Abstinence makes the heart grow stronger?

"I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink."

Joe E. Lewis

Getting more exercise, learning more technique, eating a better diet... one of the first things we were told when joining the WCB was that no matter how well we do in these three vital areas, it would all be futile if we were going out and getting boozed up every other night. I suppose technically alcohol consumption would come under the "better diet" label, but it's amazing how well drinkers can compartmentalise that particular activity!

This was me coming first in a race that
combined running with drinking.
Seriously.
NOT what I will be doing in training...

The immediate assumption is that stopping drinking should be very difficult for me, bearing in mind I manage a pub! After all, the Monday to Friday office crowd can choose not to go to a bar after work, and instead just go home, but I have to be in the thick of it, surrounded by booze (and boozers), with temptation quite literally there all the time. And there is some truth in this - especially on a quiet afternoon when one of the regulars wants to buy you a drink, or one of the suppliers comes down and wants to get a round in for your team. However, given the right mindset sobriety could also be seen as easier for me than others...

For one thing, I don't tend to drink at home, unless we have company. I have various bottles around the place, but years of drinking at work and then getting home at hours too ridiculous to warrant more alcohol have conditioned me to not even consider home-drinking. The office based crowd may be able to avoid the pub, but what temptation do they face at home - especially if no-one is there to see them!!

Secondly, even though I could drink at work, the fact that I am still at work tends to give me a bit of restraint with it. Having worked in a "normal" job before, I know how easy it is to get "on the lash" on a Friday night, but when you are overseeing everyone else's enjoyment in your pub you need a degree of clarity and detachment - don't get me wrong, I have a lot of fun and regularly party with our guests, but always with one eye on the job! To stop drinking altogether is just an extension of that restraint...

That said, I do need to be careful. One former White Collar Boxer advised me not to go all tee-total, as she had tried that and been doing rather well at it until a couple of weeks before the fight when she spectacularly imploded in a three-day bender. Her take is that this did her more harm than perhaps allowing herself one day a week for a couple of glasses of wine, and I get that. However, the downside of working in a pub is how easy it is for that "couple of glasses" to become a bottle, or that once a week to become once a day. No going "on the lash", no destroying my training in one fell swoop, but a gradual erosion of everything I am working towards... frankly, it's not worth the risk to me.

But I am still a realist. I manage Singapore's oldest Irish pub, and right in the middle of my training I will be faced with our biggest time of the year - St Patrick's Day. Four days of mayhem, with the road outside the pub closed for a Street Festival, great live music on stage, and lots and lots of Guinness... I have already set aside one day of that event as the day I will have a pint or two of the black stuff. Not too much, as the event is far to big to oversee whilst inebriated! But as the manager of a 21 year old Irish institution in Singapore, I can't NOT raise a glass to Paddy's Day!

Besides, I already know I don't actually need to drink, and the next day will be back to training, and back to reality!

"Reality is an illusion created by a lack of alcohol"

N.F. Simpson

Who am I kidding? I could murder a pint right now.