No Longer Under The Influence
Twenty-six days into ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Scotland's Under The Influence season and people are still asking me about my own decision to give up drinking.
"I've only given up drinking alcohol," I tell them. Otherwise I would have dehydrated to the point where you could scoop me in glass jars and sell me as crystals of dried fat. Yet the questions continue and this worries me. It suggests that my friends and colleagues feel unsettled unless they see me holding a pint glass and wiping a blob of froth from my chin. Especially at breakfast time.
When I insist that I'm not really missing the booze, no one seems quite satisfied with that. So I tell them about the first few days of my abstinence when I was having those biting headaches and bad dreams.
"Ah...that's the toxins making themselves known," said one know-it-all. Who knew that toxins were such attention-seekers?
Anyway, I've realised I need to come up with some better answers if only to keep others amused. Allow me to test the following on you and invite you to suggest better alternatives if you feel so inclined. Mind you, if you're so inclined, you've probably had one too many yourself.
Q. I hear you've given up the booze...how's that going?
A. Just fine. No problem at all. I mean, sucking the alcohol out of thermometers doesn't really count, does it?
Q. So what made you give up drinking anyway?
A. Well you know those crazy programme ideas you're always trying to pitch to me in the pub. Lately I started to believe they were actually good.
Q. I'm told you're off the sauce. Are you going to be a bore about it?
A. Not at all, but last night I was visited by the Holy Spirit and he told me you had better stop drinking too or risk eternal damnation. You going to eat those chips or what?
Q. You've gone almost a month without a drink. Do you feel better for it?
A. Are you kidding? I've never felt better. It's like my mind is really clear for the first time in years. The last thing I remember is going into the Student Union to have my first legal pint and now it's twenty-eight years later, I have a wife and two kids and they tell me I'm running a radio station. How did that happen?
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