“There is no soft drug, it’s a contradiction in terms,” a good friend told me. Of course, we understand that coffee withdrawal should not be like opioid withdrawal, but I find that my friend is not wrong: not everything that causes addiction is harmless.
The fashion is for 28-day cures, which is why the month of February lends itself well, although we are in a leap year and I wonder if this little extra day adds psychologically to the challenge. I’ve also been wondering for a long time if this isn’t one of the hidden messages in one of my favorite zombie films, 28 Days Later.
We choose the shortest month of the year to test our limits, and yet, it can seem long for some who discover a problem. For more than 10 years, the 28 Day Alcohol-Free Challenge has been an excellent initiative from the Jean Lapointe Foundation to encourage people to question their consumption. If this challenge had existed earlier, many consumers might have understood some of the dangers at a younger age. Despite everything, every year, rebellious spirits cry against this activity, and drink proudly without much compassion for those who fight against their demons.
No one is obligated to take on this challenge, but I understand a little of the exasperation; in my partying youth, I too laughed at this momentary and very obvious sobriety, until empathy caught up with me, seeing friends sink, discovering myself, with concern, the impacts of drug consumption. regular alcohol on health.
Studies are becoming more and more precise on this and last year, many people were shocked when they learned that just one drink would be one drink too many, which, let’s face it, was a lot of coffee. The documentary Burst the ball by my friend Hugo Meunier also made many people think, I remember that in the (drunk) evenings, we only talked about that. Unfortunately, Radio-Canada, which owns the rights to this documentary, removed it from its platform due to some factual errors that, in my opinion, should have been corrected. Because I have rarely seen a documentary have such an effect on those around me.
Alcohol is probably the only substance that we invite you to deprive yourself of for a short month, and then return to it. It couldn’t work with cigarettes, for example. Going 28 days without smoking is not enough, you have to stop permanently. In any case, that’s what I understand with the new packages whose display has gone up a notch in terror. Charred lungs, tongue swollen by cancer, and even gangrene of the foot. As if that wasn’t enough, there is now a prevention message on each filter tip, “Poison in every puff” or “Cigarettes cause leukemia”. It has become embarrassing, it makes you want to switch to electronic cigarettes to avoid this humiliation, but smokers unable to quit have endured these campaigns for a long time, knowing that no one will defend them. You’ll understand when photos of livers ravaged by cirrhosis or atrophied brains adorn wine bottles.
The thing is that alcohol is still almost everywhere in social life, and practically in all TV series. On TV, we always drink wine, and strangely, we never smoke a joint, even though it’s just as legal now.
At the SQDC, clerks must offer customers cannabis with a lower concentration of THC, which is not a bad idea. Would we see an SAQ employee offering the least alcoholic products? We drink for the taste, they say, a good wine or an excellent whiskey, but we will notice that in convenience stores, beers with a high percentage of alcohol, much more numerous than at the time when there were than Dow or 50, are popular with alcohol dependents and students on a limited budget.
If you do the 28 Day Challenge and are at all outgoing and sociable, that’s when you realize that alcohol is difficult to avoid. On the other hand, I find that the discourse around consumption has evolved a lot, we seem more and more respectful of the limits of others, we are less and less ashamed to say that we have a problem and that we do not no choice to be sober, that it is received with more understanding and less judgment than before – except, perhaps, by people who are sad to lose drunk partners. Maybe my friends and I are getting older and can tolerate hangovers less and less. The dialogue about addiction, which has for too long been tinged with morality, is improving along with research and help programs on the subject. We are slowly moving away from this idea that everything is just a question of will, which is terribly false for some who will never be able to get through it without seeking support. And you should never be ashamed to ask for help.
To be honest, I never did the February challenge, the abuse of the many parties of the holidays often mean that I prefer herbal tea in January, but February is such a gloomy and dull month that I don’t want to deprive myself of a little pick-me-up. Friday – this play on words has become so commonplace that it has become old-fashioned, that says it all.
But to the people who are doing the 28 Day Challenge, I want to say well done, you are doing well, it will never harm you. I encourage them to hold on…until the 29th, at least.