It Will Seem Like You’re Seeing Places For the First Time Again.
“The world is a book and those who travel it drunk are only reading the Cliff Note’s version.” — Ken M. Middleton
Anyone who knows me and my wife knows that we love to travel. This was one of our favorites drinking past-times. There is nothing that invites drinking without shame for three straight days than a trip to somewhere you’ve never been.
I had my drinking routine down to a science also.
Hit the airport up about 90 minutes to two hours before the flight to make sure I was good and sauced up before the plane took off.
Next, I would drink one or maybe two rum and cokes on the plane to not lose that buzz and then proceed to drink basically from the time I landed to the time I left for the flight home.
Vacations and traveling are the reasons that most people give themselves the license to drink more than they usually do, and I was no exception.
I mean…what else do you do for a VACATION?
It almost seems like drinking and vacations are synonymous. Can you really do one without the other?
The answer is a resounding YES.
Not only can you do it, but what I’ve learned in the past two years is that it has made traveling for me and my wife much better for a number of reasons.
WE SAVE A SH*TLOAD OF MONEY
Alcohol is already one of the biggest money sucks of anything you will ever do in life.
As shared in the Three HIDDEN Positive Financial Effects of Quitting Drinking, the amount of money that you will save from not drinking is enormous.
Very few other circumstances will demonstrate this more than when you’re traveling. From the increased cost of beverages at the airport to the exorbitant cost at some restaurants, when we used to travel, the alcohol portion of our total bill was probably in the 30–50% range.
Think about that.
On a trip in which I was probably already spending $1500–2000, I would easily be in the $500–750 range on just alcohol. Now, instead of adding this surcharge to each of our trips, we are able to save that money for investment purposes for our future or use it to take even more vacations during the course of the year.
Huge win.
WE HAVE TO GET WAY MORE CREATIVE WITH WHAT WE DO
Since COVID put a bit of a kibosh on most international travel, we went on a Thanksgiving cross-country driving trip instead of our usual international one this year.
Therefore, instead of traveling overseas for 10 days, we drove from Atlanta, GA to Austin, TX to visit my brother and visit a few cities on the way there and the way back.
We hit up New Orleans, Houston, Little Rock, and Nashville.
When we were drinking, the only thing we would plan for each city would be to make sure we found a bar to hit up during the day to play pool and drink. We might hit up a restaurant or two from time to time, but the majority of our time was spent in a pool hall drinking in a different city.
Now, that we are so much more focused on actually enjoying and experiencing the city instead of drinking, we spend hours looking at all the different things to do in the city and planning different things that we would have NEVER done had we been drinking.
As shared in, Why You Don’t Need to An Alcoholic to Have a Drinking Problem, one of the issues I had was that if something didn’t involve alcohol, I didn’t want to do it.
Therefore, a lot of the activities, like food and city tours, as well as cultural cooking classes, just didn’t appeal to me because I couldn’t drink as much as I would’ve liked during it.
Now, I’m always super excited about those opportunities to learn new things and see a different side of a city that I wouldn’t have ever experienced before.
WE CAN ACTUALLY REMEMBER WHAT WE DID
For me, this is the one that is probably the most precious.
Before, when my wife and I traveled, we would have nights in which we figured we had fun according to our Instagram or Snapchat documentation, but I couldn’t 100% say that I actually remembered any of it.
Now that we’re alcohol-conscious, I cherish the memories that we make each and every day, especially when we travel.
From all the different things we learned on the city tours, the museums we visit, or the walks that we take exploring the city on our own, we are creating special memories that will forever bond us and give us something to discuss 30 years from now when we look back on the life we have lived and built together.
And while the experience of seeing all the different pools halls and bars of the world was an interesting experience before, I’m excited that we are now able to truly take advantage of how much more the world has to offer instead.