Goodbye Dry July

Hello Fleshless August

One month ago, a more time-disciplined Australian than me mentioned in the Soaring Twenties Social Club that he was going to participate in Dry July, so please let’s hold him accountable. I jumped on board and joined on a whim, because minor discipline games are one of the few games I believe I have real talent in.

For the most part, the largest lessons these sorts of self-deprivation journeys give you is the insight that you don’t need the thing all that much in the first place. I’ve already participated in this genre of insight porn before, so I have no great takeaways to write down in the style of those editorial columns where some mostly middle income journalist in a dense city does a thing for a week and then tries to apply it to observations on our culture at large. Going without an alcoholic beverage for a month says nothing about modern society’s relationship to alcohol. I suspect the takeaway from the experience is written in the columnist’s mind before they even begin the experiment.

However, this July turned out to be a month where the lack was felt a few times.