Oh Just Quit Already

I didn't really even tap the brakes. I just kept going. Normally it would have been good for at least a couple of days. I might have written a blog about it. I have. But I don't so much anymore. Which is kind of the point. I don't so much anymore.
I don't drink...Wine. Or much else. I stopped, because I did. A lot. Some wine. But mostly beer. I drank a lot of beer. This is what I thought about while my family meandered through the vast wholesale warehouse of Costco. Gallons of mayonnaise. Everything in bulk. You can't buy a little something. You're going to buy a lot. You could buy a lot of beer there. Back in the day, it was a revelation to me that Miller Lite would sell you a case of beer that you could carry out with one hand. It was a briefcase full of booze. Twenty-four cans of beer in one hand, leaving the other one free to put your change away, grab the car keys, and get behind the wheel.
Well, you know the rest.
And the real amazing thing was that I was never arrested. Not once. I was pulled over a couple of times. I was not drinking and driving. I was just driving. After I had many drinks. The officer let me go with a warning. Don't drink and drive.
I suppose that was good advice. At least half of it. I don't drive a lot anymore. I don't drink anymore. Not at all. I stopped. I did that Cold Turkey thing. Now, after all these years of having told people who feign interest in the story, it occurs to me that I did not know why we say "Cold Turkey," but Wikipedia would like me to believe that it has something to do with how long it takes to make a dish like Cold Turkey. Not long. Like not at all.
I just stopped. And the drugs too. Not as big a deal, since my drug of choice was the Miller Lite. It was a package deal. A great big package of Cold Turkey.
Somewhere back in my late twenties I stopped. And people used to ask me, "Do you miss it?" They don't ask me anymore. It doesn't really matter anymore, since I have done a lot of other things aside from the drinking since then: got married, had a kid, started a career. I have quit other things since then too. I miss them.
But I got over it. Now my wife turns to me and asks if we didn't miss the anniversary of my sobriety. I didn't miss it. It's just down below a whole lot of other stuff now. Somewhere under a cold turkey sandwich.