Soberish: A SWOT Analysis

For all intents and purposes, my "sober" month is over. Saturday I am going to go to the horse track all day and will bet recklessly on horses that have funny names. I will likely take north of 20 shots of fireball and I will definitely seek out hard drugs at a Funny or Die party later that night, but Friday night I'll probably stay in because, I want to.

That pretty much sums up how I felt about my sober month. It's something that I did because I wanted to do it, see if I would notice any change in how I felt, in how I looked, how I spent my time. The results were a bit of a mixed bag. Unfortunately, quitting alcohol (for the most part) for 4 weeks will not give you a six pack; waking up on Monday morning still blows, and I still owe the city of Los Angeles over $1000 in traffic fines.

But...I also did my first triathlon (2nd place 25-29!) started working out again, wrote a new pilot, started a new job, read a couple books, finished Lost and developed an obsession with Amazon Prime. Sure, you might not throw $40 on an eight ball when you aren't blacked out, but that savings will turn into a new front door 'welcome' mat with free next day shipping. You either CAN save money or you can't, the alcohol is not to blame.

I've received some feedback that my blog is too long. OH GOD, SORRY YOU HAVE BETTER STUFF TO DO THAN READ MY BULLSHIT. But I have listened, and I'm trying to neatly package things that make it easier to follow. So today's content will be delivered a hyper pretentious SWOT analysis, because I am a douchebag of the highest order. I see you Kelley School of Business!

STRENGTHS

- a universal excuse
For some reason, somewhere along the line it became rude and unacceptable to say no to things that you just don't want to do. Perhaps we have a culture that demands universal appeasement, but I find myself saying yes to a bunch of shit that I do not want to do, and then stressing out about finding some elaborate excuse. You tell people that you aren't drinking? They get it. No, I don't want to go to the Avalon and see some Dutch teenager press buttons and shoot CO2 cannons, I want to eat some Sugarfish in bed and fall asleep watching Netflix on my iPad.

- know your real friends
When you aren't drinking it's easy to draw the line between friends and party pals. A buddy of mine told me this when he did sober January, "you realize that the only thing you have in common with most of the people you hang out with is partying" It's true. And a little pathetic. Most of the people I hang out with I've probably never had a real conversation with. Conversation relies exclusively on stories about times we were fucked up, to making plans on where to get fucked up next. The flip side of this though is the people you still make time to see outside the realm of raging. Let's go see a movie, play some trivia, catch dinner, go for a ride. When you remove alcohol from the equation, if you still want to see someone, that's the measure of a real friendship.

WEAKNESSES

- Single - alcohol = forever alone
When your game relies exclusively on dance floor make outs, you might as well tuck the dick away for a month too. Even if you are on Tinder/OKC or whatever the kids are using these days, people will think you're weird if you don't drink on a first date. Best to just chalk the whole month up to a loss and work on personal things. The thing I'm most excited about to be drinking again is to intentionally get boners on the dance floor and make no attempt to hide it. I never understood that scene from 'The Wood' when little Omar Epps wanted to hide his erection from the hot girl. I feel like gauging a girl's reaction to incidental boner contact tells you a lot about how the night is going to end up.

- Certain things are just less fun
You can have a blast sober. Shooting guns, learning archery, riding bikes, surfing, driving up the coast...all great. Sitting in a bar cheering for the USA or going to a Lykke Li concert just are not going to be as much fun sober, or any alcohol enhancement activity. I mean I played soccer growing up, but I'm mainly in this for patriotic camaraderie. Same with music, if I wanted to go to a concert strictly for the performance I would go see Wicked. (Or ONCE playing at the Pantages, who's in!?!) I go to shows to get fucked up and dance. I went to a few bars sober, went to a few parties sober and it was...fine. But it's annoying to be outside in the middle of a conversation when a group runs up stairs to take shrooms or something. On nights like that, it's best just to go watch Lost or the Paris Hilton sex tape.

Opportunities

- Time
As horrible as I still feel on Mondays, it is definitely something to wake up on Saturday/Sunday at 8am ready to grab the day by the balls. It is SHOCKING how much of a time suck drinking can be. I would say on a typical weekend I start immediately after work on Friday and don't fully recover by Tuesday morning. Sure I'll squeeze a 30 mile ride in there on Saturday so I don't feel like an enormous piece of shit, but I'm hungover the whole time, it's a total struggle and I'm strictly doing it to justify the copious amounts of poison I will be ingesting the moment I finish. (I'm talking beer in the shower) But when you AREN'T hungover, and not in a rush to get to some epic blowout afternoon pool party, my god, the possibilities are endless. In one day I ran a triathlon, went into work for 8 hours, knocked out an entire season of Lost, got a back massage and finished a draft of my new pilot (tentatively titled Always West of Lincoln, because...of course) If anything this experiment has taught me, it's how fucking productive you can be on a sober weekend. And it doesn't even have to be REAL stuff. I might take a weekend off in July so I can go skydiving, get certified to scuba dive, go to Medieval Times, Sea World, Portillo's, Six Flags, Knott's Berry Farm..and then just chill on the couch Sunday.

