Beer weariness, is it….terminal?

There’s been a lot of talk about healthy living of late, in fact it’s hard to get away from it to be honest. We’ve had the horse meat scandal (thank god they are only testing for hoss, just wait until they get as far as testing for Tiddles DNA at the takeaway).

Then yesterday we saw the spine chilling news break that eating bacon is going to kill you too. This I don’t mind if it’s going to be a long, slow and extremely tasty death, but if you tell me I have to stop eating it immediately, you can put me down now, call me Shergar and mince me into a lasagne as it ain’t gonna happen..

Even in the blogosphere though, there have been a few knocking about, the most recent of which I’ve read was from Rich over at The Beer Cast, where “Beer Sleep” was the topic. Then there was a post from Chris Dixon where he quite candidly admitted that he needed to make lifestyle changes and literally get on his bike. All of this struck a chord with me as I’d been having loads of really weird nightmares, was constantly tired and basically looked like a bag of shit shrink wrapped into a fluorescent green coat.

Now where did I put that belt…?

As far as health “expert” scaremongering goes I’ve always been a firm believer in doing what I think myself in terms of what I eat and drink. I love my food, generally I eat well, love cooking and the pleasure it give me and others. The same goes with beer. I have been economic with the truth to my doctor and the practice nurse many many times whilst fighting the effects of obesity and high blood pressure, why, because I enjoy it, it makes me happy and I’d rather be fat with a red face than be miserable and I’d look to get healthier in other ways.

So where is all this wittering going you may ask yourself?

Well this week I had a bit of a change of heart and stopped drinking alcohol for three whole days…

This may not seem much, but is probably longer than I’ve ever done so for about six years. Not because I was told to by some jumped up university scientist on the BBC News, who’d spent eighteen squillion quid researching whether eating chorizo on a Wednesday makes your genitals turn orange, I abstained because I wanted to.

Being fair I think a few things led me to this rather drastic decision. The blogs of Rich and Chris certainly played their part, especially the bit about sleep or lack of it. Also, a rather unfortunate incident I had with a belt not worn for a while when preparing to go to a wedding at which I saw photographs of myself in a new light, those incidents too played on my mind.

Most importantly of all though, for once I just didn’t fancy one for reasons I can only describe as beer weariness. Day one came and went and day two followed likewise. On day three I started out intending to have a beer, but in the end never quite got around to it settling for a late night cuppa and one of the best nights sleep I’ve had in months. The sleep thing of course may have been pure coincidence as clearly lots of factors influence that. For me though the one thing I took from the time off was the fact that I could do it easily as and when I decided to and not as a result of being pushed into doing so. It sort of proved (if only to myself) that my theory of having a couple of decent bottles, even if daily, doesn’t mean I’m an alcohol dependant fool drinking my way to an early grave.

One thing that did scare me though was the beer fatigue, this was new to me, it hadn’t happened before, EEEK, was it….PERMANENT?

I scanned the news channels, nothing. The papers too were useless and there was absolutely bugger all on NHS Direct to help me in my hour of need. In a last-ditch attempt to get some emergency aid I called the university scientist bloke, even he was useless and said he didn’t know but would research it once he figured out how to stop his John-Thomas smelling of paprika.

In desperation I approached the fridge all stealthy, like Dumbo attempting to steal an iced-bun. I opened the door and oh so carefully took out a bottle of something big and hoppy (it was beer by the way, not a rabbit waiting for the pot). In a flash it was open, in a glass, then sweeping across my tongue like a wave of gurgling effervescent tropical elixir cascading into a bottomless whirlpool…

OK there may have been a teensy bit of artistic licence used there but yes, it was good and more importantly, I WAS CURED!!

Joking aside as I know there are some real issues I’ve made light of here, I do genuinely intend taking a few breaks now and then, I want to lose some of this pork I’m carrying around, feel better in myself and prevent future episodes of beer weariness..

Has that ever happened to you, not hangover induced just not fancying beer?

Cheers