So yes, I will be having a drink tomorrow night.  And with that then the ultimate question arises: where to from here?  What happens now?  Will Hello Sunday Morning have been a nice six months and that’s it, or will it be something I carry with me for quite a while to come?  I’m very much hoping for the latter and I guess it’s completely up to me.

I posted earlier about whether my HSM was a success.  I said that I’d started things that couldn’t be achieved in six months, things that are going to take a long time to get right.  Hello Sunday Morning was a training ground.  It was six months of deliberately abstaining from something so that I could get a kick start towards something greater.  As I’m writing this I sense an unmistakable similarity to the sort of words that get thrown around a lot at high school graduations.  Graduates set out with the highest of ambitions, naive as all hell and wanting to make something great out of their lives.  It turns out a lot end up pretty quickly forgetting about those lofty ideals they were so excited about and end up doing everything they set out not to do.  So how can I make this different?

To be honest I’m not entirely sure.  I don’t know how to foolproof against that happening.  Like I’ve said before the most important thing I’ve gained from this six month experience is perspective and a new frame of mind.  I think the only way for me to continue on from here is to remember to keep a completely open frame of mind towards everything and everyone.  I think that way, no matter whether I’m experiencing something for the 1st or 101st time there’s always room for new possibilities.

I’m excited for what’s to come.

Let’s start with alcohol and me.  First off, when I started HSM, I didn’t have an alcohol problem.  I wasn’t addicted to it, I wasn’t dependant on it.  I drank alcohol to be social.  I drank because everyone does.  I drank because it’s fun sometimes to get drunk.  I drank for the confidence it gave me and for its ability to let me switch off for a little while.  Before I stumbled across www.hellosundaymorning.com.au I hadn’t given any thought whatsoever to the role of alcohol in my life.  It was something that was there and I didn’t have a problem with it.

I’ve covered why I did HSM in previous posts so I won’t repeat myself.  But essentially after reading Chris’ posts about his year without alcohol I realised that alcohol was possibly preventing me from being a better, more fulfilled person.  Not because I was drinking it, but because I hadn’t spent enough time without it.

I, like most people I know, started drinking during early high school.  That’s probably a bad thing.  There’s a reason the legal drinking age is 18 or 21 or whatever it is wherever you are.  When you’re young you haven’t properly finished developing the skills you need to coexist with other humans.  Well, at least I hadn’t.  You throw alcohol into the mix and suddenly you don’t actually need to learn some things, alcohol takes care of those things for you.  Things like confidence, things like meaningful conversation.  I mean when you’re socialising, if you’re not blind drunk you have to fill in the time with something else, and that something else generally has to do with interacting with other people.  I definitely could have used some more time learning how to do that without relying on booze to help me.  Just for the record, me drinking early has absolutely zero to do with my parents.  They tried their darned best to keep it away from me.

When you’re young you don’t actually realise any of this.  At least I didn’t.  I drank because everyone did and because it was fun and it was just what you did, alright.

So let’s fast forward to 2010.  We’re hearing a lot in the media right now that alcohol and young people are just out of control.  Hell, if you believed everything you heard you would think that you’re likely to get stabbed and glassed in the face at the same time by just walking through The Valley on a Friday or Saturday night.  First off, no it’s not that bad.  But this is where the ugly side of drinking comes out to play.

I won’t talk too much about all the problems with binge drinking.  I think everyone’s probably sick to death of hearing about it all and sick of it being blown out of proportion.  So I’ll ask this question to myself: “Dave, do you think alcohol is bad?”  My answer: no.  I don’t even think the occasional binge drink is bad.  Hell, it’s fun.  I think the problem isn’t alcohol itself it’s how alcohol is used.  Oh big fucking revelation there David, as if that’s a new thought.  And it’s not.  So here’s where I’ll wrap up.

Alcohol has become so ingrained in Australian culture from an early age that people probably aren’t even aware of why they drink.  They just do.  That’s what it was like for me.  And we drink a lot and that’s the norm.  In fact if someone decides they don’t want to drink, they’re soft or they’re weird.  That’s not exactly a great culture.

