Day 9 – from distillation to titillation

I can report that all is well. No alcohol has passed my lips during this first part of Dry January. Today I want to follow on from a couple of themes touched on in previous posts. Yesterday we looked at the process of fermentation and noted that the strength of alcohol that can be produced is limited to around 15% to 17% because beyond this the yeast is not able to survive. So let us welcome our first guest of the evening – the process of distillation.

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Day 8 – from fermentation to illumination

I am happy to report that all is going well so far. I seem to have overcome the desire for a drink as early evening approaches. The association between alcohol and 5pm seems to be weakening. Also, my sleep continues to improve – I have not woken in the early hours over the past couple of nights, which is unusual for me.

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Day 7 – a jaunty professional hat

A week of abstinence already under my belt. Writing this blog has been a bonus for me – at a behavioural level it has given me an activity as an alternative to drinking in the early evenings and at a cognitive level it has led me to explore different aspects of alcohol and drinking. Through these mechanisms it has also led me to examine more closely my relationship with alcohol. When February comes, I will use some of the material to write more formally about alcohol under the C2H6O heading on this website. That will be with my professional hat on, worn at a suitably jaunty angle, drawing on my 25 plus years of working in addictions.

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Day 6 – for sticks and sticking

As part of my drive towards improving my health and well-being, I took advantage of the sunshine this morning to dust down my homemade bo stick and did some gentle drills after not doing any drills for the past three months. I remembered some moves from my martial arts training (Tang Soo Do) and found a lot of other stuff on-line. When I say homemade, I mean I stripped the bark from a stick and sanded it down. That level of DIY is pretty good for me.

And talking of sticks, I thought today I would write something about sticking. By this I mean how difficult it can be to stick to those important changes we want to make. Here we are looking at a key stage of the change cycle – maintenance. No, not cycle maintenance – this is a reference to the Stages of Change model proposed by Prochaska and DiClemente that is widely used in the area of behavioural change (e.g., eating habits, drinking, gambling, smoking, and other health related behaviours).

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Day 5 – alive and kindling

Day Five and I’m coming alive. The low energy levels I wrote about yesterday seem to be receding. Today I managed to do a bit of wood chopping in the morning sunshine. It was just gentle chopping to provide some kindling. I did have to swing the big axe a couple of times to get things going. Swinging the big axe does tend to get things going.

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Day 4 – to sleep perchance to dream

The usual pattern of my day is a cup of tea while I tackle the daily Wordle puzzle, followed by some toast or cereal. Thus energised, I clean out the wood burner, disposing of the ashes of the previous day. I imagine this act also has a symbolic aspect to it. I sort out the wood needed for the day, cutting some of the bigger logs down to size with my axe as necessary. I build the base of today’s fire ready for igniting a bit later. After these rituals, the day can unfold in multiple ways. There is always a lot to do, but the question is – do I want to do that today?

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