January 31st - I've done it, gone the full month without a drink. I've smashed dry January. Do I feel proud of myself? Well, sort of but put it in perspective - it's not as if I've done something that will benefit us all like kicking the fat knight and his hypocritical cod-communists out of Downing Street, nor have I saved the world from totalitarianism by dismantling the insidious wokery machine. What I have done is proven something to myself. I'm not an alcoholic, just someone who drank a little too much. I always suspected that was the case, but there were moments when...well....
Prior to my Dry January challenge I'd drank every night for a decade or so, and what started out as a glass of whisky every night before bed, eventually turned into a couple, a few, a few more and then too fucking many. It got to the point where it was detrimental to my real work, my writing. Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, Dorothy Parker, Eugene O'Neill, Hunter S. Thompson, and Raymond Carver may been have been able to create when sloshed but I just ended up slumped over the keyboard.
I plan to have a glass tonight to celebrate and going forward I'm going to reset my drinking - start to once again appreciate the complex, nuanced drink that is the water of life and not submerge myself in its intoxicating depths. I've been there and sometimes it can be hard to surface again.
Anyway my new book - A Dark History of Whisky - is out at the end of this month, so expect daily whiskey/whisky postings as I promote the tome. So anyway, that's it for now from this born again appreciator of fine spirits. Now, where did I leave the that glencairn glass?
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