Day 18

Here are days 13, 14, 15, 16 & 17... my sincere apologies for the silence. It's been a busy week including last weekend. Should you not wish to read all this, at least read day 17, that's the best!

Some facts in summarizing this period:

• Yes I am still 100% alcohol free, 18 days today and loving this new AF life more every day!
  
• Last Friday night I took the wife and daughter to see The Little Mermaid theater production performed by some of the kids at my daughter's school Elkanah House. For a bunch of school kids it was excellent! Some serious talent among them, it was a thoroughly entertaining 2 hours!
  
• Saturday morning (day 13) I embarked on my 4th Ultra marathon, the Cape Town Festival of
  
  Running, I did the 50km distance. I found this to be a tougher race than the 56km Two Oceans Marathon in April, because of the tough mental challenge of this race, which took the shape of a dead-pan flat 5km loop around the Sea Point promenade from the swimming pool to the Mouille Point lighthouse, 10 times. The first few laps were great fun, greeting friends as you pass them, beautiful scenery on a stunning day, etc. But by around lap 7 to 8 you no longer greet your friends and don't care for the now repetitive scenery, like the Groundhog Day of running. To run a loop 10 times over 6 hours and 28 minutes is a complete mind-fuck, a mental challenge unlike I have ever experienced! But I finished, never to do that again! Well not until next year at least!
  The rest of the day was spent licking my wounds in front of the TV watching a few good movies with my girls!
• Sunday, day 14, I took my daughter to our local theme park, Ratanga Junction. After a good

  

  Tammy and me on the Monkey Falls water ride

  night's sleep I felt strong and lively again and had a really awesome day out with my little girl, while Wife roamed the world famous shoppers paradise Canal Walk shopping centre (I hate the place with a passion, so it suited me fine to leave her there for a few hours without the soul-sucking experience of having to be dragged around the place in abject misery absolutely aching to rather be drinking, which I often did do, go sit in the bar in the center and deliberately get pissed). Instead Tammy and I had a delightful daddy-daughter date enjoying all the rides, roller coasters, bumper cars, etc, had hot dogs for lunch, and an all round ball of a day. Then home, picking up the shopped out mom on the way, to end the weekend with another movie and a nice warm dinner of, I think chicken and stuff.
  
• All weekend I had very few cravings for booze, unlike the previous (first) weekend AF. It was really so negligible this weekend that it was not an issue at any stage, even the evenings. Though I suppose the lack of social events contributed to a lack of desire to drink.
  
• Monday, day 15, following another suckingly long day at work, with the expected usual post work cravings for a drink on the tedious journey home, I dropped Wife off at home, got changed and went to the gym for a fantastic spinning class and a strength workout. Once again the lack of alcohol poisoning every aspect of my life and body was noticeable. I had the strongest spinning class ever, it was surprisingly easy and more fun than usual. Even the instructor commented on my animated liveliness (I was air drumming on the bicycle to Nickelback! LOL) Every Monday at 6pm is my preferred spinning class, but 4 times out of 5 I've missed it because of hangovers from Sunday night and most days when I do pitch it's half hearted because of a weakened mind and body from drinking. After this workout I felt awesome!
  
• Tuesday, day 16. The usual on a Tuesday afternoon, in a hurry to get back and Murphy being a prick again I got stuck in frustrating traffic, worse than usual, which raises my impatience and anxiety to boiling point, getting my alcohol monster within very excited about the increased possibility of getting fed a hearty dose of booze, elixir of life for the addiction, deadly poison for my mind and body. But again the cravings were less severe than before because the monster is getting weaker without the booze. It's dying slowly.
  The rush was to drop Wife off at home and get down to the running club for the regular Tuesday club run. I only did a 5km, it was a cold, overcast and miserable evening, not pleasant conditions though I did enjoy the run, and again abstained from getting alcohol at the club bar afterwards despite hanging around to socialise for a good half hour.
  Then I headed off to Durbanville to the recording studio to lay down some more drum tracks for the recording we're working on. On Monday the guitarist decided to increase the tempo by 2bpm and as our soundie is still new to recording he didn't know how to compress the overall drum tracks digitally to fit the tempo so I had to go in to re-record the complete drum tracks. Which was fine, I love recording, it's great fun and therapeutic to my soul. And the accelerometer in my Garmin sports watch picks up the motion as steps. A solid rocking evening of band practice clocks at about a half marathon distance on my watch.
  
• Wednesday, Day 17. This was an awesome day concerning my journey to become free from the

  

  My work colleagues

  alcohol addiction, a rather large victory in this war with the booze! Last night I went out with some work colleagues to dinner at a local fancy steakhouse. 5 loud blokes in management including the boss out on a work pissup and dinner paid for by the company. The boss put 2 bottles of wine on the table for everybody. I did not have a single sip of alcohol all night! The other guys polished off the wine and had a few beers and tequila's. I drank Coke Zero and a coffee at the end. I did announce when I got there that I wouldn't be drinking alcohol, they were shocked and cracked a few jokes and I laughed with but it was fine and soon forgotten.
  
  The most surprising aspect to this scenario is that not drinking alcohol did not bother me in the least, not at all, not once! I did not wish to have a glass of wine or crave a beer or feel left out when the tequila's went around. I was perfectly content without booze and had a perfectly enjoyable evening without it, quite comfortable in the conversations and as chatty and funny as anybody else; and the other guys drinking and getting steadily inebriated did not phase me either. In fact I rather enjoyed being on the sober bench watching the dynamics evolve through alcohol as the evening progressed and it was quite fascinating. Nobody got stupid or misbehaved but they did get louder, more vulgar with language and more opinionated, but usually I would be as "tipsy" if not more drunk as everybody else so I've never seen this perspective before of a dinner party with outspoken drinkers and unlimited alcohol.
  
  The result of this evening, this test, is that I now know that I do not need booze to enjoy a

  

  Found my namesake in Sea Point, randomly
  bumped into him, we are friends on Facebook,
  I thought he lived in Europe. He recognised
  me. Such a rare chance meeting and it happens
  out of the blue after a race! Bizarre!

  social gathering, and I am perfectly happy without it while still feeling perfectly confident and comfortable socializing without the false sense of courage that we've been led to believe alcohol gives us. In fact I felt more in control of my mind and what I said, I didn't make an ass of myself, slur, knock stuff over or fall around.
  
  And to top it off, driving home with the complete peace of mind of being 100% sober after a party was brilliant! No fear of being caught by the cops, or causing an accident, etc. In fact I arrogantly hoped to be pulled over and breathalyzed.
  
  There are a number of social events coming up soon which will involve alcohol, and my initial fear of doing it sober and missing out is now an excitement for a new era of socializing in a far more enjoyable way, without spending a fortune on booze, the risk of making an idiot of myself or being a nuisance, or not remembering the event, or having to drive home drunk with my family and risking ours or other innocent people's lives... I really am excited about this!

That's my news for today.

The series of photos below is from that 50km race, I took on the mind-distraction of taking a selfie after each lap and at the start and finish. You can see the deterioration in enthusiasm as the race progressed, except the last lap acknowledging only one lap to go! One hell of a rough day: