What's with the sobriety thing? And bike rides.

For those of you who have not heard, I'm a teetotaling non-smoker this month. For all of September. The last time I had a drink was August 30th, and the last time I had a cigarette was fifteen minutes before 12:00 AM September first. This is about a week of non-smoking and no alcohol. It extends further than this by a little, I'm not drinking any pop-type beverages this month -- I didn't drink many in the first place, but they are free at work. I'm also cutting down dramatically on how much meat I eat. These last two are probably permanent or close to it. (I might write about the meat one later, in a different blog post.)

Here's your explanation:
I don't plan on permanently quitting drinking or smoking. I might quit smoking, and it's pretty highly likely I'll cut back (I intend to do so, come October). The fact is I needed to know I could do it, and I couldn't justify my smoking to myself by saying I liked it without actually knowing that this was the case -- which meant examining it with my mind free from the perhaps subconscious influence of chemical addiction. There's also the matter of knowing I could do it if necessary. I'll say that I could indeed quit smoking if I wanted to, and I'm proving it. A week in now. So far, so good. The chemical addiction isn't really getting to me. I didn't have much in the way of "nic fits" and I'm confident I could quit forever, should I decide to do so at some point. I wanted to do this with the quit drinking thing (there's also a pact involved in that with Morgan, Evan, and Caitlin) as an extra exercise in will power.

I particularly don't think I'll quit drinking for the simple reason that I don't see it as much of a vice in my life. I like a good beer, wine, or whiskey. I don't get drunk often. It's been quite a long time since I have been. The reason behind this is simply that I think it's good to exercise my willpower in multiple ways, and I think social drinking is a touch on the ridiculous side.

To comment on the will power aspect only: if I can't have control over whether or not I have a cigarette or refuse a drink, what can I, really have control over? I believe this kind of affirmation of freedom over our own initial impulses is a very valuable way to reaffirm that we are indeed (in one sense) decision making beings, and not slaves to something we might call beyond ourselves.

Now last thing to anybody who reads this:

If anyone has any interest in a bike ride in the city, I'm going to try to use every possible weekend of the bike friendly season to go on at least one longish bike ride. I'll go alone, but Join me if you like.


I've got some more things to say, but I'm at work.