One trick to interrupt alcohol consumption

First, this is not a you-are-in-idiot-if-you-drink-alcohol story. I get annoyed by patronizing stories about sobriety. I enjoy my drinks in the evenings and have no intention of radically changing my habits. It’s like with my consumption of meat. There was a period when I started losing weight and increasing my running and convinced myself I’d never eat meat again. That experiment failed. There was no good reason to be so dramatic about my nutrition and sometimes I’d crave steak. Nowadays, it’s all resolved: I don’t eat red meat that often, but I greatly enjoy a juicy ribeye steak every other week or so.

When it comes to alcohol, for many years, I’ve enjoyed having two-three drinks every evening. Beer or wine, never hard liquor, and I never drink during the day. Beer is especially enjoyable if I run in the evening and the weather is hot. Last year I questioned my habit, wondering if it was an addiction, and stopped drinking overnight. No problems —for weeks, I went without a sip of alcohol. Then I “restarted” during the Christmas holidays. The days were lazy, my wife was having a glass of wine, and I joined. Then several weeks later, I stopped again. Then I resumed. I ran a marathon earlier this month and stopped again two weeks before the race.

The dry stretches were good. It felt good to cleanse my mind of the fog that alcohol no doubt causes. The fog was nothing extreme, not impacting my routines and certainly not my running (I’d never do anything that would jeopardize my daily running), but it was a fog…