I have reason to believe that some people don’t like this new sponsorship era of sponsoring people to do anything before they’ve actually done it (as opposed to just pledging). If you people are out there waiting to give me money for Dry July, I will observe that is is now August.
Quick recap: Dry July, do not drink alcohol in the month of July. Fundraiser for the Prince of Wales hospital. Sponsor me here, it’s a sure thing now that July is actually over.
I sadly can’t regale you with tales of the new perspective on life that doing this gave me, except that opportunities to drink are offered to me more frequently than I realised prior to Dry July. I probably had about eight active offers of a drink during the month (including the Tuesday night drinks I go to every week). Andrew and I almost never drink at home: I don’t think we have had a drink without guests over since New Year, so I hadn’t thought it was so many. In a normal month I would probably have turned down only four or five of those opportunities rather than every one of them. It is an annoying feeling, I remember feeling much the same during linux.conf.au, when I couldn’t drink because of a medication interaction.
I drank more on the weekend than I usually would: one glass of wine Friday, and then 600 mL of beer (it was a Bavarian beer tasting thing, three 200 mL samples) followed by a cocktail on Saturday. My tolerance for alcohol does not appear especially affected by the month of abstinence, which makes sense considering my low exposure anyway.
I intend to change my drinking habits not at all long term as a result of Dry July. But hopefully the hospital is a tiny bit richer.