You know, even if I don't mind dying from some alcohol-related disease, I would prefer not to feel like shit getting there. Let death come, but if it's misery without any certainty of death, nein, I say, nyet. Non, non, mon père.
I decided to cut back on drinking and see what happens.
Keeping track over the past month, I've been drinking between 5 and 6 bottles of liquor per week. Also keeping track of how many drinks per day, I consume between 13 and 16. This is likely my life peak. My consumption has progressively increased over the decades since college. There were points where I couldn't imagine my consumption increasing, but apparently I've always underestimated myself.
Just a few days in of cutting back, I'm consuming less than 10 drinks per day. Ten drinks a day is still considered a serious health risk. Whatever, I just don't want to feel like death daily. I'm not saying this can be maintained. I am aware of how insidious alcoholism is and that this scheme can crumble like a house of cards any day.
My technique is pretty simple. If I don't feel like a drink, I pass. If I don't feel all that good (about it), I pass. If I think about it and think I can pass, I pass. It just creates a longer space of time between drinks and that decreases consumption. On the other hand, at the end of days when I'm winding down and looking towards lights out, I can go three sheets to the wind and easily go over 10 drinks.
Already I feel better. Even without a major resumption of appetite, I have been able to eat without feeling too terrible. And yesterday I finally got out to the gym for the first time since early last summer to test my cardio doing the lightest of exercise. If not hunger, I did feel the need for fuel.
But even pushing back against not feeling like crap, I can't deny the direction things are heading. I still face eventual blindness from glaucoma since I'm still not going for treatment. And nothing's stopping my bank account from sinking lower and lower. And that's always something I've accepted as endgame.
And bottom line, just because I'm not drinking so much that I feel like crap any time I try to eat, I'm still probably drinking enough to make my liver eventually crawl up in a little scar-pocked ball of ineffectual tissue. Yay?