So what do we do about it?  I don’t really know.  All I know is that I did HSM to get perspective on stuff.  To get perspective on life.  I had no idea why I drank.  In fact I didn’t drink for any real reason in particular at all.  I think the solution is to get people to figure out why they’re drinking and then to figure out whether there’s a better way.  I think that will change our culture bit by bit.  The solution isn’t closing clubs early or telling people not to drink.

So I’m not here to get on my high horse and shout that I’m a better person than you because I’ve been sober for six months.  I’m not a better person.  And I plan on having drinks on Friday night.  I might say, however, that if you’re reading this, I want you to know that getting perspective on alcohol has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done.

When I started, below are the things I said I wanted to do.  Achieving or not achieving these things doesn’t necessarily make it worth it or not worth it but it’s somewhere to start.

I want to meet new people and remember their names and who they are; oftentimes when I meet new people it’s out or at a gig.  Every time I’ve met someone new in the last six months I’ve obviously been sober.  I have definitely remembered more names and a bit about each person.  Sometimes the whole not drinking thing has really sparked personal conversation with people I don’t even know.

I want to see more sunrises; definitely did that one.

I want to open myself to love, hurt and everything that makes me human; out of all the things I wrote down this was going to be the hardest for me.  I think I’ve made a start on this one but there’s much to be done.

I want to be a better performer; being a better performer is all about confidence I think.  Confidence in who you are and in what you do.  A lot of my HSM has been about building confidence and I think I have made good headway.

I want to save more money and give some of it to people who need it more than me; I didn’t do so well on this one which was somewhat disappointing.  I did give to Haiti and a lot of my spare money was put into my band but considering how much money can be spent on booze I would have liked to have had some cash to show for giving it up.

I want to be more honest about what I think and what I feel; this was another hard one for me.  It’s not that I’m not an honest person it’s just that I find it very difficult to talk about myself, even to myself.  Part of my HSM was trying to find an identity for myself and grow the confidence to love that identity.  I’ve started but once again I’ve got a long way to go.

I want to write better songs about life; I’ve found myself listening to other people’s stories more than ever before.  That’s something I really wanted to focus on over the last six months.  Everyday stuff is not boring.  I think I’ve learned from my friends and the people around me and that’s given me new and different perspectives on life to put it into song.

I want to not worry about failing; I think I’ve better managed to put the worry about failing out of my head rather than not worrying.  I think to completely not worry about failing takes great strength and confidence in one’s self.  Maybe I’ve started to crawl on that front.

I want to be in uncomfortable situations and not have the excuse, “I’m just going to get another drink”; this is one where I definitely can tick the box.  I had heaps of these ones during the six months.

I want to not care what other people think about me; this is something I’m definitely learning to do.

I want to take more chances; done.

I want to enjoy the journey and not worry about the outcome; probably my favourite.  This is something I try to live by.

If these were the only guidelines to go by I don’t think I’d even scrape a pass mark.  But HSM for me was all about learning.  I wanted to take the challenge and see what I could learn from it.  Yes, I wanted to achieve things out of it.  But as the last six months have gone by I’ve found that it’s been less about succeeding and more about trying.  Less about solid outcomes and more about how you approach things.  More than anything though HSM was a start in trying to be better at a lot of things.  Basically it’s been about trying to be better at life.

I’m proud of myself for doing Hello Sunday Morning.  I’m proud because it was a difficult thing to do.  I’m proud because in doing it I challenged myself and the people around me to rethink our approach towards an ingrained part of our culture.  I think I sometimes could have done better.  I think I got comfortable and stopped challenging myself at times.  But HSM has given me an ability to approach things with an open frame of mind and a new perspective.  And that’s made it worth it.

The first weekend of my Hello Sunday Morning I decided to do whatever I could to make sure I wasn’t changing my social behaviour.  That first weekend I went to a couple of parties and a gig.  I stayed out ’til 3am.  I danced, I sang, I had a great time.  Sure there were moments where I wasn’t comfortable.  There were moments where I didn’t feel like I was fitting in.  There were moments where I wasn’t sure how to act or that I felt like I couldn’t join in with people who were drinking.  But that weekend I learned that a simple change of approach towards sobriety was the vital step to learning how to exist socially without alcohol.  The formula is simple – not drinking DOES NOT equal a quiet night.  I guess the rest of the experience from that moment on was learning how to make that feel natural and about unlearning a lot of conceptions that had been drilled into me since high school.

