First “I’m not drinking” practice...

[Joe Nerve]

Even after 20+ years, they still see it as a mission to get me to drink again. I never preach at them, I simply say, "No." Sometimes I'll actually do a shot of some tequila or whiskey I've never had, and their faces all light up like they just won the lottery. It's sad, really, that grown men can't seem to comprehend the idea of a sober life being any kind of fun.

I honestly didn't start living at all until I stopped drinking. My life is infinitely more exciting lived not in a haze. Sobriety is a drug in itself . For real. Most people can't handle it.

I have a new thing I like to ask people to to help them decide if they have a problem with alcohol...

If you had the choice of having a 1 month all expense paid vacation to wherever paradise is for you, but you couldn't drink any alcohol whatsoever, or take any drugs - OR one month at home where you could drink all you want for free with no repercussions or judgement from anyone, whatsoever - which would you choose.

 

[Spidey2112]

I honestly didn't start living at all until I stopped drinking. My life is infinitely more exciting lived not in a haze. Sobriety is a drug in itself . For real. Most people can't handle it.

I have a new thing I like to ask people to to help them decide if they have a problem with alcohol...

If you had the choice of having a 1 month all expense paid vacation to wherever paradise is for you, but you couldn't drink any alcohol whatsoever, or take any drugs - OR one month at home where you could drink all you want for free with no repercussions or judgement from anyone, whatsoever - which would you choose.

The former...

 

[singlemalt]

I don’t know what’s going on. I looked in my liquor cabinet, nothing but a dusty bottle of vermouth and several vape pens of hash oil. (It’s different here in Washington!)

I felt like such a quitter.

Should I change my user name or go get a bottle of scotch?

Right, mid shelf from Highland Park, called Magnus. Nice, leans toward the Islay side of things.

 

[JimB52]

I've had the same experience before. I usually have a few (yes, really only three or four) beers during practices and on the occasions when I didn't I thought I was playing like crap (even by my own crappy standard of crap playing) but that wasn't what my mates were hearing. Happened just yesterday, in fact. I had half a beer and then decided I just wasn't in the mood and never felt right-on or tight playing anything but they said I was sounding great.

I think it may have something to with state-dependent memory which would affect both your playing and your perception of your playing.

Habits are good to get away from once in a while.

Proof that nobody really listens to the bass player.

 

[Verb the Noun]

Mindfulness is something a lot more people should engage in. That means being 100% true with yourself as to why you are doing something.

Great statement!

OP, grats on your decision. Nothing but upside.

I have never been a drinker. Alcoholic father and alcohol poisoning the first couple times I tried was enough to cure me of the urge very young. Marijuana? Yea..... that's another story. In my youth it was 100% part of playing music. I "played better" when high and rehearsals were lame if I didn't have a buzz on.

I quit playing music and cut back smoking dramatically at about 28 years old. I started easing back into music again a few years ago and have gone all in this year. I would like to think I have been a lot more true with myself about my pot usage and music this go round. I no longer believe it makes me play better, I understand I'm just into the music a bit more. I think it does increase my creativity a bit and I tend to write more grooving lines, but my technical precision and song memory suffers for sure. Shows are now a 100% sober rule for me, and I stagger my rehearsal indulging by a month or two off and on. I am completely sober about 50% of the year these days, and during the other 50% the use is nowhere near what it used to be. I am likely telling myself a story to justify my use, but it feels like that off and on mix accelerates my improvement. Expand the mind for a bit, then practice the weird stuff I was doing with a clear head to master it. I have found that not as fun when sober feeling is pretty much gone now with how often I go back and forth, kind of the opposite actually as it takes a couple practices for me to stop getting lost occasionally during songs when high.

I have started abstaining from other things in my life lately as well. Sugar and salt are avoided as much as possible. I am 2 months into being mostly caffeine free. No more coffee in the mornings, but I still indulge in a soda every now and then. Processed foods are next on the list. Yea by 48 I've already done damage with all the crap I have put in my body over the years, but I am finding with each healthy choice I make I feel just a little bit better.

