So day 2 AF here and a little bit more about myself. Several years ago, as I was checking out of a hotel on the west coast of Ireland with my wife, the innkeeper asked me about my background. I told him I was half English, a quarter Welsh and a quarter Irish. To which he replied “You must be stark raving mad!”. Well, um, I’m not crazy, but I do think that background has established a family history of heavy drinking and probably depressive moods for certain family members (not sure which caused which though). My father and both brothers died far too early, a lot of it due to the fact that they did not take care of themselves and tended to drink a lot (most recently, my middle brother passed away from liver failure at the ripe old age of 59). And while I am nowhere near the level of consumption that they “enjoyed”, I am at a point where drinking (say 3,4 or maybe 5 drinks a night on the weekend) is diminishing the quality of my life both physically and psychologically. Even just a few drinks will totally mess up my sleep patterns – which in turn puts me in a bad mood and less interested in working out – or doing much of anything for that matter. So, I’m not the drunk you will find under the table or in the gutter at the end of the night, but I do think drinking is making my world smaller and less interesting. So why continue with it?