Audience Participation: Non-Court-Ordered Drinking Abatements

In the wake of the IPA love-fest for the past few weeks, the MBR meet-up, and general carousing about town, I've, more or less, given up drinking beer for the past week. Last Friday morning, feeling a bit hungover from a night out at The Old Fashioned, I said "enough" and called it quits for a week in an attempt to recover my palate and my senses. I still have 2 days to go.

Since last Thursday, I've had two beers - strangely, both were half of a New Belgium bomber. In the one case, it was because I found a bar serving Fat Tire for $3.50 for a bomber; my wife and I split it, for a grand total of $1.75 per person for 11oz of Fat Tire. The other was a Mothership Wit that I split with the dinner that I cooked - I had half and used the other half as the base for a root vegetable stew.

A friend of MBR whose wife is pregnant agreed to the wifely demand for solidarity. This is a practice that I've seen more and more of: a husband forgoing the "luxuries" that his wife must also forego during the term of pregnancy - alcohol primarily. I didn't ask if he also gave up coffee or started eating pickles and ice cream.

What have I learned from my self-imposed cessation? First, it was surprisingly undifficult. Second, I can actually taste components other than hops again. Third, I saved some money. But, I also missed the curiosity, the pairings, relaxing on a lawn chair and sipping a cold one after a day at work.

Other friends have put alcohol on hiatus for any number of reasons: conflicts with medication, got too drunk, random test of self-control. Have you? Why? What did you learn from it?