Let's talk about drinking habits. Let's say I spend $12 a day on alcohol (in any imbibed form). Let's say I do this, oh, four days out of the week. That's $48 a week. Multiply that by 52, and you get�good lord�$2496 a year, all spent on booze.

Now, let's round that up to $2500 (I was not a math major) and continue. Granted, there are probably days when I drink but pay less than $12 for it. And granted, I probably don't drink four days out of every single week. Just most of them, the last couple years, the way things have been going. In fact, I'm hard-pressed to remember the last time I went a week without drinking. Certainly not within the past four years.

Also, consider the alcohol I drink but don't pay for�the beers friends buy for me, the drinks proffered by party hosts, beers I've had at my parents' house. I'd say that more than compensates for any hedging I've done in my above estimates, as far as intake is concerned. And $12/day is pretty conservative, given that the cheapest pitcher in town, excluding drink specials, is $5-6, and a pint of domestic beer is $2-3, excluding scary sports bars that offer ridiculous deals like 50� pints. And what about the trips I've taken to London or New York, where a pint is going to be at least $5? And what about those nights when I've felt generous, and bought my table 2 or 3 pitchers in a row? Or bought shots for the birthday boy/girl?

Whatever�I think you get the idea. It adds up. So. $2500. Let's look at what that could buy me, if I were to simply (ha�there's nothing simple about it) quit drinking for a year:

� 5 high-end (30 GB) iPods
� 167 CDs
� a decent used car
� five months' rent in a major metropolitan area
� nine years of internet porn (or so I've heard)
� about 150 gallons of gas
� 2500 items at Dollar General
� 500 matinees of The Matrix RELOADED
� 5000 Let's Roll! bumper stickers
� A shit-ton of weed

Consider, also, that my average hourly wage at the variety of fulfilling part-time jobs I currently hold is eight dollars. That means I work 312 hours a year (roughly 40 work days) just so I can drink.

Man! Those are some SOBERING statistics! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

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