It doesn’t take much alcohol to get me drunk, or at least light headed. But it does take a lot to make me drink it in the first place, especially in public. I don’t not drink, but I also don’t drink, if you know what I mean. And when I do drink, I limit myself to cocktails or beer or beer shandys. Whiskey is lost on me. Wine I can drink, but cannot appreciate the nuances of it, so I limit myself to red or white, period, on the rare occasions I do drink it. To give you a clearer indication of my lack of commitment to alcohol, I cannot name one wine I have drunk. I still drink the same beer that my first boyfriend introduced me to. I have not experimented much beyond it, and I am fine with that. The concept of craft beer tasting scares me.
Every now and then I convince myself that at the very least I should know my wine, given the gorgeous wine lands we have in this country. I wonder if I shouldn’t take a course or something. But then I remember that I like not drinking. Imagine, I tell myself, that you fall in love with drinking wine, and then you walk around with a tipsy head for half the evening, every evening. That regular lack of clear headedness does not appeal.
Driving under the influence, or rather not driving under the influence has a lot to do with it too. Like I said above, it does not take much to get me lightheaded. So although I might be within the legal alcohol limit to drive, maybe in fact I am not. I never drink and drive. Not a sip.
So, with respect to the prompt for today’s writing challenge, I am happy to say I can only think of one hangover I have ever had. It happened in my third or fourth year of college. My best friend and housemate, Laura, and I lived across the hall from our college’s star football players. Apart from great neighbours, they were also as you can imagine, quite the party animals. They would get drunk two or three time a week. Laura and I were mystified by the appeal. One day we decided to get drunk in a controlled environment, and assess the result (you can see that we are both rather analytical by nature).
Getting drunk was not going to be difficult, obviously, and we weren’t going to mess around. One bottle of vodka, and a bottle of Sprite, and I was puking into my toilet bowl within the hour. I remember biting my lip by mistake in my confusion, and tasting the blood. I also remember thinking…wtf? People do this for fun? Why? Laura didn’t get it either. I have never had a serious hangover since then, and at worst wake up with a mild headache due to dehydration after a late dinner party or something like that.
Which is not to say that I hate to drink. A beer will make me tipsy, and more relaxed, and as long as I am in my own house, sometimes that is exactly what I need. If it happens, it will usually be a Friday night treat. Post week, and all that and the one night that I refuse to think about work. It’s Eve’s version of kicking up her heels and going wild. Yep, my life is that exciting 🙂
(May 2020 update: not much has changed, although I definitely drink a bit more than I did when I originally wrote this. Craig bought me a bottle of raspberry Gin when he last came in from the UK, and it has grown on me (although that may be more to do with the alcohol lockdown restrictions than anything else!). I only have two bottles of wine left to last me the lockdown, but I am not in a panic about it.)
The writing prompts come from Writerswrite.co.za and they are my attempt at daily writing for 2017. Unless stated otherwise, the images are taken by me, also as a 365 day challenge. Read my other Writing Prompt posts here.
