On Friday evenings, I morph into Fred Flintstone at quitting time (sans brontosaurus slide, sadly), skedaddling gleefully out of the office so fast my feet can barely keep up. Within minutes of clocking out, my wheels are speeding down the highway.
And then, with the miles between work and home increasing and hyperdrive mode subsiding, it hits.
The thirst.
Have you felt it? It’s hard to explain. I’d call it a kind of vague discomfort — not an ache or an itch, but more like a pull, subtly dragging my equilibrium a few centimeters off-center. I just don’t feel right. There’s something missing.
If you’re an alcoholic, you’ve come to identify this feeling as wanting a drink. Maybe in past lives, you identified it as wanting something else, but you ultimately settled on alcohol as the thirst quencher du jour.
After a while, if you’ve spent a long enough time habitually reaching for “that thing” every time you feel this, you recognize the situation for what it is: a trap. Continue reading “The Thirst Trap”
