Snowflake becomes blizzard

I was all set to blog about my experience yesterday at the iCycle race on the ice rink at Dufferin Grove park last night. It was my first time racing in such an event, and I managed to claw my way on to the podium (only because of my fellow competitors got a flat and dropped out after he had lapped me). But then something happened; the after-party which featured a ton of cheap/free beer.

Now, I am no stranger to drinking excessively. It has been over a decade since experiencing my first terrible hangover, courtesy of Goldschlager nicked from my friend's parents' liquor cabinet when the party ran dry. One would think that as a 15 year old, bringing up bile flecked with bits of gold, in terrible pain, unable to eat, drink or hide the obvious root of the problem from my own parents, that I would have learned my lesson. Fire hot, no touch. Pretty simple stuff.

So how is it then, that 11 years and countless hangovers later, I found myself getting out of bed at 10am, praying that my roomie had not yet gotten up to discover the puke on the floor of the dining room that I was fairly certain I had left there the night before? (Luckily he had not, and I did a fantastic job cleaning it up, splitting headache and all, fitting pennance for the excesses of the previous night) What the hell is wrong with me? And why are there so many others like me?

These are all, of course, rhetorical questions. I drank too much after eating too little and exerting myself; had that ratio been tweaked slightly things would have likely played out differently. Putting myself into such a situation was a bad judgement call, but sometime between lying on a piece of cardboard with a bubble wrap pillow at work and writing this much of the blog entry it hit me; I got hungover because I drank too much, but I did not drink too much because I wanted to be drunker. There were no self-esteem issues at play here as there were in the past. The beer was not being consumed to facilitate overtures to members of the opposite sex. I was not attempting to keep up to my friends in a blind attempt to assert my masculinity through alcohol consumption. No, I straight up just had a few too many. And I can remember the last time that I was this hungover about 4 months ago, and I was actually taking it easy that night. (no, really!)

It used to be that I would find myself staring at the ceiling with every cell in my body screaming for help, but unable to oblige, because I had made the conscious decision that I was gonna get wasted. And I would make that decision because of some lack or want or void that I could not define, so I decided to fill it with alcohol because it was the easiest thing to do at the time. I am glad to say that now with an amazing girlfriend, steady job doing what I love, stable family situation, and a renewed commitment to riding my bike, that void has shrunk to the point that it is imperceivable. So much so that I am not even going to say "never again", as I have uttered those words too many times before and not meant them. Instead I will say "hopefully not anytime soon" and I won't tempt fate in the mean time.