What does the year 1920 have to do with this post? That’s when Prohibition started in the United States. My own little prohibition started a bit later. It was a year ago this month that a preliminary test suggested I might have a liver disease. I made the conscious decision to abstain from alcohol until a more thorough diagnosis could be made. If you’ve been following, you know that several months later it was confirmed and I could never drink again if I wanted to remain among you good people on this mortal coil.

One might think I would be celebrating a whole year sober. I’m not. It sucks. I hate it. I don’t need it to have a life, but I sure do miss it sometimes. You see, I didn’t get a liver disease from drinking. My doctors assured me of that. They are not quite sure why I got it because the disease has damaged all tissue that would have given a clue on a biopsy. There are some indications that it might be auto-immune related, but they can’t be sure. Even though I didn’t get it from drinking, alcohol would accelerate the disease until, well you know, the big dirt nap.

This has been quite a turn in my life. As you can see by this post here, I really loved my beer. Click on the beer category and you are going to see numerous posts. Put beer in the search block on the side of the page and you will probably see even more.

Quitting drinking wasn’t that hard.  I just stopped. Despite all the alcohol related stories you might read on this blog, I really didn’t drink that much.  I rarely drank on the weekdays.  I mostly reserved my drinking for the weekend or holidays.  So I don’t feel a physical need for it.  However, it’s the social need that I still feel tugging on the old liver strings.  Here are a few situations where the urge still kicks in.

• After finishing work on a Friday.  Tossing back the first one of the weekend was like a reward for getting through the working week.  Come around four o’clock on these days and I feel the urge kicking in.
• Barbecuing.  I rarely held a BBQ utensil in one hand without having a beer in the other.  Doing it now without the beer just seems, unnatural.
• While watching sporting events.  Sucking on the suds while watching football or hockey was a given.  Now my go to drink is Mt. Dew.  My acid reflux isn’t too happy with that because caffeine stirs it up, but acid reflux won’t kill you, so you know, lesser of two evil thing.  Going to a live event is even more difficult and forget going to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch a game.  I still haven’t managed that feat yet.
• Eating a nice meal.  I wasn’t much of a wine connoisseur in my younger days.  My wife changed all that, and when we had a nice meal, like a T-bone steak with scallops on the side, I also enjoyed a glass of Pinot Noir.  Now it is PiNOT NOir that I get.

I loved beer so much that I even had my own kegerator.  My favorite beer to put in it was a quarter keg of Devil’s Backbone Vienna Lager. That’s a brewery in the mountains that I like to hike in.  When I stopped drinking, my poor kegerator sat in the corner all dark and lonely.  I knew I should do something with it but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger on it.  It would be like Travis having to shoot Old Yeller.  After eight months I finally released my grip.  I didn’t shoot Old Yeller.  I passed him down to my son.  Last I heard, he’s doing great with him and his girlfriend.

So, in summary, this sucks.  Sorry this wasn’t a particularly funny or entertaining post.  I just wanted to whine a bit.  I’ll get back on track next time.

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