It's 1:30am.  I just got home from a night out.  I went to see some bands.  As I was leaving The Troubadour in The Valley it was raining pretty heavily.  There were massive cab lines everywhere.  At that point I realised something strikingly obvious: one of the biggest benefits of not drinking is that you can drive home; no waiting in cab lines, no $30 cab fares, no fucking around.  It was at that point also that I realised the other benefits of being able to drive whenever you want.  It means you can go to 3 parties in a night if you want to.  It means you can give people lifts out.  It means you can give people lifts home.  It means you can get up and drive at 10am and not worry about blowing over .05. So here I am thinking about all the stuff that's cool about driving all the time and then something strange occurred to me.  When I decided to do this HSM thing you would naturally think that I was preventing myself from doing things, namely drinking.  You would think that by putting a ban on booze I would be limiting myself; limiting what I could do and all that.  What I've realised is that removing alcohol has done quite the opposite.  In fact, straight off the bat, I'm free to not drink.  Which sounds a little weird because of course we're always free to not drink.  But are we really?  All the social pressure... I'd say we're not really.  So now that I'm free to not drink I'm also free to do a whole lot of other things.  I'm free to drive out, to drive home, to drive between parties.  I'm free to get up in the morning at 6am after going out the night and not feel like dog shit.  I'm liberated from being doomed to spend $100 on a night out.  I'm able to have a conversation with someone at 2am and remember every word.  I'm able to write a blog post at 1.45am and have it make sense.  I'd never thought of it like this before, but by not drinking I've afforded myself all sorts of liberties that hadn't even crossed my mind. On that point I was talking to my band mates today about how I wasn't finding it awkward anymore to not have a drink in my hand when I'm out.  One of them said that it must be kind of like quitting smoking when you finally get used to not having to do the hand to mouth action.  I'd never thought of getting off alcohol like quitting smoking.  I'm no alcoholic and most people aren't.  But I'd say quite confidently that most of us have a dependence of sorts on alcohol.  A dependence to socialise, to celebrate, to mourn, to go a little wild. Here's a little thought: maybe Hello Sunday Morning is a bit like quitting alcohol.  Not for good, but quitting the dependence we have on it.  And you know what, after getting through three months and the initial withdrawal symptoms, I can tell you it's not even that hard!! I might go and raise a glass of water and toast to new found liberty!