Yesterday we had lunch at one of our favorite flatbread places. It was nice. Socially distant. Good service. And for the first time in a very very very long time, alcohol-free at a restaurant.

This was the first time we had gone out to eat since we stopped drinking two and a half weeks ago. And I didn’t really miss it. I had twinges of looking at the beer menu and watching the bartender. But it was pretty easy. I drank, like 57 gallons of iced tea.

But the striking thing was when the bill came. It was only $28 for lunch. And I thought there was a mistake. We never spend $28 at lunch. In fact I don’t remember the last time we went out to eat and the bill was less than 50 bucks. And so we kind of looked at each other and realized that without the alcohol, the bill was literally half of what it would have been. My wife would have had gin and tonic. That’s going to run 8 to $10 each. And she probably would have had two. I would have had beer most likely. Those would have run six bucks each. And I probably would have had three. So the whole thing would have come to about $56 And we would have left a $15 tip. And so that would have been $71 for lunch.

Now in the past, pre-covid and pre-sober, we would have done that a couple of times a month. So it made us consider how much were we spending on alcohol for the house. And when you count a bottle of whiskey a bottle of vodka, bottle of wine (or 5), couple of six packs of beer etc etc during the course of a month, and in some cases much more than that, depending upon if we had friends over or we’re going to the lake or just wanted another bottle of whiskey, we figure it all added up to around $400 a month.

Human beings are weird aren’t we? Why would we spend $400 a month to poison ourselves? Because let’s face it that’s what you’re doing when you’re drinking heavily.

Really think about that.

You may like drinking. Hell, I like drinking. But the fact of the matter is, it is not good for you. It just isn’t. You’re making the choice to drink something that you know isn’t good for you because it makes you feel a specific way. But in reality it’s poison. You are ingesting poison. And if you do it enough you’re slowly killing yourself.

So let’s say you spend $400 a month on alcohol. If you only do that for three months that’s $1,200. Think about what it would be if you did that for six months which is about where we were. That’s $2,400 we spent to voluntarily ingest poison.

Two thousand dollars to voluntarily drink poison. Seriously?

Suddenly I feel really stupid. I mean just like blindingly ignorant.

Think of all the cool shit I could have bought for twenty four hundred bucks. Or what if I would have taken every dollar we would have spent on alcohol and put it in a piggy bank. After even a year we’d have enough to take a pretty decent vacation.

So think about that next time you voluntarily ingest poison that you paid good money for. I’m just saying. That’s definitely something that will run through my brain from now on.

So it’s Sunday now. We are off to the woods for another hike. We were going to get the kayaks on the River today but for some reason we decided to go hiking. Which is great. Either is fine with me. I like being outside and I like the exercise.

Peace