When I have occasionally ventured into public since beginning my great pregnancy adventure, there is one question that basically everyone has asked me: How do you like not being able to drink at all?
The truth is, it has been incredibly easy for me. When there is something as important as the health of your child at stake, there is not even a thought process involved aside from, "I am pregnant; I cannot drink." That's it. The simple fact that something truly important is at risk makes it very easy to abstain, even in "drinking establishments".
I have fortunately discovered that I have some great friends whom I enjoy spending time with when I am sober, even when they are drinking heavily. Case in point: Last night I played designated driver for my longtime friends Sarah and John, who moved here just a few days ago, so that they could get properly New Orleans smashed on a Sunday night. Even though they were getting pretty drunk and I was not, I had a wonderful time just hanging out and talking with them. Our friendship is strong and complex enough to overcome little obstacles like a considerable difference in sobriety. It's nice to have friends like that, and I love them wholeheartedly.
Unfortunately, along with that happy discovery has come the realization that I have some friends, at least in name, who I cannot stand to be around unless everyone in the room is hammered, practically.
"College age" people tend to build relationships with their peers while drinking, often to excess. In fact, in recent history, I have considered individuals who I have never even seen sober to be friends. These are people who I have hung out with on countless occasions, and whose secrets I am privy to, but whose sober mannerisms would be completely foreign to me. It seems sort of crazy even writing that down, but I spent my party years in a drinking town, and such are the consequences.
I suppose some drinking buddies are meant to be nothing more than that. Some people have golf buddies, fishing buddies, or even sex buddies. I happen to have some buddies with whom my connection does not go any deeper than our mutual love for jager bombs and other fun shots. And that's ok.
Until it's not. Until I am necessarily sober for nine months, minimum, and suddenly find that the basis for some of my friendly relationships has been extremely tenuous. It is not possible for me to tell someone whom I have recently considered a friend that, to sober me, their obliterated company is borderline tortuous. I am just not that kind of person. So, I guess the next step is to gently and considerately weed out the relationships that have turned out to be, for lack of a better word, shams.
I think that part of growing up is to select the relationships in your life that are healthy and beneficial to your growth and nurture them while moving away from the ones that are not particularly deep or meaningful. At this stage in my life, that apparently means saying goodbye to some of my drinking buddies.
I wish I could have taken the time to learn some of their middle names or maybe see where they lived, but it's time for me to move on.
