Delivering the Dry January Pizza
A brief reflection on my completion of the ever increasingly culturally relevant month-long event of sobriety: Dry January.
Dry January is a somewhat new phenomenon as part of alcohol culture in which participants refrain from drinking alcohol for the entire month of January.
Different folks have different rules that might allow for exceptions or temporary breakages of fasting.
My rules are as follows:
No drinking alcoholic beverages of any kind during the month of January.
Exceptions to Rule 1 are as follows:
Drinking alcohol is allowed on January 1st if it is related to New Years celebrations, but must cease at 11:59 pm.
Drinking alcohol is allowed at weddings.
Drinking alcohol is allowed at funerals.
If Rule 1 is broken, the participant is to cease drinking alcohol of any kind, for the rest of time, with no exceptions, other than medical emergencies.
Throughout Dry January, which I will from now on refer to as DJan, one ponders the experience of drinking a beer, just as one would on any other day. Often accompanying that ponderance, is a sort of mental image which might show oneself drinking said beer. It seems for me, as more time was between my alcoholic abstinence, time grew later in that mental image. For example, on January 2nd, when thinking about drinking a beer, I’m likely to imagine myself sitting outside, enjoying a 55 degree winter day on a patio with a turkey club sandwich and a light beer, whereas on January 16th, that mental image is more likely to be of myself pulling a cold-one from the fridge in a dark kitchen after returning home from work, and on the 28th, all I could think about was the impending hangover that I’m currently fighting to write this account. That being said, when I drove to the store to buy a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon at 5:00 pm, it seemed too early in the day to start drinking.
Feeling like it was too early was a good thing, I thought, because it meant I was less likely to continue being an alcoholic once I allowed myself to drink again. DJan was, hopefully, going to curb my habit.
It felt a little weird having the mission prerogative to get “real beer”1 instead of the usual overpriced box of “fake beer,” and in fact, sort of felt wrong. It felt almost as that same feeling of turning twenty-one and buying your first bottle of Aristocrat from the ABC store. The walk back to the apartment was filled with the speculative thoughts of what beer might taste like after this long of a break.
Did I forget what beer tastes like?
Is my tolerance going to be lower?
Will I even still like it? Blasphemy.
Call me dramatic, but opening the fridge and seeing a crisp new box of PBR MUST’VE been the inspiration for the brief case in Pulp Fiction.
“It’s like we are next in line for a roller-coaster,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jackson said and laughed.
One box, twelve beers, two out, clink.
“Seven of hearts,” I said.
“Queen of diamonds,” Jackson said.
Two twists.
“Damn, seven of spades,” I said.
“Damn, so close, I got jack of clubs.”
Two gulps, two burps, two smiles. We congratulated one another for completing DJan and turned on Dick’s Picks Volume 3.
~ 3 PBRs later ~
“Uhh, are you drunk?” Jackson said.
“Oh, yup. Since beer 2,” I said.
Normally, it would take a little bit more than just 2 PBR’s to get either one of us tipsy, let alone drunk. We agreed that our tolerances for alcohol had become significantly lower than before Djan.
~ 12 PBRs later ~
Waking up on February 2nd brought acute head pain, stomach cramps, and lots of empty vomit.
Thus, a new month was born: Dry-heaveuary.
My roommate, Jackson, was participating in DJan too, and we together looked for ways to curb our cravings. Discovering non-alcoholic beer was the biggest help for that. We typically distinguished traditional alcoholic beer that we banned ourselves from, from non-alcoholic beer by referring to them as “real beer” and “fake beer” respectively.