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What Is The Point of Drinking Alcohol?

My relationship with alcohol is a fraught one

Tom Stevenson
4 min readOct 23, 2019
Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

Yesterday, I went to meet up with an old friend. I was back in the UK after a few months away and it would be a good chance to see him again.

As is the case when meeting up with someone here in the UK, you tend to go to a pub. There’s nothing wrong with that, they are great places, but there is one problem.

When you enter a pub, it’s expected that you will be drinking alcohol. The culture in the UK looks down on people if they don’t drink. As if they have some kind of issue that needs fixing.

Normally, I wouldn’t have been so apprehensive about going into a pub, but I recently went a whole month without drinking alcohol. The effects of this were fantastic.

I felt fitter and stronger. My mind felt much clearer and I woke up fresh and ready to attack the day. All of this was playing on my mind when I was in the pub deliberating whether to drink a beer or not.

In the end, I caved in. A few beers after a month of none would do no harm. That was the way I justified it to myself.

While I enjoyed meeting my friend and catching up, I didn’t particularly enjoy drinking the beers. Granted, I have a soft spot for Guinness, so it was nice to have one after a…

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