Detox - Take Two

I am sitting here reading all the indescribably bad shite that goes into Diet Caffeine Free (disclaimer - insert cola drink name of your imagination here). What am I doing to myself? Draw up a chair and I'll let on..........

I am a Roman Catholic. A practicing left footer. Again, there's enough luggage there to jam the bandwidth of the information superhighway, but I mention it solely to bring up the subject of Lent. Every year, I go absolutely banzai and give up shedloads of stuff I genuinely love and cannot live without. And you know what? Yes, it has absolutely zippo to do with JC's temptations in the desert, that is stuff for the mind, not to be mimicked in body. Nope, it is the only time of year, all 46.5 days of it (my mum said it ends at midday on Holy Saturday, and she's in heaven now) that I can fairly say I am in control of my addictions, which I have now whittled down to two - alcohol and proper coffee.

I actually enjoy Lent when I get the hang of it. I also enjoy looking forward to it, as I find my year starts on Easter Sunday, and I start my precious habits slowly and responsibly. It takes until Mersea Week in August to start getting battered seriously again, a process that usually starts with a post race drink on board, and then ramps up in West Mersea Yacht Club in the apres-race analysis. The next big festival for alcoholic over-indulgence is of course Christmas, and then during the run up to Ash Wednesday, I positively ache to give up the sauce.

The first year I gave up the booze was unmitigated hell for the whole 46 days. I was a social leper, avoiding going to the pub at all costs for fear of my defences being breached, I cut myself off from friends and family gatherings and moped (that's a funny word to type, sounds like the family motorbike!) around the house in me slippers. What put the hell into perfect perspective was starting drinking again on Easter Sunday, and finding how weird drink tastes. I found beer the worst, posh bottled lagers tasted unpleasantly metallic. Consequently, I drank much more moderately, and my slow decline into over-indulgence left me with the memory that being dry felt good.

And being dry does feel good. I sleep like a baby, need an hour less each night, and feel massively more energetic when I wake. I always describe myself as coming off the bed like a long dog. The whites of my eyes are whiter, approaching white, I lose weight and I generally combine it with a get-fit campaign. To paraphrase Gene Hackman in one of his less celebrated roles, 'I could rip the ass out of an elephant'.

So what's all this joining in with the atheists, detoxing on January 2nd? The answer, dear reader, is that I haven't given up the sauce, not entirely.

What worried me was a report in the broadsheet press about middle class drinking at home. I calculated I was wiping out an annual figure dangerously close to three hundred bottles of red wine or equivalent. That is a liver-bursting amount, certainly health-threatening, and I'm otherwise proud of a year in the gym and a good basic level of all-round fitness. So it has/had to stop.

So I analysed why I drink. The biggest reason is for social ease. There is nothing I enjoy more than having a snifter with friends, that delicious feeling when the alcohol first delivers its calming wave. Answer - Only drink in social situations. No nighttime glass on the desk whilst tapping away at the VOIP connection with the office, or indeed typing this.

So I thought I'd give it a go. Another factor is the unusually early Easter this year. Anyone bearing the name of the calendar decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 knows that Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, or March 21st. I think I'm right in saying that Easter can be no earlier than this year, 2008, and I am struggling to find the last year it was celebrated on Sunday 23rd March, great though the power of Wikipedia is. My thinking is that Ash Wednesday is going to be around the 9th February this year, so if I rein in my drinking ahead of that, it will be the easiest year ever.

The real problem with this is perennial. My birthday. March the sodding 1st. A nine in ten chance of being within Lent every year. What the hell.

So, tonight is day three of leaving the booze alone, two nights of wonderfully restorative sleep and easy waking, and the prospect of another tonight. Might nip down the pub tomorrow night for a couple, and my dear neice Jess is coming on Monday, so that's a big night out, but if only I can keep this not drinking at home up until Ash Wednesday, then the chances of continuing the new regimen after Easter portend well.

So I raise my delicious Not Coke in a toast to finer living!! Salut!