Hey Bartender

When my heart got stepped on in September of 2013 and then further mangled around May/June of 2014 by a southerner who sold me for a country song, I made the mistake of thinking wine would help.

It didn't.

Then this Lady Antebellum song came out conveniently a week or so after a NOLA bartender named a drink after me and booked a trip to Boston to overlap with a week I was spending there with my family.



Throughout my late teens and in to my late twenties, I drank for a lot of reasons.  I copied pages of my diary to show my parents when I got caught drinking my senior year of high school.  I wanted them to see how I'd struggled to decide to deceive them, how I hadn't simply caved to peer pressure, and how I was actively attempting to lower my inhibitions.

Prude, first born, over achieving, daughter of squares that I was, I had A LOT of inhibitions blocking my access to what I believed to be the full teenage experience.  So quarters games led to funneling and I toasted to "the nights we'd never remember with the people we'd never forget" for about a decade before waking up with a resolution on my 28th birthday.  Never again did I want to have that "oh shit" moment upon opening my eyes for the first time after a night out....

I didn't want to regret or forget conversations, canoodling sessions, or any uncharacteristic behaviors that might have been benchmarks of the evening prior.  Ever again.

So far so good since then.

A big trick I've been using: drinking less... even not drinking at all, especially in circumstances where I'm prone to experiencing emotion.  Because emotion + alcohol = a lack of cognitive control.

It's actually like only now, at 31, I understand the value of inhibition.  Only now do I appreciate and honor my internal barometer for what I'm comfortable with.

I wasn't lying to my parents, I didn't follow others in their decision to drink.  I definitely made my own and had so much fun in the years I spent drinking recreationally.  Once in a blue moon, I love a few too many blue moons or vodka sodas or what have you.

But I'm actually really content with the decisions and lifestyle of Sober Naugs.  She's still super fun.  She just also never needs her parents to pick her up from the party because she's gotten too sloppy.  And she just doesn't chase that disco ball around till she can't remember.