1) I have a very rare off switch which gives me the ability to actually quit things once I’ve made that decision.
2) Hangovers were the only thing that made my job tolerable.
3) My mouth and alcohol are both the best of friends & mortal enemies.
4) I was carrying around almost 25 lbs. of beer related weight. I quit drinking and working out (due to injury) at the same time, and that weight melted off.
5) I have a lot of friends who take pictures of the drinks they’re consuming and post them on social media (much like I used to), and that doesn’t bother me or make me want to drink, but it occurs to me that it probably doesn’t help other folks who are struggling - especially folks that might have a bad case of FOMO. I've unfriended and/or stopped following a lot of folks because of this. Alcohol is everywhere I look, and that’s not hard for me, but I’m now very aware that it must be a real problem for a lot of people. I never cared about that before, but now the empathy for those folks runs deep. *edit: I only mention this as it occurred to me that I might have been inadvertently triggering friends who probably didn't need triggering, and was trying to apologize for that w/out actually apologizing. This wasn't purposefully directed at anyone, so I apologize if it seemed that way, and I also apologize for not just apologizing for being a potential trigger-man.*
6) I’m still addicted to substances that make me feel something, anything, and therefore have increased my coffee intake knowing damn well that that’s not healthy either.
7) My creativity has disappeared, almost completely, and that makes me sad. Not sad enough to drink though. I have faith that my drive to write and create will return with a vengeance, but realize that faith is no substitute for work.
8) I miss beer. A lot. But I don’t miss being drunk. Unfortunately I can’t seem to have one without the other.
9) Alcohol functioned as earplugs to drown out the noise in my head, but without it, the noise of the world has increased ten-fold, and it's really fucking frightening.
10) I wanted to have a bunch of profound realizations, but have finally realized that profundity is all about ego, which is something I'm trying to get away from.