So when I started six months ago, what in my life did change?  I’ve read some other people’s blogs where they found that they couldn’t hang out with the people they used to hang out with before.  I have to say that this wasn’t the case for me at all.  Last weekend I went on a wine tasting tour with about 30 guys and girls who I’ve been friends with since old high school days.  We camped at a mate’s winery and took a bus around to a whole bunch of other wineries, tasting wine, eating and having a grand old time.  The only difference for me was that I didn’t taste any wine.  The party continued late into the couple of nights we were out there.  Everyone who was there knew I wasn’t drinking and everyone was cool with it.  These are the same people I have enjoyed spending time with for about 10 years.  Experiences like that were a great affirmation to me that I have a wonderful group of friends with whom I share real lasting relationships with.  I’ve made new friends in my period of not drinking as well.  People who couldn’t give a shit whether I was drinking or not as well.  A lot of the time people haven’t even been aware that I wasn’t drinking, the fact only becoming obvious when I’ve offered to drive everyone home.

But surely there are things you’ve missed not drinking, right?  Of course being sober makes you feel a little on the outer sometimes.  At 3am in the morning when everyone around you is paralytic it starts to become difficult to communicate with them.  But that’s only when everyone is paralytic.  Of course it’s more difficult to amp up for something when you’re not feeling like it, and of course sometimes you just can’t bring yourself to amp up at all.  Shit, maybe in those situations you’re just better off having a night in anyway.  I have sometimes felt the drain of getting all my energy internally, without any aid from alcohol.  But that’s part of the learning process.

Here’s the thing though.  Hello Sunday Morning was never about giving up alcohol for good.  Sure by not drinking I haven’t had those ridiculously loose nights where I’ve gone a bit crazy and woken up the next day to hilarious stories about what I did the night before.  But I’m sure I’ll have some of those in the future.  I’ve said before that this whole experience has been about personal growth and about getting perspective on alcohol.  But I’ll speak later about my thoughts on alcohol and where to from here in my next few posts.

When I first started HSM the hardest part of not drinking was being uncomfortable – feeling awkward being out and not having a drink in my hand; feeling self-conscious being sober amidst a slew of drunk people; feeling disconnected from people come 11pm because I wasn’t drunk and they were; feeling like I was being judged by other people.

Mid-way through the hardest part was missing the social aspect of drinking.  And I don’t mean get drunk social aspect, I mean catching up with someone for a beer social aspect.  Like when my best friend was in town for the first time in ages and wanted to catch up for a drink; like when I met someone for the first time and had to turn down their kind offer to buy me a drink; like when someone says they feel a bit weird talking to me because I’m sober and they’re drunk.

Towards the end I must admit the hard bit has been missing the “let go” factor that drinking can give you.  Sometimes it’s great to reach the end of the week and have quite a few drinks and go a bit stupid.  While over the course of HSM I’ve gone out and had some of the best nights on record, sometimes I have found it difficult to get into the head space to have a wild night out when I’ve had a shit week or I’ve been feeling down.  I know that sounds like a massive failure right there but seriously, honestly, I have occasionally wanted to go, “Fuck it, let’s get drunk”.

All of these “hardships” I’ve been able to overcome with a bit of willpower.  In the end the way I’ve felt or the way I’ve perceived things has had everything to do with my frame of mind.  I’ve just had to make the effort to get into the right frame of mind and not rely on alcohol to do it for me.  So when people say, “I wouldn’t be able to do that”, I can’t help but think “why?”  Is alcohol really so important to our lives that we’d be unable to function for six months without it?  Obviously the answer is no.  What people probably really mean is, “I don’t really want to do that” which is altogether different.  Some people have applauded me like I’m doing something quite extraordinary by not drinking for six months.  I think that says a lot about how entrenched in our culture alcohol is.  I don’t think what I’ve done is extraordinary by any stretch of the imagination.  If anything it has given me a lot of perspective around that very concept; what really “can’t” be done and what I simply don’t want to do.

