Mebbe you could rent The Beastmaster tonight.

If it's any consolation, Dean, not everyone is having a good time tonight. I work in a pub, and not only is it St. Patrick's Day, it's also March Break, and this is the #1 tourist town in the country.

And just think, you'll have a leg up on everybody come Lent. (Or is Lent already passed? I can't keep up with these things anymore.)

Oh, and this region has the #1 alcoholism rate in the province, too.

Yo, dowingba. It is Lent right now. :-)

Sounds nearly like religion.

We are squarely in the middle of Lent - it runs from Mardi Gras to Easter. I have a friend who is observing Lent in the traditional medieval way, by eating nothing during daylight (with a couple of exceptions), and eating no meat or eggs or dairy (fish is OK). She's not even Catholic.

Hmm, from the sounds of it, I started smoking again right around the time Lent began. Buh ha ha ha ha!

A former spouse of mine was an alcoholic, and we quit drinking for five years. One of the things that I noted about social gatherings and parties was that people I had thought vibrant and witty when drinking were actually kind of dumb and slobbery when your judgement wasn't messed up by booze.

There is a great line in the book John Barleycorn. Something like "you will never have as much fun - but the fun you have will be real fun".

Here is the URL to a complet web version of the book: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/JohnBarleycorn/

I'm pretty much a teetotaler, so I can't relate to your Beast. But let me say that I agree whole heartedly with Stu's comments - I, as a sober person, find sober people a lot more fun to be with on a regular basis. The occasional drunk can be fun for a while, but not for the long term. That gets tiring and boring.

Well done, Dean. Keep on...

I also agree with Stu, but with one exception.

You know those drunks where you flip coins at them and they dance? Those ones are great fun; until you run out of coins, however, then they're just a bother.

Good show Dean. I am happy for you, and proud of you. If only all in your situation could show such strength and restraint.

I think its best if you don't read my blog today. Sorry I am Irish and beast is more friendly than yours.

Éireann go Brách
Ireland Forever

Green beer is stupid. I'm just saying.

Dean-- Tell US about wanting to go - and then don't.

Doesn't matter how you get your goal accomplished (staying sober.) Just do it!

And congrats on all your success. One day - or one hour - at a time.

Dean; Slight echo of peg, but that's how you beat it. One battle every day/hour/minute at a time.

I worked in bars for about 15 years, and almost always didn't drink until we had kicked out the paying customers (as a bouncer, I wanted every edge I could get against the miscreants). I completely agree that drunks are not nearly as funny when you are sober.

Dean -- In all the talk about you and drinking, I feel like we have let you down by not letting you in on the SOBER fun the rest of us have been having for years. See, as a non-drinker, I've enjoyed many a drink. Here's a few examples to get you through the afternoon.

(1) Drinking is more fun if you have a big button phone. You need the kind that has pull-off buttons (like the ones on your key-board). Rearrange the numbers. Let drunk people TRY to make phone calls. (I've been told I'm a mean non-drunk :)

(2) Paint their nails (with fingernail polish). Do every other one. Make them wonder WHAT they were thinking when they painted their own nails. Say you don't know, they just kept mumbling about Mexico.

(3) This one is not encouraged, because I thought it was TOO mean. A friend drew a fake beard on another friends face. With a PERMANENT green laundy "sharpie" marker. That certainly got the waitresses attention the next day at lunch.

(4) Watch a DVD, but change the language selection. Pretend its English and they must be crazy if they don't understand it.

(5) Move your lips but don't make sounds. Thats an old standard, but somehow it gets them everytime.

(6) Turn all the books in the house/apartment upside down.

(7) Put all the pots&pans from the kitchen under their bed. Two-fold fun. First they have to locate all their pots&pans, then they have to figure out why they put them under the bed. (Ok, that one is a little harsh, but thats the price they pay for having a friend be the designated driver AND help them all the way to their bed)

You have a good imagination. Surely you realize that the opportunities presented by drunk people are practically endless. I've discovered they are a source of great amusement. If I follow some simple rules, they invariably forgive me (usually immediately). No physical damage to either them, or their stuff. Nothing that would get them arrested, or evicted. Nothing that would make the local news.

You know, here is a sad but honest truth:

I know several people, including people who don't drink at all, who have told me on more than one occasion that I'm more fun to be around when I am drinking.

Family members, even. Good people. Teatotalers. Not manipulative people.

Unless, of course, I'm so drunk I'm just stupid. Something about a few beers simply makes me gentle and gregarious and more patient with others.

I think as I've said, 99% of the time, I'm a gentle drunk. I can also drink an awful lot before I start to seem drunk.

I am, when completely sober, a very quiet person. I am not particularly gregarious, and am more inclined toward the cerebral and analytical. My idea of a good time usually involves a book in my hand and shutting the noise around me out. Which, by the way, I'm very good at. I could read a book in the middle of a New Year's Eve party, and probably during a major allied bombing campaign. I've had people literally walk up to me and YELL MY NAME because I was reading and did not hear them talking to me even after they'd called my name and spoken to me several times.

As I say, I'm not one to think booze makes me clever, witty, charming, etc. But it's funny how often I've been told that people like me better with a few belts in me.

I mean, it's too bad for them, but it is something I contemplate a lot. Apparently I need to learn to interface more effectively with humans without methanol as a lubricant.

Lucy: Very funny, you sadist! ;-)

But, I'm a little embarassed to tell you this: you'd only get me on any of those about 1 time in 10. I'm one of those expert drunks, you see. I can drink an awful lot before it starts to become obvious, and I don't/didn't always drink enough to make it obvious. (Sometimes, yes, but often, no.)

