So another month has clicked over. The start of August signals the march out of winter for all of us and, for some, it brings a pat on the back for having completed Dry July - a whole month without alcohol.
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Unfortunately, the self-congratulation too often comes with celebration and a duck-dive back into the booze. Top marks for going without but no points for diving straight back in.
I'd always scoffed at Dry July, mainly because I didn't think I had the fortitude to go a whole month without alcohol. But something strange happened when I got a bad dose of flu in March - I lost my taste for grog.
"Can't wait until this passes," I remember thinking at the time. "Those Coronas in the fridge are going to go down a treat."
The flu passed but the Coronas are still in the fridge, along with the sauvignon blanc and champagne. For some reason, something clicked and I haven't touched a drop since April. And I haven't missed it one bit.
What I have felt is a whole lot better physically and financially. The $50 a week beer habit broken, I've saved $800. And while it hasn't yet completely gone, the unsightly paunch is in retreat and the lower back pain I'm sure it was causing seems to be easing up.
The clarity four months without alcohol has afforded has also been enjoyable, no longer clouded by the morning-after regret, wondering if I'd been an idiot the night before.
I've also begun to wonder if our deeply ingrained drinking culture is a marketing construct with its origins stretching back to the days of the Rum Corps when booze was legal tender and the foundations of corruption were laid in NSW.
When Dry July is sponsored by a major liquor retail chain, when a national alcohol strategy is compromised by input from the alcohol industry itself, you have to ask yourself if we're all being taken for a ride down a booze-soaked path to penury and ill-health.
We know - and choose to ignore - the risks associated with drinking. Heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, liver problems, not to mention road trauma and violence. Dry July draws attention to all that but what's the point if we just slide back into Alcoholic August, Sodden September and Obnoxious October?
If it was the flu that helped me drop the habit of lifetime, the fever, headaches and misery was well worth it.