During the last couple of years, especially the last year, I became quite dependent on beer. I had never been an alcoholic, and I wasn’t drinking too much most times, usually just 0.5L to 1L, which is a bottle or two. But the problem is, it became way too often.
I wrote it back then. And re-wrote it some years later.
I placed it into its original time-frame, as a part of this valuable series on addictions.
First, it was just weekly, usually on Fridays. Then, a couple of times a week. Then, every other day. And eventually and predictably, it became every single day. I tried drinking low-alcohol beers, or even non-alcohol beers.
Non-alcoholic#
My very first time drinking non-alcohol beer was quite funny one.
We were in a nearby shop with my work-mate and close friend, who also happened to live nearby. I offered him to grab a beer. He could resist it first, I won’t recall. But I remember that word-by-word I persuaded him, by offering to take non-alcoholic one. I’ve never tried non-alcoholic beer, and in that location it’s a subject to many offensive jokes. Like real men never drink non-alcoholic beers, ‘it’s for the pussies’ you know. I didn’t care about the jokes, and I just wanted to compare. I guessed the taste should be much worse.
So, we grabbed 0.5L or even 0.33L bottles each, and just drank it on our stroll back home. That’s where police came, out of the blue. It’s illegal to drink alcohol in public places, and we were aware of it. We didn’t try to mask it in any way, because, well, it wasn’t alcohol! That’s what I said to the police, smiling. They didn’t believe us, so I showed one officer my beer, it was non-alcoholic indeed. I don’t remember the police reaction, whether they smiled back or not, but we were given permission to continue our stroll. Possibly we finished drinking those small bottles by then already, and just trashed them.
I cannot recall the taste. But I think that’s because I wasn’t smacking my beers by then. I just drank them like water. There was a funny song of a German origin, with the meaning ‘it’s not the beer that kills people, it’s the water!’, which every other alcoholic was murmuring.
Taste#
At that point in life, I was fat. While my normal weight varies from 75 to 85 kgs, depending on the muscles mass; I was at about 95 kgs to 100 kgs. I wasn’t overweight or obese, as I’m quite high (about 185 cm), but I quickly gained some breasts and beer-belly.
I didn’t like the taste of beer, by the way. Never liked. It just was fine with some fish, chips, and other things. I’ve been eating junk food in huge quantities, with that small bottle of beer. That was the primary problem (apart from alcohol intake), as eating a pile of junk food with one bottle of beer was easy.
That was the problem of its own. I easily combined two bad habits and improved upon it each and every day. One day I would take beer and junk food; other day I’ll take just a huge pack of Lay’s, make my willpower exercise and avoid beer. The next day I’ll take that chips pack again, but as its better with beer, I would take it too. The following day, I would take just the beer, but then again, why not take some chips, right? That was a dead end.
Twenty years later? I would say fish and chips, beers included, isn’t that bad of a taste. It’s just, it’s not healthy, you know. Do it once in a while, just don’t make it your habit. Like most addictions, being a habit is the problem.
Degustations#
At some point, I got tired of just repeating my beer-chips cycle over and over again, so I invented a degustation contest. I would buy every possible beer in town and smack it.
I think, that helped me solve that problem.
I was half-assing that contest. Never kept any records, never made any spreadsheet of beers, no nothing. I was just trying to buy a new beer each time. Guinness? How could I been buying so many beers and never tried Guinness? (Don’t ask!) How could I never tried Budweiser? Thanks god, all that happened before the IPA was as popular as it is today! (Fiveteen years later.)
I was drinking that beer, and tried to compare. Do I like it more or less? Even when I did not like it more, I tried to not buy the only one beer I like, I tried to put that difference as the differenciation factor. I would just buy another beer next time. I had a very good visual memory of all the packaging, so I would just buy another one that I never tried before.
- Haha, that’s what those brands do to hack our tiny brains! They constantly update the visual communication, aren’t they?
As that was pre-smartphones times, I had no pictures of my beer frags. But even if I’d buy same beer twice, not a problem! I did repeated my purchases, but I tried to keep the difference line anyway.
At some point, I’ve tried all the beers in that nearby supermarket. And since I’ve been half-assing it, I never tried to haunt some rare beer that just one bar in a country sells. As this beer habit wasn’t even a social habit, most times I drank home alone, it wasn’t difficult to gave up on this. I just naturally lost interest, I’ve tried all the beers (in that one supermarket near my home).
Later on, I’ve found another job that I liked more, it wasn’t as routinish, and I was focused on it, so I just forgot about the beers. Then the life kicked in, I had my girlfriend and didn’t feel that lonely to just routinely drink beers at home, my first relocations, my first other big events in life. I never came back, and could easily say I never drank a beer since then. With just a couple of exceptions here and there, but that wasn’t a big deal anyway.
I was just lucky to leave it that easily. These days beer is just a drink for me. And since I don’t like the taste, and I’m not up to following that white rabbit and seek the beer I’d like, I don’t care about beer. I may drink a beer on a special occasion, and if there’s a beer lover in my life, who would invite me to some great beerthey like, possibly I won’t skip. But most times now, I would just prefer a very old Scottish whiskey. I’m not addicted to it (yet), as I drink those on special occasions and in a very small quantities. I just like it and drink it not to avoid something, but for the joy of it.
Do you have some addictions too? The ones you were fighting, the ones you are fighting? If you want to talk about it, I’m open to it.
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