Where the Grass is Greener: An Alcohol Free Weekend

One of the best benefits to skipping alcohol on Friday and Saturday nights is the early morning rise on Sunday.

Like many across America, my hometown is gearing up for Opening Day of Little League baseball season. With more teams than baseball diamonds, practice times need to be scheduled and allocated so each team has space available for practice.

This year my son drew the 8 am slot on Sunday morning.  This morning, I loved it. But I haven't always.

I'm an early riser by nature. However, my not atypical path through life had me drinking on weekends in high school, then drinking even more frequently during college, and then drinking at a myriad of opportunities presented by the alcohol-loving culture of the Silicon Valley high tech industry (this is changing, but that's another blog post).

Waking in the early morning hours is innate in me. I don't know if it's genetic or learned, but boozy nights never quell my internal clock from cranking my eyelids open before the sun comes up. Five a.m. is typical for me, and factoring out for periods of international jet lag, I can count on two hands the number of times I've slept past 8 a.m. on any given day.  Hangovers be damned.

So, the best benefit is not the waking up early, it's how great I feel in comparison when waking up, period. 

Waking up on a cool, crisp, and sunny morning with a crystalized sense of how the sun's rays are breaking open the day -- birds singing, frost melting, seeds in the ground starting to get a sense that Spring is coming -- waking up with the natural world around you uninhibited by the numbing fog of metabolized alcohol -- this is the one side of the fence where the grass is definitely greener.



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