So how hard has it really been?  The last six months for me have definitely had their challenges and hurdles and pitfalls, but there are certainly more difficult things out there to be tackled.  If you’re thinking about taking the plunge, just do it.  I’ve found that things seem a lot easier than you think once you’ve started.

So what drew me into the project?  I can remember following a link to the website and reading a couple of Chris’ posts (it was only him blogging back then).  I got a little bit interested and then accidentally found myself spending the next few hours reading pretty much every single post.  That was approximately 10 months worth of blog posts.

The thing that sparked my attention was that the more I read the more complicated the project became.  On the surface it looked like one guy quitting drinking for a year.  You might hear about that and think, “Okay, good on ya mate, but why would you do that and what’s the point exactly?”  But the more I read the clearer it became that alcohol was the catalyst to start a conversation about personal growth.  Drinking alcohol just happened to be one activity that pretty much everyone alive took part in and also one activity that is inextricably entwined in pretty much everyone’s social lives, particularly in Australia.  So it got me thinking; exactly how hard would it be to not drink for that long, and what would I learn through the process?  Was I reliant on alcohol?  I don’t really know what else I was thinking at the time.  All I knew was that for some reason I needed to find out more.  So I shot an email to Chris (a guy I knew only from reading his blog) and met up for a coffee.  He managed to convince me to start a six month HSM and before I’d really thought too much further about it I had publicly committed to not touch a drop of alcohol for six months.  Hello Sunday Morning.

If you want to read my first post you can see first hand my super keen, altruistic goals for the six months that lay ahead of me.  Reading them back now they seem like very awesome things to try to achieve.  Did I achieve them?  That’s the topic of another post.  Patience avid reader.

So I’ve signed up for this HSM thing, I’m a little nervous about the whole project and straight off the bat I get slammed by a few people for signing up.

Here’s a couple of quotes straight off my Facebook wall by two very close friends of mine when I posted about starting HSM:

“Butler, the thing with this campaign is that you need to actually drink alcohol in the first place in order to claim that you are going to stop. This is a problem for you.
I salute the cause, and encourage you to continue your love affair with diet pink fanta – especially on Saturday nights when everyone else is on the amber nectar – but are your fellow bloggers aware that you are a fraud?”

“What kinda rock star are you?….pitiful butler, pitiful”

There were more but this kind of sums it up.  The first wave of attack was that I was soft.  The second wave was that I didn’t get shitfaced every second night of the week and so I was a fraud for getting involved in something like HSM.

As you can imagine these words of affirmation definitely helped me reconcile my decision to get off the booze for six months (if I was speaking this I would have added sarcastic inflection to this sentence).  But I held strong and tried to explain to people exactly what HSM was all about.  Well what I thought it was about anyway.  Over six months I have had many many of these conversations and it has been extremely interesting to see what people think and have to say about it.  One thing’s for sure, people are at the very least intrigued as to why someone would stop drinking for six months if it’s not a cash thing or a fitness thing.  I considered taking the easy option and saying, “I’m trying to get marathon runner fit at the moment” but never did.  I’m glad I never did.  I’ve had some really fruitful conversations as a result of talking out the reasons behind HSM.

So that’s how I started.  “Why is it you started again?” I hear you asking.  And I’ve had that a lot as well.  I’ve always been a little cautious about how much personal information I should post in an open internet forum.  Sometimes when blogging you forget that it is a journal but at the same time it’s not.  So to answer that question I’ll say that when I came across Hello Sunday Morning I’d reached a point in my life where I’d lost a lot of confidence.  I never had a lot of confidence to begin with so I was reading pretty low on the confidence scale.  I felt like somewhere along the way I’d lost feeling like I had an identity I could easily relate to.  I felt like somewhere along the way I’d lost some self worth.  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t unhappy, but somewhere, something had gone wrong and I wasn’t the person I used to be, or wanted to be, anymore.  HSM was a chance to challenge every comfort zone in my life that I’d fallen into by default.  It was about learning to be better at being a happy, fulfilled human being.

