Toxic Tolerance

It’s easy to become a lightweight when you remove bullshit from your everyday dealings.

It’s no secret to most of my friends that me and alcohol have been pretty close buddies up until recently. I’ve always had my family’s tolerance (titanium liver) and have been able to drink most friends, colleagues and peers under the table. But after taking a long hard look at what road that was ultimately going to take me down, I retooled somethings. And I started a detox program (no… not Betty Ford) – but a physical health detox. A general detox for my body that would remove impurities slowly and surely. I’d been doing it regularly and noticed that because of it, there were some things my body didn’t NEED anymore. And other things that my body does that it hasn’t in years. For example – I’ve slept THROUGH the night. I can’t tell you the last time that has happened (when it wasn’t stupor induced). And the heart palpitations? Gone for a week. LITERALLY. Things were just generally feeling better, behaving better… shoot, even my teeth were getting whiter.

Then I went away this weekend.

And thought to myself – I can let go of this routine for 2 days… just two… Shouldn’t make THAT much of an impact. Famous last words.

Might not have been so bad if I didn’t attempt to have 1 too many shots of Grey Goose on Sunday night. Mind you – in my past, I’ve had three times as many drinks and it’s had NO effect. But on THIS given Sunday – my newly detoxified body was SURE to tell me where I went wrong. I won’t go into specifics, but I’ll just say that it’s now TUESDAY and I’m still “hung over”. My body WILL NOT tolerate this crap like it used to. I’m sure if I stopped the detox and ramped up the drinking again, I’d be sure to be back in the saddle in no time. But it hurts to fathom that I’d numbed myself so thoroughly that I couldn’t feel that I was doing THIS to myself.

I’m back on my regime and I imagine eventually my routine will purge these toxins that are running rampant through me now. Things look and feel different from a new vantage point. And now? It’s easy to identify the things that just don’t belong anymore.

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