Sex and the city – Day 9

I watched the sex and the city movie on Netflix last night, it really got me thinking about me weekend I just had.

I love this programme and these films. The more I think about it the more I notice how cool drinking booze is made to be. At the birthday thing in the park at weekend, people were asking me why I am not drinking. I said its just not working for me anymore and I think I would do better without it. There were a few raised eyebrows because they didn’t understand it, that’s because they are not where I am! They don’t know how much I drink. One friend said, you don’t drink much though do you? When I explained how much I do drink she said aw that’s not bad its normal. Normal! I said I drank average 4 bottles of wine a week and she thought that was normal. That’s 40 units of alcohol a week and as a women I am not supposed to have more than 14. I am not blaming sex and the city, like I said its one of my all time faves but its films, programmes and advertising like this that makes us think its normal to drink a lot. We have lost sight of what normal is.

Take the new Gin craze. People are going crazy for it, why? They are putting it in pretty bottles, making unusual attractive flavors, opening special gin bars and giving it glamorous advertising. At the weekend there was a gin festival in our local park, you should have seen how busy it was. People who didn’t like gin are now big gin fans. All because its been made cool. People also follow people right?

It gets me thinking that what if the SATC girls didn’t drink cosmopolitans and drank virgin mocktails, what if the media took a shift and started to make alcohol sound really uncool. No more pretty girls in bikinis running down a beach with a bottle of corona in there hand, instead an overweight unhealthy looking alcoholic sat in a chair watching TV drinking a bottle of corona, not as appealing I don’t think.

When I read (twice) the unexpected joy of being sober by Catherine Gray ( https://twitter.com/cathgraywrites?lang=en ) she mentions some good blogs and podcasts to follow. After looking into some of them there seems to be a growing movement happening that is making sober cool. What is even better is that people in there 20’s are doing it, the amount of celebrities that are doing it, I hear in Australia even teenagers are turning there nose up at it. Its encouraging and exciting to think if I succeed in my mission to completely stop drinking then I may not be the only one.

Here are just two of the recommendations that Catherine makes that I have been reading to far. https://www.hipsobriety.com/ and https://www.lauramckowen.com/

On another note – my day 8. Its Monday again and I don’t feel as fresh as I had hoped and still have some brain fog, my sleep is still off and motivation at work is low. I am trying to stay positive and not disappointed that I don’t feel better from not drinking for a week but I know its still early days. In good news though I downloaded this app called I’m done drinking (again this is from the book that Catherine recommends) and from right now I not drank for 8 days, I’ve not consumed 20 150 ml glass of wine, I’ve saved $63 and saved 2540 calories. Pretty good going!!