Sober October Day 7: I'm Better Than You
By now, it’s no secret that the best approach to doing something healthy, challenging, or fulfilling with your life—aside from simply doing it—is consistently telling others about it, posting about it ad nauseam on social media, basing your entire personality around it, alienating yourself from your friends because of it, and gradually becoming the very person you used to hate. So here I am, on the seventh day of Sober October, coming to you as a martyr for self-important bloggers with tiny dicks and thinly veiled substance abuse problems.
How did we get here?
I’m a simple man. I see that some type of event or activity is based on two words rhyming and literally nothing else, I’m all aboard. No questions asked. That’s why I never missed a single Power Hour, Spring Fling, or Virgin Excursion in college. I scrambled to every Kegs n Eggs I’ve ever heard about, and I’d be the first on the boat if I ever got invited to a Booze Cruise. If you say “wake n bake,” I’ll say “how high?” Oh, there’s a Black Swan Marathon? I’m watching it on repeat until I can reenact Mila Kunis’ entire performance down to the subtle tongue motions; playing the Air Portman to cinematic perfection like there’s an Oscar on the line.
Point is, I go fucking berserk for words that rhyme. In fact, I like words that rhyme more than numbers, colors, and trains combined. So when I heard there’s such a thing called “Sober October,” I truly can’t describe how fast I threw out each of the flavor-coordinated spiked seltzers lining my fridge in groups of four. I was fully committed to Sober October, and I’d be damned if any “reliances” or “withdrawals” were going to throw me off my model train tracks.
Step 1: Tell others about it
I started small by announcing it on a national radio show, and then I delicately weaved it into every single conversation I had thereafter, whether the context called for it or not.
Step 2: Post about it on social media
The Instagram Story feature is a great way to convey a certain message and seek attention without worrying about having to delete the post due to insufficient likes. When you’re participating in something difficult and pretentious like Sober October it’s important to use social media to:
A. Fish for compliments and positive attention
B. Feign happiness and/or superiority
C. Lie
Step 3: Use the outpouring of support you receive as motivation to continue
Step Whatever: Alienate yourself from your friends
As someone who only spends time with friends in situations that directly involve alcohol, this was automatically accomplished for me.
Compensate for lack of friends by doing things that make you appear better than others
I initially struggled with this one since I don’t have the funds to even appear inferior to other people, let alone better than them. And libraries/book stores weren’t cutting it since I don’t even have the attention span to proof read my own blogs, let alone entire books. One thing, however, that’s simpler, cheaper, and more uppity than (most) alcohol (the kind I drink) is coffee. I can afford coffee; I really like coffee; I’ll be fucked if I wasn’t going to become a full-blown “coffee enthusiast” dickhead by All Saints Day. So I did a quick Google search and…
You know what’s even cu-snobbier than being a self-proclaimed coffee enthusiast? Being a self-proclaimed coffee enthusiast who’s too snobby to even ingest coffee. Looking down upon the vile plebians willing to stain their teeth, tarnish their breath and trigger their bowels, coffee smelling aficionados are in a class of their own—the roastal elite—and I was determined to penetrate their community. Consensually. Plus, caffeine is a gateway drug for alcohol and amphetamines, so being solely a java sniffer would be the perfect hobby to keep my “KBNoseSwag” nickname apropos.
If the title of the event itself wasn’t enough to sell me on it, the description had me ready to carefully circumvent a brick wall while furrowing my brow at the drunken peons attempting to run through it. You aren’t Harry Potter, you fucking rmoron.
As someone who’s no stranger to putting my nostrils through fairly odd and immersive experiences (just ask the Cosmo), I knew I had to attend this magical festival. But at what cost?
A true Brown Noser (niche slang for coffee smelling aficionado) would never settle for a standard ticket at such a prestigious extravaganza, so getting a VIP pass was more of a no brainer than JFK opening a Shake Shack in Terminal 4. I could already feel my forearm wince as the weight of my tote bag increased upon the addition of an entire scratch-and-sniff booklet.
Just like that, I was a future VIP guest at New York’s flagship taste-free coffee event. And the best part is that I’ve been saving tons of money by staying sober.