My last HSM blog post was sometime in February.  3 months ago!  When I sat down here and worked out that I hadn’t posted anything for 3 months, I felt a little lazy, but to be honest I just didn’t feel like blogging anything at the time.  I was a little tired of analysing every day and night in terms of how it related to alcohol.  Instead I just wanted to live without alcohol and enjoy it and not worry about thinking about it.  So for the second half of my HSM, that’s what I’ve done.

So I’ve got one week left and before I sign off on this wild adventure that’s been Hello Sunday Morning I thought I’d reflect on the whole experience and post a series of blogs until I’ve got nothing left to say.  I think that’s the best way for me to finish.

I will post every day until my HSM is finished.

One of the things I have enjoyed most about the Hello Sunday Morning blog is reading other people’s thoughts on life.  I’ve enjoyed reading about their personal struggles, their triumphs, things they’ve learned.  All in all it’s adding up to a wealth of insight into existing.  And like I said before, it’s not stuff you necessarily talk about everyday over a drink.

This might be pretty obvious but it made me realise just how much I can learn from the people around me.  I mean I’ve always known that but when I’d previously thought about learning from other people I kind of automatically thought about learning wisdom from my old man or a teacher.  It didn’t instinctively occur to me just how much I can learn from my very closest of friends, and people who are yet to be friends.

Last year I met (or in a couple of instances got to know a lot better) a few people who I’m now really good friends with.  In being more aware of and receptive and connected with them I learned something different about life from each of them.

From one I learned that you should never let yourself become a victim of circumstance.  It doesn’t matter what has happened in your life, if you’re not happy you can do something about it.  For example moving to a completely different city where you know no one, don’t have a job or a place to live and making a go of getting happy again.

From another I learned about throwing yourself open to loving someone, despite how scary and full of unknowns that can be.

And from another I learned that confidence (as opposed to arrogance) has nothing to do with not being frightened of things.  Instead it’s about shelving those fears and having respect for yourself and what you believe in.

These people didn’t one day just come out and tell me this stuff.  Instead they told me about their lives and I watched and listened.  Basically, they just told me part of their story.

One of the things I said I wanted to do when I started Hello Sunday Morning was to meet new people and remember their names and who they are.  I’m going to add to that.  I want to hear their story and I want to learn from it.

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!

I think that music has taught me a great deal about living.  Great music, great performances, are when it’s genuine, honest.  Excitement is there when it’s spontaneous.  I think the same can be said for life.

I must admit, I am beginning to find Hello Sunday Morning very challenging.  It’s been nearly seven weeks since I started and since then there have been numerous Christmas parties and housewarmings, I went on tour with my band, and of course there has been Christmas time itself.  It’s been hard because, honestly, sometimes I have really wanted to drink, get drunk actually.  Like when I was on tour and we finished a great show, wanted to celebrate, had seven hours to kill before our next flight and didn’t plan on paying for accommodation that night.  Another time it pained me to turn down just one drink of ludicrously expensive Champagne at Christmas time.  I mean how often do you get offered that stuff for free?  Another one was catching up with a really good mate who lives out of town and not being able to share a beer.

Those things have been difficult but the one thing that has made it most difficult is constantly having to explain to other people why I’m not drinking.  It’s not exactly a short story and trying to make it short doesn’t do justice to what Chris created when he started HSM.  I have tried quite a number of times to dodge the question but, infuriatingly, people are incredibly curious as to why someone would stop drinking.  The most frequently posited explanation being that I must have recently had a really bad drinking experience.  In drinking environments I’ve found it somewhat difficult to try to explain to someone what I wrote in my first post.  Sometimes I haven’t really wanted to speak about myself so personally to someone I only just met.

I think part of people’s curiosity is because when you remove drinking from the equation, particularly with people you don’t know, and particularly in a drinking environment, you instantly remove at least one thing they probably assumed you would share in common.  I’ve noticed that there is a real sense of camaraderie when people drink together.  Even more so when people get drunk together.  I think it’s because drinking immediately establishes common ground.  If you meet someone for the first time you might know absolutely nothing about that person but when you say “Can I get you a drink?” and they reply, “Yes”, then straightaway you share something in common.  I think maybe getting drunk together enforces that because then you’ve had a readily identifiable common experience.  It doesn’t really matter whether or not you have anything else in common.  I’ll admit that not long before starting HSM I became really good mates with someone after sharing a night on the piss.  Would we have become close mates without getting smashed?  I don’t know.

