I’m going to call it, the ’Critical Mass of Inebriation’ theory.

It works on the same basis as herd immunity. For those who don’t know about herd immunity, it’s a way of vaccinating the entire population, by vaccinating a certain amount. For each disease the threshold is different, but usually somewhere between 80 – 94% of the population need to be vaccinated in order to cover the entire population.  Because such a large proportion of the population has been vaccinated, the likely hood of a non-vaccinated person coming in contact with another non-vaccinated person is ridiculously low. This is how a disease such as Polio can be virtually eradicated.

Anyway, enough of the public health lecture…

So I formed my theory after another hilarious night where everyone else I was with was reasonably inebriated and I was not. No-one was over the top drunk but there were quite a few drinks had by everyone. It was great fun to get involved and laugh at the crazy things that everyone was doing, including; some of the guys flirting with the bar girl to trade the three pairs of sunnies we won in a bar comp, for one of the singlets; stealing the cardboard surfboard used for advertising; stashing it in the garden when we thought security were chasing us; and finding a bunch of witches hats that had been left outside a friends house for over a week, and stealing them so we could have a ‘witches hat party’ at a later date.

Had no-one been drinking I can guarantee none of those things would have happened. It was all completly harmless fun and the night was made because of them. I got involved in the witches hat stealing and the encouragement of all the other activities even though I wasn’t drinking.

So I’ve come up with this theory that somewhere between 80 - 94% of the group need to be drinking for the non drinkers to participate in the same amount of shenanigans as if they were drinking. It’s not very scientific but it has proved itself to be true time and time again.

P.S. I wanted to post a photo of last nights collections but no-one wanted to be in a picture with ‘stolen-goods’, so here’s a picture of a bunch of puppies instead…

So I’ve got good and bad news… I think I’ll start with the good.

I had such a brilliant weekend. Like, really awesome. On Friday night it was my boyfriend engineering ball and since he finishes uni in a few weeks he was keen to go. We ended up rounding up a whole bunch of  our friends and got ourselves our own table. Everyone looked so great dressed up and the boys loved that they could ‘suit up’! 

Suited up.

 There was an open bar which everyone took advantage of and it killed me to not have a glass of champagne. It’s just not the same cheers-ing with a glass of water. It ended up being such a great night though with everyone dancing and singing and generally having an awesome time. I have to say, I may have lived a bit vicariously through my friends and enjoyed how drunk they were and how silly it all was. Drunk people (not out of control people) are fun to laugh at/with.

At the end of the night I was chatting with a friend and he was asking me interview type questions about my HSM. He asked me about how hard it was to not have that glass of wine with dinner. It only really occured to me that yeah, I did wish I could have that drink, but that feeling passed in half a minute and it didn’t cross my mind again. Plus I felt fine and apparently the wine was awful. So I think I dodged a bullet with that one. But it was great to see my friends take so much interest in what it was. I mentioned to them I thought it was amusing how interested they were yet none of them had said anything about doing their own HSM and the ones I heard from agreed they were impressed with what I was doing but none of them thought they could do it. But that’s fine. It’s not for everyone. And none of my friends are huge drinkers anyway so it doesn’t bother me that much.

Saturday morning I dragged a slightly hungover boyfriend out to breakfast and it was so nice to sit there and watch the world go by. It was a very relaxing morning. I wish all mornings were like that. I had a chat to mum later on in the day and she asked if I had anything to drink the night before. She was pretty surprised I didn’t cave and just have a sneaky one so it made me feel extra proud to prove her wrong! I ended up going to putt-putt that night and generally had a great time so it felt good to just do cool things as apposed to being poor and hungover.

Sunday morning I went with mum to a tupperware party and that’s the bad news…

I had alcohol on Sunday morning. Not by choice let me assure you!! I was offered a hot chocolate which I had and it tasted pretty awful to be honest. Turned out later on, it had Kahlua in it. I was so disappointed because I really wanted to be able to say I didn’t have a drop for the whole time. It also shocked me that that was just part of our culture. At 10:30 on a Sunday morning at a Tupperware party I had an alcohol spiked hot chocolate. It mostly annoyed me because I wasn’t told about it before. I’m on my open licence and have been now for a few months but what if I had been driving and needed a blood alcohol of 0? I was disappointed but also shocked about the fact that it was just a normal part of our culture. In my opinion… having my hot chocolate spiked by alcohol on a Sunday morning should be frowned upon so much more than it was…

But other than that, I’m so excited to be doing awesome things on the weekend!

