There was a time in my life that I drank beer as my favorite pastime. Really, it's true. I of course only realized this after finally walking away from drinking, but the point is that drinking was literally what I did for fun. I always figured drinking was just kind of "along for the ride" , if you will, but finally realized that the act of drinking was my pastime. The interesting thing about this little Christopher Columbus like discovery I made was the fact that almost everyone I knew was just like me!

I've heard it said before that you become just like the people that you spend time with, but never gave it any credence. That was until I came to these realizations for myself. It's so perplexing to me, but most everything that I did at that time in my life, revolved around drinking beer. Well, maybe revolved isn't the correct term, but involved drinking beer. Going over to a friend's house to have a BBQ? Who's bringing the beer? Going to the lake fishing? Did you remember the beer? Playing cards in your buddies' basement? How much beer do you have? These are all the types of questions that were always asked. None of these so called "things to do" were about whatever it was that was being done, they were about the drinking!

Once my daughter incarnated into this world (which is another story) and I decided to walk away from drinking, I also walked away from all of these so called "things to do". Not as a conscience effort, but just naturally. I didn't see the "friends" or "buddies" anymore either. Once I stopped drinking they all faded away as well, again not consciously, but it just seemed to "happen". This is when I came to the realization that drinking was my pastime, none of the so called things to do or friends mattered.

Once I really started to analyze it, I also realized that this had been going on for 15 years! Drinking had been my favorite pastime for 15 years, and do you know what else was ironic? I was in about the same position, personally, as I was when it all started. It's almost as if those 15 years was a dream! A dream we would all rather not have by the way. The point is that by the grace of God my daughter came into my life and all of that came to an end. I've heard it said that everything happens for a reason, well now I know that statement to be true.