Here’s where I think this is good.  Two people might think they have absolutely nothing in common.  But they get smashed and have a good night out.  They find they have a lot in common.  A great friendship is forged and that’s great.  Here’s where it’s bad.  Two people don’t have anything in common.  They get smashed and have a great night out.  Their friendship is based on nothing but getting drunk together.  They have to get drunk every weekend.

I hope I’m not speculating too much here or over analysing things.  But I’ve found that when I’ve tried to talk to people about HSM, oftentimes people don’t understand, or can’t understand, or don’t want to understand why I’m not drinking right now.  I’m struggling to explain that this is not just about abstaining from alcohol, it’s about personal growth.  And I’m not trying to preach to them or convert them to this project or anything like that.  What I’m saying is that I’m merely finding it difficult to be frequently misunderstood.  I’m finding it difficult to not have drinking in common with them.

I hope there’s some clarity in what I’ve just written.  Like I said at the start I’ve postponed writing because I haven’t been sure of what I meant to say.  I’m starting to think that Hello Sunday Morning is even more important than I thought it was when I signed up.  The fact that I’ve found the stuff I’ve just written about difficult is part of the reason I did sign up.  I need to get better at this.

I feel like I’ve just gotten really heavy.  So to lighten up, has anyone else noticed that the names of all the HSM bloggers start with A, B, C and D only?  Is that weird?

Another thing is that while I was complaining about not being able to drink on tour I forgot to mention that I had an amazing time.  It’s great to be around people whom you don’t need to get drunk with, even when they might be.  Here’s a video of it – http://vimeo.com/8309364.

This was going to be the first night out where I was going to be around a lot of people I didn’t really know.  And I was dreading the thought of having to explain why I wasn’t drinking again and again to people who didn’t know me.  Did I mention there was free booze?  But I convinced myself to stop being soft and I headed out.  I’m really glad I did.  I had a great time and met new people and got to know people better whom I’d already met.  I made a fool of myself dancing to lame songs that always end up getting played at functions like this towards the end of the night.  It was fun.  Anyway, there were a couple of things about the night that made me think, and I wanted to share them.

At the end of the night when I was standing with a good mate waiting for some other friends, a girl came up and started chatting to us.  It took all of five seconds for me to realise that she was extremely drunk and about ten seconds for me to guess that I wasn’t going to enjoy talking to this person.  I can’t remember exactly when, but pretty early on she asked us if we were gay.  Fair enough question I guess.  No big deal.  When we said “no” she then said that my mate looked gay.  She then proceeded to tell him how he could look more “straight”, one of the ways being to pop his collar up.  It quickly started to become abundantly clear that she was using the word gay or variations of it in a way that was supposed to be insulting and that started to really piss me off.  Not because I find it offensive to be called gay or asked if I’m gay but because she obviously thought that my mate and I should.  How ignorant and intolerant can someone possibly be?  When she started saying things such as “gay homo” and using four letter words starting with s, f, and c in combination I considered asking her whether she realised what she was saying was tautological, but decided to save my breath for someone who would actually understand that word.  I was so angry that people like this still exist.

It occurred to me that she probably wouldn’t be saying this stuff to me if she wasn’t drunk.  It also occurred to me that if she were a guy, there were the makings of a fight brewing right there.  And that made me think about all this media coverage recently about alcohol fuelled violence.  Yes, some people get violent when they drink.  Most people don’t.  Is it really alcohol that’s the problem here or is it that some people are just as intolerant and ignorant as the girl I unfortunately had this conversation with last night?  There are bigger issues at play here.  People choose their behaviour.

Anyway, enough about that.  One other thing came to my attention last night.  It’s an obvious one and one that I’d already known.  When we drink, we say what we mean and what we’re feeling without really thinking about it.  We’re more honest.  Sometimes this is a bad thing.  Sometimes we say stuff to people we don’t know that well and we regret it.  We say stuff that we just need to get off our chests and we say it at the wrong times.  But sometimes it’s really good.  Sometimes we say what we mean to people who mean a lot to us when we didn’t have the courage to say it when we’re sober.  We shouldn’t need alcohol to be like that.  That’s one of the things I said I wanted to learn how to do during Hello Sunday Morning.  I’m trying my best.

