After seven and a half years of not drinking there are no longer any time-consuming thoughts about me being a non drinker. There are rarely any situations where I think, you know today would be a great day to take a drink. Actually its only about once a year where there seems to be a situation where I decide this is the year I am going to start drinking again and that moment usually lasts all of a couple hours. In Spain however I have thought about me being a non-drinker non-stop.
Almost every young person here drinks…excesively. The amount of alcohol consumed by my generation in this country is absolutely insane. In fact, it is Sunday night and I just got back from a disco that had more people crammed into it than most of Calgary’s bars combined on a Friday night. I think my first visit to Spain was such a rush that the life just seemed like a big fun adventure, coming back however made me look at it much differently. There was actually a point in the night were I looked around the bar and just wanted to cry for all the wastefullness.
It is sad actually. You can only drink for so long before this stand still feeling kicks in, before your life just feels empty and your goals become a big wasted blur. Not only do I see that here, I hear it in their words. I asked a guy today what his friend was like and he responded by saying “she is one of those drunks who gets really mad or really happy; you never know what you will get”. The conversation or the environment had nothing to do with drinking but that is the only way he knew how to describe his friend because that is the only context he knew her in. The first time I came here I thought it was so great how everyone knows everyone, I thought it was such a wonderful community atmosphere. I realized soon it is not community at all, at least not my version of it. They are all getting drunk together six out of seven nights a week and possibly spending the afternoon together sleeping off their hangover on a beach. It is completely unappealing.
Now to be clear, there are many things I adore about Spain and this really is my only issue. Other than the drinking it is a wonderful place that I have adored, it just so happens that the “other” is quite a definitive factor. Needless to say, I have felt so blessed this trip to be a non drinker. To be able to wake up early every morning and discover the city, to not make terribly bad decisions based on a drunk moment, to know my goals and keep them, to know who is important in my life and be responsible to them, to know the value of my life and make decisions that reflect that awareness, to make my experiences real memories. Literally there are dozens of reasons I have come up with as to why I am so thankful for my sobriety. Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me the strength in my sobriety to get me through so many years of avoided pain, mistakes, and emptiness, and thank you for continuing to open my eyes so I can see why it is I choose to have a substance free life.
Oh and my parents say thank you too…especially on a trip like this!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
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2 comments:
Yep, very grateful.
So dad and I were on the boat last week and saw this houseboaters cliff diving, not in the usual place but down near the niles. There was three guys and i dont know how they made it to the top of the hill, they were so drunk. Two of the guys went higher and 1 of them stayed below. The lone dude was still afraid to jump so his drunk friends who were about 3 meters above him proceeded to whip it out and pee all over the guy.
So he was forced to either jump or take a pee shower from his friends, and he ended up doing both, it was gross. But the moral of the story is, yes, drinking makes people do stupid things...like pee on people. lol. Mwah!
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