beginning, and I know it’s going to be tough again.

BORDERS UP! (By Jason Rohloff)

Just a quick post today, my contribution to the HSM Book Club.  A journalist by the name of Vitali Vitaliev wrote a book about ten years ago called “Borders Up!: Eastern Europe Through the Bottom of a Glass”.  In his book Vitaliev drinks his way through Eastern Europe, recounting stories from his youth and the drinking culture he grew up in during communist rule.  It’s a desperate tale, at one point he tells of a friend who drank nail polish remover in an effort to get drunk.  The postscript is that he actually gives up alcohol at the end of his trip.

If you’re interested in glimpsing an excessive drinking culture beyond our own this is well worth a read, his comments about Australians at Octoberfest are particularly amusing, as is his optimism about there always being another eighteen drops in the bottom of an empty vodka bottle.