Just for example, I was drinking when I sat down and wrotethis essay, which I seem to recall you once telling me you particularly liked.

Probably a third of the articles ever to appear on Dean's World were written while I was sloshed. And no, not all the stupid or obnoxious ones either--I'm more likely to be stupid or obnoxious when not drinking.

I look at it all and am rather frightened at just how high my tolerance for alcohol is. It's not something to brag about. :-\

Well Dean, you got this inner Beast?

You have some great qualities and I WILL beg to differ with anybody that says you have no sense of humor, AAah...

Let me tell ya, I have come to your blog for quite sometime now and followed you and a very endearing friend of yours on your own FUNNY, FUNNY roundtables in boards of the past.

You have got the WIT and The Wisdom and down right Sarcasm with an underlying touch of this mans personality to a T!

"A woman drove me to drink, and I'll be a son of a gun but I never even wrote to her to thank her!"

"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink, that's the funny thing I'm indebted for!"

"I don't drink all the time. I have to sleep you know!"

On Falling down drunk he would say, ( have you ever Dean? Nah!) Now Here is where you really have his personality in that beast you refer to...

"When you Woo a Wet Goddess there's no use falling at her feet."

He did guite well as a survivor. A drinker and celebrated drunk. Solitude was His Domain! (sound familiar?)

Dean
Don't drink. If you want to do something stupid, write suck-up piece on John Kerry. (Sucking John Kerry... That's just gross... I'll have to vote for Bush now).

Just don't drink. Or as one of your posters wrote in another piece, beat someone up who deserves it. I've got recommendations if you need them.

Ah, in response to your work and the sauce and the greatness that can be found. Mae West was stupified by this kindly soul... for he could be a master.

He was a gentleman, as he walked with her and held her arm so gentley, she responded by putting a rose in his mouth!

I used to work in a bar as well, Dean and you aren't missing anything.

You're missing large crowds of sweaty, drunk people. You will sometimes get a really funny person but mostly you will get someone rude, someone loud and obnoxious, someone stupid, someone who traps you at the table and talks and talks and talks, breathing his drunken fumes upon you, thinking he is solving world issues when in reality he's just irritating the hell out of everyone...everyone has migrated away from the table and there you are, stuck, listening to this freak until he gets sick and throws up on the table and then passes out.

Woohoo. What a load of fun.

Look, St. Patrick's Day (I'm part Irish as well...who isn't?) can be fun but no one says you have to drink to enjoy it.

When you're strong enough, you will be able to enjoy the atmosphere and have a coke or whatever non alcoholic beverage you choose.

But for this year at least, it might be extremely hard....just think how good you're going to feel in the morning.

And Dean...really, you aren't missing anything that won't be there when you are strong enough to join the party and remain sober. I promise.

Ya do know there now Dean the above posts were to make you laaugh at yourself and know there was a beloved man, that has still endeared and is so funny. So if you get to serious with yourself remember W.C.Fields and know there is a bit of him in ya...so laugh and dance and carry on. We know he died a sad death of cirrohis.

He is legandary and he came to my mind to cheer ya on this St. Patty's Day.

Smile there Esmay, you've got a lot O' years ahead of ya lad!

Somehow I think that corned beef and cabbage stays down better without the drinking.

I like the corned beef. I could do without the cabbage, though.

Good job, Dean. About that beast, he'll get quieter as time goes by, he never really dies.
When mine gets too noisey I use a technique called Thought Stopping. I simply shout (in my head) 'Stop!' at the top of my mental lungs. If I'm sufficiently isolated I'll say it out loud. Then I concentrate on some task I have facing me.
Bear in mind one little thing, nobody becomes an alcoholic without first enjoying something about drinking. If you didn't like to drink you wouldn't have drunk enough to have a problem.
My case may be much like yours. I don't particularly enjoy idle conversation. My interests tend to be rather narrow and most of what people talk about doesn't particularly interest me. I'm far more comfortable afield with a rifle or fishing pole than in a crowded room.
Drinking helped that until the downside overcame the upside. So, I'm basicly a loner. I can conversate for an hour concerning the fine points of a particular rifle/cartridge combination for a hunting or target task. I don't dislike people in general, I've simply little to say. Tends to make me rather ill at ease at, say, a PETA gathering.

Dean,

From what you've said, you're normally very introverted (Believe me, I know whereof I speak). If drinking made you gentle yet gregarious, then of course many people would think of you as more "fun" when you have a couple of belts in you. This would tend to indicate that they are not completely comfortable with someone who is quiet and introspective. A lot of people are like that - they don't understand how to interact with someone who is like one of us, so when we "loosen up", they get along with us better.

That can be a very powerful reinforcement of a habit, and it shows strength of character that you were able to identify it yourself, and to resist it when strongly tempted. Keep up the good work!

Lucy - similar activities work well to mess with the minds of persons who are high on Marijuana. Also, for them, try just standing in front of them, and waving your hands and arms slowly in and out and around. Accompanying this with sound effects enhances the results.

I consider Paddy's Day "Amateur Hour" when it comes to adult libations, and remain sober so as to deal with the rookies.

It's the other 364 where the Beast and me have our running feud.

*rising from the chair and clapping*
Congratulations, Dean, on 20 days.

Way to go Dean

I am going on 17 years....of no drinking. One day at a time. The beast never leaves......just sleeps. But I started the 17 with 1 day and then another and then another......it gets easier...

And...for.. me....being sober means never having to say I am sorry the next day........for whatever I did that I sorta remember ....sorta.....

Sharon

Oh don't feel bad about not drinking on St. P's, it's a celebration of cultural genocide (hint: the snakes he drove out of Ireland weren't reptiles).