I just finished a month break from alcohol.

Back when I decided to take a break, it was to stay balanced. I was always drinking in social situations, spending a lot of money,  feeling sick and tired after. Telling myself over and over I would never drink again, only to fall on my face every weekend.

For once I took my promise seriously and took a month off from the social glue, spending time on cultivating my own energy with other inputs like yoga, meditation and creativity.

What I realized is that it is not so much that I have a problem, it was easy to quit. Sure, the few times I went out it was a little hard to resist getting a beer as I arrived at a venue or feeling awkward when people clincked their glasses together in a cheer, but after a while of breaking my patterns, it was a brieze! A real breath of fresh air. I felt energetic, woke up early in the morning without feeling groggy and in general I feel like my mood became quite stable.

As time went by and I started feeling really good about my choice, even wondering if I should keep going after the month was up, I found that support for this idea from the people around me, however was hard to come by. Someone even wondered if my detox was a cover for being pregnant.

What? I mean sure it was an active choice, so maybe I was being all vegan about it, telling people how great it made me feel, perhaps threatening their choices, but in general I was keeping mostly to myself.

I decided to have a little dinner party when my one month was up, and it was really nice to have a drink with food. I’ve worked with food and beverage for years, so I’m interested in complimentary tastes. The first glass of Cremant was my favorite glass, and then the South African Chenin Blanc my friend had brought to fit my curried pumpkin and sweet potato soup.

But after those glasses, it was a slippery slope into old patterns, refilling the glasses as a proper hostess, finding myself drunk at the end of the night. Sick and grumpy the day after. Even the day after a little queezy.

Like everything else, it’s probably a bit of both. I have a slight problem controlling the intake once the first sip is in, but there is definitely a social pressure there that I cannot ignore. It was as if being sober was more uncomfortable for others than it really was for me.