So I just passed the ninety day mark on the whole not being a drunk thing. Eh... yea me. Apparently, this is supposed to be some sort of a benchmark were I’m to reflect, stare into my naval, pat myself on the back, and give myself rah rah personal cheers.

Fine (sorry you have to suffer through this). So here are the big life changes:

1. I no longer have hundreds of empty bottles sitting around my apartment. Yep, hundreds. Not an exaggeration. They would just pile up dozens at a time. Embarrassed that my neighbors would see me, I would wait until I had three or four garbage bags full and sneak them out at four in the morning every few weeks. I always thought that was freaky and strange, and it was freaky and strange, but it is apparently common and not without president. That’s the one big thing I got out of reading that Bourdain Dry book, an explanation of why the hell I was doing that. Supposedly, it had something to do with my drunk ass self trying to isolate my physical self so I could keep the drunk party going on without interruption. Well... in retrospect that sounds sort of like a lot of bullshit. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But, the apartment is cleanish now, and I guess that’s a good thing.

3. The ching ching in my pocket. The old hooch budget was about $30 a day, which came to about eleven G a year. I guess that wouldn’t be that big a deal for someone in a different tax bracket than myself, but God knows I couldn’t afford it, and had to be a monster cheap ass to compensate and keep the drunk on. I had to skip meals and eat for free whenever possible (which was not a big deal: refer to #2). And buying drinks for other people? Ha! Wouldn’t happen. If I squandered the cash on someone else’s drink, I might have actually remembered falling asleep that night, and I couldn’t let that happen. A couple of night ago, I was hanging out with friends, and bought one of the female ones a drink. A third party friend saw that, and knowing my past tendency towards cheap assedness, assumed I was trying to get the mojo on, which was not the case at all, I’m just trying to make up for years of cheap assedness and picking up a few rounds every now and then. Besides, even when I was trying to hook up in bars, I would NEVER buy them a drink. That one drink would dig into my own drunk stipend, and the alcohol had become way way more important to me than the ass.

And that, my friends, was the screeching alarm that told me it was time to quit.

Whoot. There, done.

Anyway, enough of that. I’ll try my best not to boor you with the little heavy personals for at least the next 255 days or so.

Update: DaBrettman just IM’ed me, berating me for closing my comments on this one. I explained that I closed them because I cannot stand “hang in there kiddos” from the ladies. He was pissed because he wanted to offer to take me out for a drink in celebration of my sobriety. I told him I would insert his offer into an update:

“dick. I was going to offer to buy you a drink in celebration of your sobriety, but now you can forget it.”

Thanks DaB! You’re a true friend. heh.