100 days of sober 'tude

Alright, I'm doin' it.

Yesterday I made a pact with myself, a friend, God, Jack Daniels, and of course, the half-drunk-thirty-pounds-heavier-pink-and-pasty reflection that's been eyeing me irritated-ly in the mirror lately.

ONE HUNDRED DAYS SANS BOOZE.

Of course, yesterday I initiated this pact with the additional "OR CIGARETTES" and then out of angst and fear promptly smoked two cigarettes while fantasizing about the curvature of a glassy green bottle of cheap sparkling wine... the lure of the glittery foil adorning her smooth bottleneck that catches the light just right and dances its reflection into my thirst-struck irises ... the pop! of ecstasy that erupts from her circular rim when I force her cork open with the determined finesse of my thumbs.... the melting movement she has perfected of shaping herself to my trembling champagne flute, rigid against her ambiguous liquid form as I slowly raise her effervescent presence to my quivering lips....  **raging liver boner**

Needless to say, I had to walk away from my daydream biting down hard on one fist while lighting up about five Parliaments.

I can do it though. I CAN DO IT, GUYS!!

I proudly presented my plan for alcohol abstinence to my favorite drinking buddy, and she agreed that it was time for a much-needed reprieve from our binge-gulping stints. Thus ensued A GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT! to not drink for thirty days. Being poetic and slightly retarded, I raised the bar for my personal goal to one hundred days, thus shittily referencing my favorite writer we studied in all my years in Spanish class.

It's a funny thing, alcoholism. On a daily basis, I flirt with the idea that I may or may not be a legitimate alcoholic. Someone will tell me about the great price they got on apples at the Leucadian farmers market and I'll say, "I don't think that drinking alone makes me an alcoholic. I enjoy my own company, okay?!!!" And as that person backs away slowly deleting my phone number, I cross my arms and frown defensively, mentally tallying the running score: ALCOHOLISM : 1, (singlewhitefemale) : 0.

When I have a day off I rejoice in the resplendent possibility spread out before me. Maybe start off with a little jaunt to 24-hour gym for a lil bit of elliptical time, know what I'm sayin'? On my walk home I towel off my sweaty red face and dig my bottle opener out of my purse in preparation for the post-cardio beer reward that I'm about to pour down my sweaty red throat. I stretch my lack-of-muscles on my living room floor and scoot the glass bottle around my feet with each shift of position. By now I've perfected the art of guzzling beer from a bottle shoved in my cleavage while focusing on my third eye's sight as I hold the Downward Dog pose for as long as I can chug back all the calories I burned in thirty minutes of exercise. ALCOHOLISM : 2, (singlewhitefemale) : 0.

I love going to breakfast at Swami's Cafe down the street from my house. They have a vegan curry dish with tofu, rice, vegetables, and a side salad whose whopping enormity sets my primitive fears to rest about not having enough food for survival's sake. Usually I dump the salad and basil vinaigrette on top of the mountain of yellow-sauced veggies and eat about a third of it before packaging it up and dreaming about the epic post-nap leftovers lunch I'm about to commit to later in the day. However, the last time I visited the cafe for my favorite breakfast, it turns out that I may have still been quite inebriated from the night before. We'd all gotten together to celebrate our favorite dude's birthday with a bonfire gathering, and the sight of that many faces of people I loved all crowded into one hippy abode proved to be a little too much for my tolerance. I giggled with joy as I hugged a hello to everyone, simultaneously opening a 2-liter bottle of cheap-ass white wine and dumping it into a pint glass. I spent the entire evening chugging what most people assumed was a huge glass of water while surprise-patting female coworkers on their bottoms, interjecting wrong lyrics into the talented circle of musicians and singers lit up by the fire's light, declaring my love for showers in an anti-Burning Man fashion, and making secret trips to the kitchen to refill my bucket of wine all casual-like while everyone was reaching for the guacamole. At one point I lost my beer stein and resorted to sloshing my third bottle of wine into a plastic Magic Bullet blender capsule. The last thing I remember was announcing loudly to an empty chair that I'd written a song and then heckling the musical genius to my left when he couldn't sight-read my mind and predict which chords I would need him to play next in accompaniment. My friends say the last thing I ACTUALLY did was hijack the hand of an unlucky male coworker and curl up into a fetal position, shouting "A GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT!" as he high-tailed it away from me as fast as his feet would carry him. Anyway... um... what was I saying? Oh yeah yeah yeah, so the next morning I woke up feeling remarkably fanTAStic, and we all went to breakfast at Swami's to compare notes about the night before. I ordered my curry dish in French and marveled at how uneven the ground seemed and how much my head wanted to float on up under my legs in a bout of antigravity acrobatics. We all reminisced about how much fun we'd had, but I kept interrupting with fits of possessed cackling and spraying my neighbors with spittle, and for some reason everyone kept remarking on my inability to control my voice modulation levels.  An hour passed and I was shriek-laughing like a banshee at a fly on my leg and polishing off the last cube of tofu from the ten-thousand-calorie plate of food I'd just consumed; it was then that I hiccoughed and realized that I was still shit-faced at 1:00 PM and drunk-eating like a pregnant Kirstie Alley after a two-week fast. ALCOHOLISM : 3, (singlewhitefemale) : 0.

Alright alright alright. So it would appear that I might have a bit of a drinking problem. But I got this, guys. So far it's only been two days, and yes, in those two days I have thought about drinking five thousand six hundred and seventy-eight times, but-- BUT--- I did NOT!!! And it WILL get easier ( I think...?)!! I've already filled the void I feel with a new addiction to scratcher tickets and coconut water, and though I haven't won any money yet and am still consuming hundreds of liquid calories daily, I feel pret-tay, pret-tay good about it.

In ninety-eight days' time, I predict the new score will be ALCOHOLISM : 0, (singlewhitefemale) : 100.