Diana's Diary

2003-03-08 - 1:25 p.m.

Sobriety Checkpoint

Last night was JB's "Last day at old job, two days till new job starts" crash-in. She rented a hotel suite for it and everything.

And my God...how dreadfully boring. Get a bunch of girls together, and I would have thought that we would at least do something fun. But no. The choices were (a) watch bad movies on hotel-room HBO, (b) eat junk food, and (c) drink.

Now, I have definitely had some regrets after being presented with situations like last night. (Halloween 2001 and this past New Year's come to mind. Party's boring? Have another drink.)

After last New Year's, I vowed I was never going to drink again. Obviously, no one took me seriously, and I'm not even sure I took myself seriously. But really. Drinking until everyone else becomes interesting isn't really a very good idea. More likely, you'll just make an ass of yourself. (Or wake up naked in a hotel room and not remember how you got like that.)

So. Since last New Year's, I have had the following alcoholic beverages:

1. Half a flute of champage at the cocktail party in Orlando, when the President gave his toast.

2. One cosmopolitan at the club in Orlando when I was with Martine and Ebie.

3. One appletini in the lounge at the hotel, bought for me by one of our Board members who was drunk and belligerent and seemed to want everyone else to be drunk and belligerent, too. (Why is it that drunk people always seem to want everyone around them to be drunk, too? Fewer credible witnesses after the fact, maybe?)

4. Three swallows of a mudslide. (Holden made one for Selena, and there was a little bit too much to fit in one glass, so I got the leftover.)

5. About four swallows of pear cider at the crash-in last night. The first swallow almost made me physically ill, the next couple weren't much better, so I ended up giving the rest to JB.

Okay. Not exactly "never drinking again" here. But considering how I am offered alcohol every single day of my life, it's not all that bad. (Selena has started having at least one mudslide every night, and of course, Holden is a "former" alcoholic. The kind of "former" that still drinks like a fish, but at least he hasn't had to go get his stomach pumped in a couple of years. Yes, I know that living with these people is not healthy for me.)

The majority of my drinking since January 1 was when I was at a meeting. It is very hard not to drink at meetings. (See above re: boring people.) Every time I ordered a ginger ale instead of a martini, I had to deal with all of the "why aren't you drinking" questions, and then the inevitable, "hehe, little girl's not old enough to drink yet" jokes. Ugh. I am old enough to drink--I will be 24 later this month--I just chose not to. I cannot imagine what it must be like for a recovering alcoholic--it seems like people are always trying to get you to drink! Maybe it's the industry I work in, but it seems like people are always giving me bottles of wine. (Doesn't help that my boss's husband is a high-muckety-muck at a vineyard, either.) And going to cocktail parties is part of my job. It's enough to drive a girl to drink, ha ha. Except not.

So, I guess I'm not saying that I'll never drink again. I am realistic. What I am saying is that when I do choose to drink, it will be on my own terms, and not because everyone around me wants/expects me to (funny that I never really had to deal with peer pressure when I was in school, and do now that I'm an "adult"). And trying to make someone else seem interesting is not a valid reason to drink. Nor is drinking for the express purpose of getting drunk, which seemed to be the point of last night.

Anyway, about last night. It was stupid, and boring, and everyone who was there was drunk except for me, and then they all started to fall alseep around 11:00. I was wide-awake and bored, so I made my apologies and went home, happy to wake up this morning alone in my own bed, sans hangover, and not having to rush around to make myself presentable before checking out the hotel.

Good day.

-Diana

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2003-12-16 - Ow! My Nose!
2003-12-15 - 'Tis the Season...For Moving
2003-11-17 - Rush, Rush
2003-11-03 - Apartment Hunting Sucks
2003-10-22 - Apparently, "nauseated" is a good look for me.

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