I'm not an alcoholic

....no really. I'm not. But I do have a bit of a problem with alcohol. And the problem goes like this: I will happily go a week or two without touching a drop. But then, I attend a social or a gathering in a pub and I turn into an ethanol guzzling gorilla. It hasn't caused me any health problems...yet but it does mean I occasionally create days where my whole body's raw tenderness screams at me every time I move. It was OK when I was young. In youth my hangovers were not nearly so bad and therefore fair payback for a corking night out. But I no longer want to inflict this on myself.

There's more. In recent years I have really started looking after myself. And I mean - really looking after myself - in an almost fanatical way that possibly puts me in the realms of 'weirdo' for most. For a start, after a colonic irrigation (weird in itself) in 2011 I cut out all obvious refined sugars from my diet. That's all cake, biscuits, pudding and sweets. I just occasionally allow myself a square of really dark chocolate and perhaps a bit of Christmas pudding in the festive season. I felt great on it and lost some weight. I generally don't do caffeine - just the odd cup of tea now and then. For breakfast I have had freshly juiced organic beetroot, carrot, celery, ginger and cucumber and a handful of seeds and nuts for about eight years now. I also have honegar (honey with apple cider vinegar) twice a day . I have started eating loads of salad and vegetables, recently cut out gluten (after reading Grain Brain) and I take a variety of supplements (turmeric, coconut oil, zinc, pro-biotics, various other guest supplements - depending upon what health information I have recently read - and of course, milk thistle). I chew my food properly - as I do believe good nutrition and digestion is key to optimising the body's capacity to heal itself and I exercise too. I cycle everywhere and I jump about to electro swing at home a few times a week! And the icing on the cake is that I learnt transcendental meditation this summer. That has had a hugely beneficial impact and real, unaltered consciousness feels much better and I no longer really like exiting this state via alcohol. So all in all I have turned into the person my twenty something self would have completely ridiculed.

So alcohol consumption is the last health frontier. I want to try life without it for at least a year. 'Write a blog about it,' my sister said. That will help you stick to it. And she knows me well for turning anything into a project is more likely to make something work for me. And I don't expect anyone to be that interested - I really don't - but that won't stop me from posting my experiences, difficulties and observations of this completely novel experience for me. And that fact it is novel - well that's appealing too.