I think I’m just past the half way mark through my HSM and this whole no alcohol thing is actually starting to get to me. I don’t miss the big nights. I don’t miss going out and drinking to feel confident and dancey. And I have no desire to “drown my sorrows” or make the night more fun by doing shots. But I’m really missing the glass of wine with dinner. And I’m missing sharing a beer with the boys after moving house. I’m going to my partners engineering ball on Friday and I am paying my share of an open bar but won’t be using it. I would love a glass of wine to celebrate with him.

I know that there is no need for alcohol at all and I am coping quite fine without it, but I am missing it in those few situations. On the flip side though, I’m not missing the wasted days, feeling awful or becoming infamous for hanging my head out of a taxi vomitting the whole way home. I think one thing I’ve learned and I’m learning from HSM is about balance and having one or two drinks when the time is right, and not drinking till I drop. While unfortunatly quite a number of my weekends have been spent doing uni work, I am loving making the most of having my whole weekends to do whatever I want. At the moment I’m not working so it’s really important to me to spend my weekends doing things I love. So when I haven’t been doing uni I’ve spent my time going on picnics or doing high ropes courses. It’s about a billion times more fun than laying in bed with a headache or groaning about how sick I feel.

In the last few weeks my aims for my three months have changed and have become more about doing something fun and exciting every weekend. To me it doesn’t have to be anything major but I want to enjoy the time I have away from uni and destress naturally, on the weekends. It’s such a simple concept, to just do things that make me happy, but I, and I’m sure almost everyone, has spent weekends trying to piece the night before back together, and feel less ill. So from now on, I’m going to do my best (uni permitting) to do something enjoyable and new every weekend. I’m going to attempt the new thing, I’m pretty broke so I might just have to stick to things I love.

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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So it’s my second week into my three month sobriety stint and the last weekend was spent with a mixture of loving and hating what I had signed myself up for.

On Friday night I caught up with the girls for a wine and cheese night. All of us being students, we found it is cheaper then dinner and more relaxing in someones home. I drank mineral water all night and probably enjoyed it a bit more than the wine to be honest. As the night progressed and the girls all got a bit silly I started to feed off their energy and was pretty much as silly as them. It was wonderful! We were dancing and singing like complete idiots but I had so much fun and the best part was waking up in the morning, feeling awesome, and remembered everything from the night before. I had such a fun night and I remember thinking about how glad I was that started HSM because it put things into perspective a bit.

Sadly though I finished the weekend wishing I could pause HSM and just have a few drinks. I went up to Mt Tamborine with the boyfrend and we had an awesome day. Didn’t end up getting lunch till about 3:30 or 4pm and we found a little pub that brewed their own beer. It looked like a pretty cool little place to have some food and enjoy a lazy Sunday arvo. We went to the bar so Kieran could have a beer and I grabbed a lemonade. He ended up getting a platter of beers for tasting and I went hunting for food. Unfortunatly though they had run out of food and only had beer left. After being so elated on Friday night I felt guilty for wishing I could drink because the beers looked and smelt amazing and I would have killed for a taste test. We ended up going back down the mountain to a pub at the bottom cause we were starving and it wasn’t so bad since I could distract myself. But that afternoon I would have killed for a nice cold beer to sit back and relax with and watch the sun go down.

On a disappointing note, I’ve put my finances together and sadly what Centrelink gives me isn’t enough money to fund a trip to SA for Aus champs so I’m going to have to give it a miss this year. I would have loved to have gone but I’ve got a few too many more important expenses I’m going to have to fork out for in the next few months. I am going to try and keep up running and training as if I was going to go but uni tends to put a massive stop sign in front of any running plans I have. I think I’m definitly still in the honeymoon period with HSM so all of these problems haven’t really registered as anything even slightly minor. Just teeny speed bumps.

Till next time…

Hi there!

My name’s Brooke, I’m 20, in my final semester at the University of Queensland studying Health Science and I’ve just started my three months of HSM. 

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