Week 3 of dry month. I did a month without drinking back in 2021 so I know what to expect. I’m sure over time I may have done one without realising it at some point. The difficulty of the challenge is completely dependent on your relationship with alcohol. Mine has become a little more intimate than it was before around 2020.
I moved in with Rebecca at the beginning of 2020 just as the pandemic era came along. We had our own, generously sized and priced apartment and were about to be stuck working at home for several months. This came with the temptation to stock the cupboards with booze for what felt like a holiday.
Even before the pandemic, work didn’t start until 2pm. The worst thing about drinking, even small amounts, is rolling out of bed at 6:30 and going to work. For me, it’s a guarantee of a day full of irritability and the stinging tiredness that never leaves your eyes no matter how many coffees you put away to fight it.
This problem was non-existent at my training school. A few weekday drinks, even more than a few could be shaken off well before work. If the message came through for evening drinks it was no dilemma. Hop into a cab for around 2 quid and be sat with a bottle within 20 minutes. Another 2 quid cab back, rise from my bed at 10:30am, a tea and a hearty breakfast and I was in good shape before I had to leave for work.
After-work drinks were guilt free on this schedule, there was usually booze in my house. I worked my way through a crate of bottles every few weeks or so, mostly during home screenings of football. I invested in various spirits bottles and shook up cocktails when we had company. I would dip into a bottle of whiskey on occasion. Around this time I realised that I had crossed a social drinking Rubicon and enjoyed a drink at home more frequently than I had in the past.
I decided to do a dry month in early 2021 after gaining some weight and becoming aware of the amount of money that alcohol burns through. The first week wasn’t difficult but one of mild frustrations at not having a beer with my hotpot or perusing a menu for the least sickly soft drink in the bar.
Once the habits of a few cans with the football and cheap bottles of Tuborg in restaurants was disrupted, the dry month settled into an easy ride from the second week through to the end. Despite my home still being stacked with bottles and cans, the Friday evening craving for a drink vanished.
It was kind of eye opening. Alcoholic’s addictive quality is one of those things you hear about, but I had never really considered it in this way. It had always felt like a treat, like an ice-cream. I wondered if the first week of Disagreeable Me would be how the month would unfold, but it wasn’t. By the morning of the 7th day, felt like I lived in a world where alcohol was completely on the periphery.
I expected my first drink afterwards to feel like heaven. It was just fine. It was an Estrella whilst watching UFC with a mate. There was no deep satiation the same way a glass of water is when you’re thirsty. It was an anticlimax. So was the second and then the third.
The next day I felt fine. I slipped back into the semi-habit of ordering a beer with dinner and having the tumbler of rum when playing Zelda fairly quickly. The warm familiarity and pleasure of a drink came back. But it was clearly self-taught and self-perpetuated.
Chinese attitudes towards drinking are interesting and contrast with the UK in unexpected ways. Alcohol is so deeply entrenched in UK life that it’s a kind of mini culture shock just experiencing the less problematic ways that people from other countries relate to the drug.
In the UK, we are introduced to alcohol before we even have a clue what it is beside that thing that makes our parents act weird. It becomes this unspoken and unacknowledged yet absolutely necessary step into adolescence. It was just something you do because everyone does it.
In China, particularly the less modern parts, bars are not widespread. Drinking culture is interwoven with eating culture whereas in the UK they are quite separate. There is some metabolic difficulty with alcohol that is pretty common in China. Drinking causes a red face and overwhelms motor skills pretty quickly. Old school Chinese men will have a crate of beers delivered to their table and dish them out over the course of a meal. Even on hot Summer evenings, the crate sits by the foot of the table, quickly hitting room temperature but seemingly not impacting the enjoyment of the party at all.
There is a competitive element to drinking too. In the UK there seems to be a strand of machismo pride at being able to out drink people around you. This is also present in China but it is of the more ‘last man standing ilk’. The weapon of choice is baijiu, a hydrochloric composition. Some kind of spirit, a bit like vodka but worse. You can almost feel tomorrow morning’s vomit being stirred within seconds of the stuff hitting your stomach. Baijiu is present at all the big meals, weddings and holidays. Chinese men will shot the stuff until paralytic, which doesn’t take too long.
In the more modern areas and cities, bars are more common. Younger people are more likely to frequent them rather than the smokey tea houses and suspicious basement bars that their parents’ generation may have favoured. Craft beers and cocktail bars can be found easily and they attract Chinese locals as well as the immigrant population.
Now, I find myself constantly reevaluating my relationship with alcohol. In my new school in Beijing I am on a rigid, rise at 6:30 schedule so there is no room for the midweek escapades of the past unless I want to ruin my day.
I dislike almost everything about drinking. The money it costs, the easy weight gain, the impact on sleep even afterone or two drinks, how I become lazy the day after, the fact I am so easily irritable after a few, the lack of control after one too many, the health side effects of which I’m sure to pay for in the future. There are so many drawbacks.
And yet…the few things that I enjoy about drinking, I enjoy very much. I only recently got into craft beers, o’ brave new world. I approach the end of my latest dry month after a month long holiday off school where it was all too easy to derail a day or two with drinking. Many of the things I enjoy doing can easily be ruined if I’ve been drinking the night before. When this month ends I may consider a little more carefully what the future holds for this particular relationship.
