I’m drinking a James Boag’s Premium lager as I type this. I’m not really even a beer drinker, but they were left over from Christmas and somebody has to drink them! Right? Am I right?
Maybe not.
Every new year, the wowsers dust off their cautionary tales about the evils of binge-drinking. A lot of us make the same resolution every year — eat better, exercise more, drink less — but wake up the following New Year’s Day five kilos heavier with a nagging pain in the liver.
My liver’s okay and my diet is generally good. I’m a binge-exerciser, an advocate of the “one day of HIIT per fortnight is better than nothing” philosophy. I did some HIIT over the weekend and I’ll be HIITing it again on Wednesday.
But I drink four days out of five — five out of five, if I didn’t work nightshifts.
Problem?
Every single male I know in my age-bracket drinks more than I do. Orders of magnitude more; like there’s a comet hurtling towards Earth and they only have 24 hours to live more. They’d absorb beer through their skin by osmosis if they could. They brag about how much they drink.
I just feel guilty.
The problem in this country, and probably many others, is that hard drinking is conjoined at birth with manliness. Literally the most unAustralian thing a Aussie bloke can do is not like beer. Canadian Club commercials humorously exploit this, but they’re hardly the healthy alternative.
Funny, tho!
Anyway, I’ve done Dry July (2017) before, and it was awful. Mostly because my birthday is in July and not being able to drink on your birthday sucks balls. In fact, not drinking on any of the other days in July was also schlarving the doad.
But don’t worry.
I’m not about to embark on some futile mission. Joyless January, or something. I’m not even warming up for Fun-free February. But what might be a good idea for me is to ease up a little.
I can do that. But wish me luck anyway.
Totally unrelated, but I’ve been watching G.L.O.W. (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) on Netflix and stumbled across a music video featuring one of the GLOWs — Sunita Mani — which is pretty hilarious.
Watch it here for free!
And remember, it’s better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.