This is a thread for ILXors ON THE WAGON (and for the Wagon Curious)

my mom was a dietician.

and despite that i still regularly misspell dietitian, smdh

Calstars, I am a musician (of sorts) and therefore I frequently spend four or five hours in a bar with my best friends, once or twice a week. That is tough to do while being completely abstinent.

That said, I do like a lot of NA beers, especially the Athletic ones. NA Heineken is basically indistinguishable from Heineken. My other go-to is Ritual Gin Alternative. Spicy and good.

Athletic is what I was drinking on Monday, the golden ale and the 'IPA.' I think the GA was a little bit better. Would have NA Heineken in a heartbeat.

i miss wine...wine is so good.

Calstars, Upside Dawn?

That’s the one

i heard a comedian, maybe neal brennan? talk abt non alcoholic beer

A comedian friend of a friend of mine, years ago, at an open mic, had a funny bit about replacing beer with non-alcoholic beer, and it, too, becoming a habit. The punchline was something like, "my name is (redacted), and I am a non-alcoholic."

I have a friend now who readily concedes an addictive personality. He apparently used to drink, though I never saw him drink, and eventually went to AA for smoking pot, though I never saw him smoke. Lately he's been fishing a lot, and he admits that even that has started to become a problem.

I had one of those Revive kombuchas a couple of years ago and it kinda tasted like beer

I would probably drink more of the "hop water" type drinks, but they are so damn expensive for what they are - water with hop flavoring, so not even a NA beer. That must be extremely cheap to make (no malt, no grains), but they still go for $10/6-pack.

I sampled one that was called Hop Water years ago and thought it was pretty good, but it sold for the same price as actual craft beer.

I stopped drinking alcohol completely during the pandemic, but marking the end of the working day with a non-alcoholic beer is a really important element of winding down for the evening.

"Lately he's been fishing a lot, and he admits that even that has started to become a problem."

i don't play video games but years back i thought maybe it would relax me and take my mind off things so i found one that i liked and i played it for an equivalent of months, made maria hate the sight of it, got tennis elbow, and became 8th in the world on Playstation.

Alcohol was never more than a means to an end for me, non-alcoholic booze just seems like the worst of all worlds. Unpleasant taste and I don't become more sociable? Sign me up.

If the NA equivalent of tobacco existed, though, I'd be in. Standing outside the bar smoking with the other remaining reprobates, now that's a pleasant time.

i don't play video games but years back i thought maybe it would relax me and take my mind off things so i found one that i liked and i played it for an equivalent of months, made maria hate the sight of it, got tennis elbow, and became 8th in the world on Playstation.

― scott seward

i got addicted to one of the match 3 games, i've had to quit it cold turkey a couple of times now. never spent a dime on it... something about a box that flashes pretty colored lights at me and tells me i'm a winner in response to my performing trivial actions, god, i could do that all day and night

so in unrelated news it turns out that i have pretty low self-esteem

If the NA equivalent of tobacco existed, though, I'd be in. Standing outside the bar smoking with the other remaining reprobates, now that's a pleasant time.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

i've had ex-smokers tell me that the NA equivalent of smoking is like literally breathing, that a lot of the reason smoking cigarettes feels good is because it requires you to breathe mindfully

i've never smoked tobacco but breathing mindfully _does_ feel good. that should be a habit, replace "smoke breaks" with just being able to step outside for ten minutes to breathe mindfully with other people. but it isn't, because we live in a dystopia.

Non-alcoholic beer definitely helps for me. There's a ritualistic aspect to my drinking, I get home after a day's work and sitting down with a drink is a signal that the working day is over. Having a NA beer kind of helps with that.

If the NA equivalent of tobacco existed

there are all kinds of herbal 'smoke mixes' out there, but it's probably just like smoking a campfire or something, likely not very satisfying

Smoking for me was the whole ritualistic aspect beyond either the communal or solo time-out aspect - packing the pack, flipping around a lucky one, gotta find my lighter, no lighter, oh hey man you got a lighter I can borrow, people bumming, pointing with a cigarette in your hand.

Too bad about the whole waking up feeling like an elephant sat on my chest and shit down my throat aspect (and cancer/etc.).

When I was 18 the head shop sold catnip cigarettes (I think they were supposed to get you 'high' but we just thought it was a funny thing). 12 hour headache city.

Non-alcoholic beer definitely helps for me. There's a ritualistic aspect to my drinking, I get home after a day's work and sitting down with a drink is a signal that the working day is over. Having a NA beer kind of helps with that.

Same here. I don't drink very much anyway - but I had to cut down on drinking after a concussion (which I got while sober!).

After a while, the rush of pulling a cold beer of the fridge after work was the same for me, whether it was alcholic or not, so I started sticking to non-alcoholic more often.