When the first Friday afternoon came around and my boss was handing out beers before we’d even finished work, it occurred to me that I was thankful I had Hello Sunday Morning as the support network behind why I wasn’t drinking.  I’ve never considered myself someone who has to follow the herd and who easily submits to pressure from others, but when it comes to drinking alcohol, now that I think about it, oftentimes I’ve definitely had drinks because it was expected of me, not because I really wanted to.  The amount of pressure that is applied to young people to drink from friends, coworkers, teammates, acquaintances, you name it, is enormous.  Most of the time it’s not meant to be malicious pressure or ill intended, but there is the pressure there.  I’ll a little ashamedly say that I probably wouldn’t be able to go six months without drinking all by myself without a support base such as Hello Sunday Morning.  I think it takes an extremely strong-willed, self-confident and self-aware person to ignore the abuse (even if it’s friendly) that comes with saying you’re not going to drink, if you’re doing it completely on your lonesome.  It’s a hell of a lot easier to say you’re not drinking because you’re part of a larger project.  And that reason right there is one of the most powerful things about Hello Sunday Morning.

So, my first weekend.  I decided in the spirit of starting HSM to get out and about amongst the drinking masses.  On Friday night I went to see a band I’d never seen before (Blitzen Trapper, who, by the way are pretty awesome) at a venue I’d never been to before (The Hi-Fi in Brisbane).  I had a great night.  I was really energised and ended up at Ric’s in The Valley dancing until after 2am.  I never dance when I’m sober.  Sorry, rather, I never used to dance when I was sober.  I woke up Saturday morning feeling tired, but not sick.  How good!

Saturday night and I headed to a house party.  Actually it was more Saturday afternoon when I got there.  I was a little nervous about going to a house party this early and not drinking.  Afternoon sessions usually get pretty messy.  But it was great.  The guitars were out and we had a massive 10 person sing along to Beatles and Doors covers.  I ended my night about midnight.  At one point I was standing, obviously without a drink in my hand, observing everything going on.  Someone asked me whether I was driving.  I said I was and asked why he’d asked me that.  He said it was because I had a driving look on my face.  I found that interesting.  I made a mental note to try and make sure that no one asks me that question again.  I don’t want to be somewhere and have a “driving” look on my face.

The next week I felt myself coming down with a bit of a cold.  It was a little ironic really because a couple of days before I was touting to someone I knew that I hadn’t been sick all year.  My best friend had just finished his final uni exams and so I headed out on a Thursday to celebrate with him.  It’s not difficult to have high spirits when you’re amongst people who have just finished exams.  It’s a brilliant combination of utter relief and pure excitement that seems to drive everyone to get “rugby league drunk” and go crazy for a bit.  I thoroughly enjoyed being amongst the festivities.

On Friday and Saturday I actually was sick and stayed in writing songs.  I hate being sick but particularly so when it’s hot.  There’s something really quite gross feeling about being sick and being hot at the same time.  It’s easier to cope with being sick when it’s cold I think.  Anyway, on Sunday, I headed to Merthyr Bowls Club down on the river for lunch and catching up with friends.  That venue is awesome.  It is so good that a pretty ordinary looking bowls club has survived on prime riverfront land like that.  The owners must have had to knock back so many very lucrative offers from developers to sell up.  Kudos to them.  It’s great having somewhere like that to hang out on a hot Sunday afternoon.

Keeping in with end of uni exams celebrations I decided to relive my short lived law days and tag along to the UQLS end of year party at The Fox.  I believe $10,000 was put behind the bar from 3pm on a night where beers were going for like $2.  I’ll let you use your imagination to picture just how messy that started to get.  Everyone had had so many drinks that no one really realised I wasn’t drinking.  No need to even explain myself.  Easy.  People are just so happy at the end of exams.  It’s like all worries are forgotten for a few days.  It’s beautiful really.  If you could bottle the atmosphere, you’d sell it.  It’s a massive shame that all nights out aren’t filled with that sort of shared celebration.