Shop Boy Explains…why I can’t bounce back like I used to

…why I can’t bounce back like I used to

This could easily have been included as my RDOs post for yesterday, however I felt had an important enough message to warrant something more than a mere recap.

I can’t bounce back like I used to.

At 24 I am well and truly on the downhill run of run of my drinking life. Let me take you back, yesterday, 4am; I awoke with a start to something not right in the pit of my stomach…literally. Pulling some pants on I made a dash for the bathroom…that was the first vomit of the day.

Hour by hour I was woken up with an urge to spew and was overcome with deep shame. You see, I had only consumed two bottles of wine; while this statement might make me sound like an alcoholic let me justify by saying that the drinks were consumed in the space of eight hours which equates to roughly 1.75 drinks per hour. It’s hardly anything c-razy, to quote my friend Sarah.

Cut to 11am yesterday, the vomit total had reached eight and it was at the point where I had gotten down to just the foul bile that looks and taste like a wheatgrass shot (I’m never having a wheatgrass shot again…not that I’ve had one since 2004, but I’ve digressed in a bracket). I just can’t do it anymore; my body can’t take it.

It’s not like I’m a wild person. I mean I like my beer and wine as much as the next person (unless it’s Boris Yeltsin), however have always been a bit of a hermit meaning my drinking normally focused around me and the couch bonding over a drink. However with the marathon of vomit, I think I have well and truly hit a point.

Back in the day my flatmates and I, who included the aforementioned c-razy Sarah, used to partake in a couple of bottles of Passion Pop before going out. Sometimes we would participate in the drinking of some jugs before particularly painful lectures and it never had any negative impacts. It seemed we were invincible. We could go out all night, have Calzones in the Valley at 3am and then walk home to have a coffee before heading to a tute.

The reckless abandon developed until it reached the point where I was convinced that I performed better in French or Spanish speaking exams if I had a chronic hangover. I think the term most would label me with here is a functioning alcoholic, I would argue and call it being a student…it is a loose defence.

Four years later, age has wearied me and the years have well and truly condemned; I can’t drink anymore. It’s too much and it’s too hard for me to bounce back from.

So farewell lady liquor…well, until next week at least.