Teetotalling month

September marks the beginning of the autumn conference season. And that also means: beers in the last break! beers and wines on the closing parties!

I don't need any of that alcohol. So I decided to make September my alcohol free month.

I had already experimented with this last year, where I didn't drink any alcohol during the entirety of March. Mind you, it's not like I'm a frequent drinker. But even then, occasions would arise, and I got "the weird look" more than once when I said I was not drinking alcohol:

"Are you OK?"

"Why?"

"Are you taking any medication?"

"Are you pregnant?"

The fact that we assume that people are not OK, that there has to be a reason and we are entitled to know why, or which medication are they taking or what's the status of their reproductive system in order to perpetuate the ways of this alcohol-fuelled-society is quite worrying.

On my first week of abstinence, I witnessed how a person who cannot drink beer because they are coeliac was asked three times in a row, by three different people, why they were not drinking. I was cringing, but happy to be supporting them by standing there, empty-handed. I have also had to justify myself in two different events, in less than a week.

I invite you to try this :-)

Or if you want to take it to the next level, Lifeboats (a UK charity) are running their H2Only challenge--something similar but where you only drink water for 10 days. You can estimate and donate the cost of the drinks you would have drank otherwise.