7/8/17 (Sat) Here we go - Sober Renaissance and they weren't as drunk as me???

Welp..I am going to the first sober Renaissance ever.  I don't feel like I will be tempted even though it has always been unapologetic drunken, crazy, fun day for 20 years. I am dead set determined to experience all the same things without alcohol.  What I am worried about is being bored.

I am not going to isolate myself this time.  Last night we went to some high school friends' house for a "been a long time" get together.  These are the people I got wasted with every weekend for 20 years before I had kids.  I did not drink last night.  I had a dark root beer bottle and just sipped on that all night with my hand covering the label.  We were outside and nobody even noticed.

I noticed two things.

1.  My memories of my twenties are very blurry.  I really don't remember a lot about some of the people we hung out with. I remember their names and their faces but really not much about them.  I do believe that I has just drunk every weekend that I wasn't all that present for the conversations we had or the things we did. I found myself faking it a lot last night.  "Oh ya, I remember that" even though the memory was very vague.  I didn't realize how much of it I don't remember, therefore how messed up I was most of the time, until people from the past start talking about it.  I had no idea how much I had not only forgotten, but couldn't pull it out of my memory at all even though I was there. Kinda scary, actually.

2.  Because of the conversations last night and the reminiscing I don't think everyone else was as drunk as  I was most of the time - and  - at the time (and until last night) I thought they were.  They talked about all this stuff that happened. I was there and don't remember a lot of it.  During one particular memory they were talking about, when I was super drunk, we were all laughing about it.  I was laughing right along with them, but in my head I was thinking "how embarrassing" bc it involved things like holding my hair back for me while I puked in the toilet and having to be picked up  in the ally of a bar I had to be dragged out of the bathroom by security.  I turned to my friend and asked, "Was anyone else as bad as me?" She said, "No." I got this weird feeling, right at that moment last night sitting around the fire, that that might have been the case during much of my twenties.  They were sitting there remembering all these details of that time period and I was struggling to keep up, nodding my head and laughing, pretending to remember.  I could have sworn everyone was always as drunk as I was. It's all just so weird.