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Giving up grog, inspired by Peter FitzSimons, to focus on work

John Birmingham

I've just had a year off the grog, or the better part of one anyway. I blame, or credit, Peter FitzSimons who wrote a now famous column last summer about giving up the drink, and sugar, and dropping a heap of weight.

Pete has slimmed down from a high of 152 kilograms, to just over a hundred. He's a big man and because he's back in the gym and putting on muscle mass, he probably won't go much below that.

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Australia's love-affair with alcohol may be cooling according to a research poll published in May. Vision courtesy ABC News 24

I stopped drinking because I had a hell of a year coming. I'd just had a hell of year gone by and there was a line in Pete's column that resonated deeply.

He was having dinner with a friend – some big wig at Thredbo if I recall – and at some point the former Wallaby realised his mate had let him run away with the drinking duties.

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He hadn't touched a drop, in fact, while Pete had done his best to introduce a bit of scarcity into the nation's red wine supply. "Why aren't you drinking?" he asked.

His mate explained that his job was difficult and important and he owed it his A game.

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I had some difficult and important work to do this year, and that line hit low and hard.

I do love a drink.

Even now, a year off it and soon to end my exile, I still love a cold one.

But I have to confess some anxiety about uncorking the bottle again.

FitzSimons is an advocate of radical temperance. He believes it's easier to just stop drinking than it is to moderate yourself, and there's some truth to that. I have a hard-won experience now.

In previous years I've often let my liver take a break from the Christmas drinking season, going dry in February to repair the damage done over summer.

Anyone who's tried that will know it ain't easy.

But for some weird reason it's a lot easier when the prospect of a drink is removed completely. You'll be thirsty every day, for sure. But you don't have to listen to the whining of that little voice that argues and cajoles, "If you're gonna rip the top off one in a couple of weeks anyway, why wait?"

When your next drink is a year away, it's not an issue.

My next drink is no longer a year away, though. I'll be having one later this week. And I'm looking forward to it, but like I said, I haveâ€Ĥ concerns.

Like FitzSimons I've dropped weight this year and kept it off. That's mostly down to removing thousands of empty calories a week from my diet.

It would be cool not to put them back on the table.

Like Fitz, and his Thredbo mate, I've been able to bring much greater focus to my work this year, building a new business line of self-published books while writing a couple of other titles for my traditional publishers here and in the US.

Be nice to keep up that sort of productivity.

I've also enjoyed much better sleep. Just before she died the great screenwriter Nora Ephron wrote a magazine article condensing to a short list all of the most important things she'd learned in life. The one that stayed with me - that second glass of wine is why you can't get a full night's sleep.

Nora, you spoke the truth.

So I'm fitter and more productive, but unlike Fitz I'm not an evangelical convert to the dry path. Why?

Partly it's the social cost. Most of our socialising is lubricated by alcohol and if you don't drink you really do bring everyone down. The initial curiosity ("Seriously? Wow? I couldn't even!") turns to discomfort and resentment as you remain icily sober while surrounded by increasingly overheated drunks.
Eventually, the invites stop coming.

Meals in restaurants are less pleasant too, and as somebody who occasionally writes reviews I know how big a part the wine bill plays in keeping most restaurants afloat. The few times I've eaten out this year I felt genuinely guilty for ordering fizzy water.

And sometimes, damn it, you just need a drink. But there's the rub. The need.

Oh, I've had plenty of days, but mostly nights, when I felt the terrible need of alcohol – most often when things would go wrong. But as Fitz points out, with undeniable authority, it's when things are going wrong that you should really leave the cork in the bottle.

I had the knowing of this forced on me the hard way somewhere around the middle of this year. I said it was going to be a hell of a year, and it was. 2016 has been hell for everyone.

It was during winter that I fell into a profound melancholy. Not depression, but something that could have become depression if it had gone on much longer. I think, looking back, that not being able to drink led me into that dark place.

If I have one revelation to add to all that Peter FitzSimons' has written about this, it's a realisation of just how much we medicate ourselves, how much I was medicating myself, with alcohol.

Take that medicine away and I was forced to confront some pretty raw wounds and pain. Because I was thinking clearly, and getting my sleep every night, I guess I could confront them, but it took time. Probably three or four months.

So I find myself now at the end of this experiment in a strange place. I was never going to give up the grog permanently. I've been looking forward to having that first drink all year. But as it gets closer I am, I dunno. Disquieted.

I'm happy to talk it over below.

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