I quit cigarette smoking cold turkey in early 2006 and never really looked back, not interested anymore at all

Occasionally will hit the spliff (weed & norwegian shag) at band practice, that's about it

I do have an old pipe that I used to like to take on camping trips a few years ago, but I haven't even seen pipe tobacco in drug stores in several years and I don't care enough to go to an actual tobacconist

if you guys start talking about how wonderful smoking is i might have to skedaddle!

catnip cig talk is fine by me though. when was the last time someone had a clove cigarette?

i could never smoke cigars because i couldn't stop myself from inhaling.

i knew i had to go the edible route with weed after i quit smoking. too much nostalgia for tobacco.

vaping just made me want the real thing too.

big fan of breathing mindfully here. breathing is how we access god imho. did you know the most efficient way to deliver oxygen to your bloodstream is to breathe through your nose? i want to tell everyone about all of this but no one gives a fuck lmao. maybe i'm turning into a pseudo-spiritual crank but no i don't go to church and never will thank you very much.

re smoking, i'm romantically involved with someone who's abroad for a few weeks. he's been smoking cigs in video chats (do as the locals do). thank god it's been over 4 years since i had my last cig. i have literally no cravings now. i don't bat an eye watching him. i just feel a little concerned. the real reason i finally quit smoking was because i wasn't getting enough oxygen. big cause of me feeling depressed. i had asthma as a kid. things you learn or suspect that aren't in the dsm.

My weed intake was already significant but went up when I stopped drinking. I stopped drinking cuz I was trying to find what was triggering my migraines, and that is apparently one of them. They only started after having Covid. Weird.

I don’t really enjoy NA beer but I bet if I looked hard enough I’d find one I liked. I just drink a 12 of seltzer every two days. Sometimes I like a tart lemonade.

In terms of taste, NA beers have improved massively over the past few years.

I have never successfully smoked a cigarette or cigar. Just can't fricking do it.

Pipe tobacco was a moderately fun affectation when I was an English major on the East Coast wearing a tweed sportcoat with elbow patches. (Not even kidding here, I literally did precisely those things. Walking cliché, 1992 me.)

Even for weed I prefer edibles.

cigs never did much for me, thank god. make me cough a lot too and it's hard to get the smell out of your clothes. but I love the ritual of smoking, or at least taking a break from a noisy, busy atmosphere to chill outside for a few minutes and have more intimate conversations. eventually I realized it ain't that weird to go outside to hang out and just not smoke.

I mean in general I guess I'm lucky I didn't have that addiction gene. or maybe I do but it's not as strong as some others have it. in my early 20's pretty much everyone I knew drank a ton, smoked cigs and weed. which eventually led to harder drugs, up until one guy discovered this thing called "fentanyl" and promptly overdosed on it. he also happened to be the plug for a lot of us so most of the group just had to quit cold turkey. not that getting high was all that fun anymore when one of your best friends dies. some people struggled really hard with it and came out the other hand as totally different people, for better or worse (I mean, obviously it's "for better", but a couple of them just won't have anything to do with anyone else in that group anymore, which is sad). and then for some of us it was just like, eh, whatever. I like weed because you're still present, you can still do stuff and you still feel pain and all that, it just bothers you much less. the Percs I was taking just papered over everything. it was nice but you felt like you lost control of yourself somewhat and I didn't like that feeling.

It has suddenly occurred to me that I could likely make my own hop water pretty easily. I used to make beer so I have all the equipment, just boil some water, add hops, let cool, and bottle. I may even have some 20-30 year old hop pellets around.

when was the last time someone had a clove cigarette?

Lol as I was reading through this and M mentioned the catnip cigs I thought of cloves. When I was a freshman in college going to the smoke shop and buying cloves felt so cool. Leave me alone, I was 17. ;) There were so many rumors around them too. Do they actually cut your lungs? Who knows! They did taste amazing. That I remember.

Get a free vial of patchouli oil with every purchase of cloves

and some incense.

there seems to be something of an arms race happening here - every can at the bodega is a double-blasted IPA clocking in at close to 10% ABV, i think there's one at like 13-14%. i think of them as new 40s.

I feel your pain, brother. There are exactly two non-double IPA cans I can buy at the bodegas, Lagunitas and Deschutes Fresh Squeezed, everything else is 8% or more. And forget about a 19.2 lager or pilsner! So not gonna happen.

clove cigarettes are mostly tobacco anyway, they don't really count as a substitute

This is a thread for ILXors OFF THE WAGON (and for the Off the Wagon Curious)

^does this deserve its own thread or should I just use it as a subtitle in next year’s at the bar thread

Lol I was never suggesting cloves as a tobacco alternative just to be clear.

could never get cloves here, but I was in NYC for my 26th birthday and met a girl on the way back from a club in alphabet city who gave me a box of Djarums and I thought they were fucking delicious. I bought a packet of some other brand and they were awful though, it was just that brand I liked maybe

Dajarums where the gold standard. I don't think I ever got any others. That said, I prob bought them less than 10 times in my life but, yes, those are the good ones.

I just realised I should not be on this thread lol

I realized something that I neglected to mention upthread re: not drinking. One of the last pre-pandemic events I went to in 2019 was the memorial service for my ex-mother-in-law (I was married 2008-2009). She had a pretty high-end career and upper-class lifestyle but once she retired she made up for lost time and hit the bottles harder than most broke punkers I've seen. In ten years, she was dead from total liver collapse.

Every time I smoked a clove I was too drunk to remember it... but I definitely knew the next day.

Trip report, I was able to control my intake to a surprising and satisfying degree Friday and yesterday, happy about that

Small steps that feel good are good amirite

Yes indeed : )

I'm 17 days into a mini-wagon. Not a big boozer, particularly, but have had a few weekend benders of late. I've been low-grade ill, so not really felt the full benefit; even still, the clarity and *readiness* on weekend mornings is a revelation.

Good for you, hope it goes well ❤️

The weekend morning thing is amazing, truly.

zzz