- Exploration
Not that I would ever advocate anyone leaving the comfort of the Los Angeles West Side (Lincoln is the Wall and everyone east of there is a wildling @kpo) But ya know, when you aren't drunk all the time you can actually explore your surroundings a bit on the weekends. During my quest, I spent time in Malibu, Elysian Park, The *gasp* valley and Orange County. I nearly took a road trip down to San Diego/Tijuana to pick up some bootleg pharmaceuticals. Sure you could do this drunk too, but that would be one hell of an Uber bill, and does cabbing around Los Angeles drunk by yourself sound like that good of a time? Last time I was super fucked up at a museum it was the Anne Frank house, and I felt supreme German shame. It takes a degree of clarity to appreciate art/history. Side note: Saturday night I was way the fuck up in rich Brentwood. North of sunset, like the REAL rich part. I took an uber back to Venice at about 4 in the morning, for NINE BUCKS. I love my Mini, but if I get one more email about Uber slashing prices, I may sell my car.

Threats

- Perceived as boring
As great as it is to have a universal excuse when you aren't drinking, it also works both ways. If someone gets a last minute ticket to the Jay Z concert or a suite at a Kings game, their first thought is not likely to be 'Hey, I'll take the sober guy!' During the month of June my phone rang less frequently than when I was an unpopular high school Sophomore. It's possible that inexplicably during one of the greatest months of the year there just wasn't a lot going on. And of course, a lot of people vacation in the summer...but I think it's more likely that it was assumed that I would not be interested in going to a rager at the Playboy Mansion. I mean, ya I was enjoying the Flash Sideways aspect of season 6, but staring at a bunch of naked bunnies in the grotto is about as close as I'm going to get to real female companionship! I'm in!

- Predictability
I live for the unknown, especially as someone who fancies himself a storyteller, I live for the wild crazy shit that can only be born organically out of a bender. If I wanted a comfortable existence, I would do accounting in the Midwest. I would agonize over my expense reports and I would be posting on Facebook shit like "I'm a homeowner." Or Sarah is pregnant! Instead I am much more excited by gauging the reaction of some nameless barfly when I do something inappropriate on the dance floor. Maybe she'll take me to a warehouse party in Compton at 4am! Maybe we're soul mates! Maybe we'll cab back to her place San Bernidino in the now extremely reasonably priced UberX! I hope she invited me to burning man next year!

I did this sober month not because I wanted to cut back on the negative externalities of my drinking, but I wanted to see if anything positive would come from NOT drinking. And it totally did, with the obvious revelation being how much time you suddenly stumble upon when you don't aspire to crawl to the bottom of a bottle all weekend. When you work 70 hours a week and your Monday-Friday are in essence lost, this can be extremely valuable.

When I set out to do this I said, change has to start from the inside. You can't decide to do something because a girl broke your heart or you missed a promotion you felt you deserved, you have to want to change. I called this post "Soberish" because I didn't quite make it. I had a couple beers Saturday night and I had a few more during the soccer game Sunday, the reason? I wanted to. Another thing this experiment taught me was how to deal with peer pressure. I always thought that would be the reason for my eventual cave, but despite that there were literally 8 boozebags sleeping on my floor for 10 days begging me to drink every night, I only did when I decided I wanted to. And that's the ownership I'm taking on my life. No excuses, if I do something it's because I want to. I want to live an active lifestyle that juxtaposes juice cleanses and Ironmans with molly rolls. I think you can do both. There is some bullshit principle called the duality of man. I have no idea what it means, but I think you can have it all.

There is a switch we all have, an on/off of sorts. What your switch controls is entirely up to you. Some people like to spend time with friends and then spend a good chunk of time alone, in introspection. That's cool. Others may find it hard to work on a creative project while living a normal life so they isolate themselves temporarily until they finish. I enjoy equally time spent chugging down coffee bouncing ideas off of a creative collaborator as I do reading a book on the beach with a cocktail. I like doing 5ks where you are drenched in paint, I like raves where you are drenched in paint. And if some day that switch becomes harder to switch on and off, I'll just stop. A writer on the tragically doomed masterpiece Ironside gave me the best advice I've ever received.

1. Don't Jump off high shit.
2. Be nice to people
3. When you're done drinking, just stop.

Well Mick, I'm working on 1 and 2, but the party isn't over just yet.