Sober-curious by reason of lack of finances, we'd been spending money on beer that we'd rather use for airfares to countries where it's not $12 a pint. I knew I would struggle, having been a fan of the magic anti-shyness elixir since my specky freckled teenage years, but the truth is, we both did. And it really, really surprised us how much.
The first 10 days were the absolute pits, but I shouldn't whinge: my friend Dallas is having a dry February too, and she works in a brewery. Not having drunk water (preferring coffee in the morning, wine at night, just like the French; the 17th century French, that is, whose water was bubonic) since doing it by accident once while having a baby in 1992, my kidneys ached for two days straight.
Being relentlessly sober non-stop all the time, we were both emotional, enormously tired and super short-tempered. The mountain man's poor Airbnb guest, who backed into the Green Hornet while it was parked in his driveway, leaving a great big dent in the side, got a mouthful of expletive as her reward.
Plus, it turns out that without alcohol as my end-of-day time to stop thinking signal, I simply do not turn off. After painting the bathroom and sowing wild flowers in the garden long after the midnight hour, I wrote lists, did the dishes and threw things away. I don't know if it's the not-drinking, but an almighty chuck-out has begun at the mountain man's. If it isn't beautiful or useful, a la Corbusier, it's heading for the door. Have you noticed women are a bit like feral cats in this regard? Marking territory all over the place (metaphorically, I mean, although I still haven't cured myself of weeing in the garden every now and then after eight months spent without a toilet: on the upside the rhododendrons are looking marvellous this year), imposing their own taste, biffing things. Men are happy to sit in the same recliner for 40 years as long as no-one yells at them or asks them hard questions such as, "What are you thinking, right now?''.
Staff at the resource recovery park must have thought I'd found Jesus or the 12 steps: from a bin heaving with empties I started turning up with just a couple of ginger beer bottles, the contents of the mountain man's house and a bathroom mirror that fell off the wall (who knew No More Nails takes longer than 15 minutes to set?).
It was interesting to see when you felt like a drink. For me, it was after gardening on a hot day, coming in from the sea at Kakanui, or finishing a bathroom at 1am and having the mirror fall off the wall. It was just like quitting smoking; you realised how often you pushed pause or I can't deal with this right now during a day, and how much it went hand-in-hand with having children. I'm surprised mothers aren't falling down drunk at the primary school gates. Maybe they are.
It was always me campaigning for a relaxation of the absolutely none shall pass my lips rule. "Let's just have a night off for Joshua's birthday,'' I said. "No,'' said the mountain man, shortly before, "You can, but I'm not going to'', surely the most passive-aggressive phrase ever uttered. However, by the 14th I'd got over it (almost, Valentine's lunch felt the lack of bubbles), hardly missed it. Although, awash with tea, I went to the bathroom more than the prime minister.
This weekend is our last without alcohol. While University of Otago students pelt ambulance staff with bottles as they do every February, we've become fans of really seeing each other. I wonder what will happen come March 1? Perhaps we'll take a leaf out of Mindful Drinking by British journalist Rosamond Dean, a former ladette who found cutting down changed her life. Never an alcoholic, drinking had made her libido-less, fat and anxious, so she adjusted the way she approached it and discovered, as we did, how nice it is to wake up not worrying about what you might have said the night before.
