Alcohol

I stopped drinking it, or reduced my consumption of it by 98%. With (only positive) consequences

I noticed that there is a beer in the refrigerator. I didn’t remember having it. Seeing it led me to wonder if I felt like drinking it, which is a way of asking whether or not I could resist the temptation. I concluded that I was indifferent to it. I closed the refrigerator. I haven’t had a drink for nine months now.

Before nine months ago there were always beers in my fridge, and a worry — not an obsession but certainly a thought — was that there would always be some. To think that a slot in my brain was occupied by the “Buy Beer” reminder makes me smile but also think about how badly one can misuse the brain. It is, after all, a tool with a finite mnemonic and processing capacity, and to occupy a part of it to remind yourself to buy beers (and simultaneously to keep track of how many you have left, and possibly provide for them) is to leave no room for other mental processing. You have to free the mental processor, at least of these loads.

I did not quit because the cardiologist told me to, nor because I thought it had become an addiction. To this day I still believe I was not addicted to it (evidenced by the fact that I quit overnight with no consequences except positive ones), but all the more reason, since getting…