{"id":1378,"date":"2025-05-11T17:20:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T22:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2025-05-11T17:20:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T22:20:55","slug":"dry-april-may-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/?p=1378","title":{"rendered":"Dry April\/May 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I did another &#8220;Dry January&#8221; although it was more like a dry April into May. No real journal on this one but I&#8217;ll write some random notes down. Let me say that it was my choosing, again, and I did so without force or temptation. It wasn&#8217;t a problem for me to give it up cold turkey and no cravings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I didn&#8217;t repeat the same mistakes I made from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/?p=1289\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1289\">Dry January 2024<\/a>. I didn&#8217;t just switch to soda. I mostly stuck with mocktails, tea, water, or towards the end, non-alcoholic beer. I still feel bad for having non-alcoholic beer as I feel like it&#8217;s cheating since it does contain some trace alcohol.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I&#8217;ve actually lost weight this time! I think it&#8217;s because of EMS and all the yoga I&#8217;m doing. I&#8217;m also eating better and less. The last time I did it I remember eating more. This time I feel like I&#8217;m not substituting alcohol for more food.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I&#8217;m not sleeping well. At least the last few weeks. Difficult to get to sleep and I wake up during the night at least once or twice. Every morning I feel like I wake up with a hangover. I don&#8217;t understand. I thought that was one of the perks of NOT drinking&#8230; no hangover? Seems I had this problem the last time too. What is it?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There definitely were some difficulties but nothing I couldn&#8217;t handle and nothing I almost broke down on&#8230; maybe a few but I never did&#8230;\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Sam&#8217;s birthday with everyone trying to get me to drink<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mexican Train nights are difficult especially with so many fun drinking buddies around like Jaque, Viv, and Larry<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>First happy hours on Thursdays are actually easy since Glenn hasn&#8217;t been drinking either<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The first Saturday with our Pinochle group&#8230; Marlene brought Sangria&#8230; damn it<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When all the power in Portugal went out all I wanted was a beer on my balcony; I did settle for non-alcoholic beer but it didn&#8217;t do the trick if you know what I mean<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Not cheersing at Tivoli happy hours and not ordering anything from there<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Not cheersing period (except with non-alcoholic or mocktails)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ugh, the festival&#8230; All that craft beer that I didn&#8217;t get to taste&#8230; that was tough<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After my eye exam I really wanted a beer<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After the Portuguese placement test I REALLY wanted a beer<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Denying Brandon at the store&#8230; damn me<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Looking in my fridge and instead of grabbing a beer I had to settle for water<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Not having a beer with Sam and her sister<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Not having a beer or wine on our game night even though it was easy since Jay doesn&#8217;t drink and Petra can&#8217;t drink<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Seeing Shawn have a beer and not being able to grab one from the fridge and drink with him<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Watching shows and movies where people drink to cope or forget or whatever&#8230; like that is my thing<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I hate having to explain to people why I&#8217;m not drinking.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I feel like I&#8217;m going to cut back when I continue. I definitely need to take it slow whenever I start again.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Speaking of &#8220;starting again&#8221; I may go another week. I want to see if I actually do lose weight this time and it&#8217;s not a fluke.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If I do go another week, this was the right time to do it. Michael is away and he&#8217;s been one of my drinking buddies so that&#8217;s one temptation not there. Plus Rene is MIA at the moment.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is difficult not having alcohol with Sam. I feel awful when she asks, &#8220;are you doing one more?&#8221; and I say no&#8230; I mean I can because it&#8217;s non-alcoholic but still. Shit is expensive.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Marina Bar upped its happy hour prices. This may effect my drinking when I continue.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I do like the recycling bin being not full of empty beer cans and bottles.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Given all the reasons above, I&#8217;m proud that I didn&#8217;t give into temptations. I also may do this once or twice a year to give my body a cleanse.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I did another &#8220;Dry January&#8221; although it was more like a dry April into May. No real journal on this one but I&#8217;ll write some random notes down. Let me say that it was my choosing, again, and I did so without force or temptation. It wasn&#8217;t a problem for me to give it up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,29,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","category-personal","category-random-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}