Myth busting

You can’t have a good time without a drink! You are boring without alcohol. Drinking makes you cool. Alcohol is not a drug because it legal.

All the above I believed. Why wouldn’t I? It is ingrained in us from an early age that when we get older we should drink alcohol, it’s what makes us an adult. It’s only this last 4 months of my 38 years of life that I have realised we do this and it’s the most ridiculous thing isn’t it?

We grow up asking dad for a sip of his beer, we see mum drinking wine to relax her and can’t wait to be old enough to feel those grown up feelings. It’s normal to drink, or so society, or at least the society i have been part of made it normal. Up until recently I was bringing my daughter up exactly the same way.

Most humans including myself are stupid. We have a tendency to believe everything we read and not question it. Advertising and marketing are the absolute worst, glorifying alcohol. Pimms o’clock. Lambrini girls have more fun. The Budweiser advert!

This post has come from a little reflection. I went camping this weekend. I was a little nervous about it, camping to us is about cracking open that beer at 10.30am putting the tent up and just leisurely drinking throughout the day into the night. Before you know it you have had 4 beers and 2 bottles of bubbles cranking the music up and chatting shit. Then you sleep horrendous, get up at 6am the next day as you have no choice because the tent has turned into a sauna and you do the whole day again but not as well as the day before. Then morning 2 you wake up wanting to die rather than pack away all your tent feeling queezy as hell hoping your husband offers drive home so you don’t have to admit you probably shouldn’t as you are still drunk from the night before.

It’s funny as writing it down is making me wonder why I would miss that but I was worried I would. I had an absolute blast without the booze. I had so much energy although still had the shit sleep but I think that’s just camping isn’t it! I was playing tennis with the kids, playing laser tag, swimming, morning walks fresh as a daisy. I was anything but boring. I went to bed the same time as everyone else who were drinking. I didn’t feel left out at any point. I had zero arguments with my husband. An overall success! It made me want to drink even less.

I have to give credit to AF beer though, it really does help.

I am reading more about the harsh facts about alcohol lately that not many of us make reference to because they are classed as scaremongering but I think we should have a bit more scaremongering to counteract the glorifying that alcohol gets!

Scaremongering coming up. Alcohol is a drug and we need to remember that. Every time it goes into our body we are poisoning it. Some are more sensitive to it and I think I was one of them with the severity of my hangovers. There is sufficient evidence that ethanol – the chemical present in all alcoholic beverages – is a carcinogen!!!! It’s causes cancer! If you have breast cancer in your family and drink a lot of alcohol you are increasing your risk of getting by 35%, this is big and frigggin scary as hell. Alcohol per year kills more people than global terrorism and alcohol kills more people than any other drug! Yet the government still let the media glamorise it because they want the money but think of all the money they could be saving the health service of no one drank.

Ok as I write this I see I have gone off on a tangent, I’m not preaching. If you have read my previous posts I’m not planning to be a non drinker forever but I am glad I know all the bad stuff because if I do drink again I can do it knowing what I am doing to my body as that would be my choice. I’m hoping this information will help me moderate especially now I know I’m not boring and I don’t need the alcohol to get through any event.

Happy Aussie day weekend to Aussie family xxx