I will probably smoke less and less as the years go by, but I don't feel too bad about indulging in one of my few remaining vices. Especially considering the ability to use moderation I have learned.

Best of luck to you OP! Week #3 is always the hard one for me, that's right in the gap between routine kicking in and willpower wavering.

 

[IamGroot]

When I cleaned out my liquor cabinet, I didnt want to pour it down the drain, so I tried to give it away to my musician buddies. None of them touched the hard stuff. A lot of them alluded to former problems.

I wound up giving my top shelf collection to strangers.

 

[IamGroot]

On a slight detour, I am amazed Lemmy lived as long as he did.

 

[juancaminos]

OH boy...in the early years I drank, smoked, snorted & swollowed what ever was given to me and let me tell you all that a lot was given to me. At about the time I graduated to a quart of Canadian Club and several bowls of good skunk weed every night after work I started having anxiety attacks that would not go away...ever. Thru the help of a real good psychologist I stopped all stimulants for five years, including coffee, tea and music. My personal life went into overdirve, my career went up, up & up. My kids actually got to know who their dad was.
My friends and "partying" family members said I was dull and no fun to be around any more.

That was in the mid 80's and it was a good five years. Now I drink one cup of coffe a day and a few light beers twice a week (Mich Ultra), no other recreational drugs. Believe me even that is a big change and life is still good. I still don't feel right playing music with out drinking share of beer though. A normal gig starts with two beers during set up, a third to last thru the first set then one at each break (we were doing two breaks). PLus as much water as I can drink. Nothing during tear down.

If I ever get something new going I plan to have one during set up and drink water after that. We'll see.
Good luck and much respect to all of you sober musicians. Hats off to the OP.

 

[somebrains]

I had my first "after hours senior guys talking about how things are going to go" session where we were all sober.
That's unusual since we have beer and booze in the office.

 

[swarfrat]

So what's a not drinking practice? Giving it up for a few hours? What do you call it when you decide to not drink for real?

 

[Frndmoretti]

I sometimes have a few beers when we rehearse, in some rare occasions I drink with the drummer before the rehearsal. It's never been an issue because I always take care not to drink too much.

Occasionally we meet to write music and have a party and it's all very loose. It works.

I enjoy having two cans of beer before playing if possible, simply to get in a good mood and feel a bit loose.

Not many beers on stage since I had to make our concert a two-sets one because I needed to go to the bathroom to save my bladder from exploding.

 

[slagheap]

i never drink during rehearsal or gigs.i played a year with a couple of cats that drank whiskey at rehearsals. not at gigs, though. it was no problem, they kept it together, they were good, better than me. we didn't socialize so i don't know about consumption outside that area. on the other hand, when i saw larry carlton & steve lukather they were bad ass until they had a couple of drinks - they screwed up simple tunes after that.

 

[Gianni "Orlandez" Orlati]

Maybe one. Sometimes none. Makes you realize how little gear actually matters sometimes.

Perhaps to people only catering for their instrument ... ensemble music requires a higher degree of mental discipline and discerning ability ... there are tunes more suitable for P basses other which are more suitable for PJ or J basses ... same for Guitars or keyboards

 

[Killed_by_Death]

Practicing sober is tough, but rehearsing sober should be easy.

 

[Robscott]

...in quite some time.

Decided last week I needed to stop drinking. Probably not a permanent situation but I need to break my routine/habit of 2-3 beers a day.

So yesterday was the first practice with water only. It was weird. Didn’t like my bass sound all afternoon and felt everything was low energy.

Drummer said it was the best I’ve played though so it’s all in my head.

Also, in discussing that I think I like the Lakland 44-64 P/J more than the 44-60 the guitar player said he didn’t know I had another bass. I had brought it last week.

Good man! Keep it up. Can't tell you about the Lakland, never played one, but I've sunk a few beers and it's never helped me sound good

 

[Real Soon]

As someone who CAN drink a shag ton and who is, as of these days, taking breaks to reclaim sharp-minded time both on-instrument and off, I can attest to the value of reclaiming a dry, focused state of mind and relegating the drank time to r&r and the occasional night of loosening up.

For me, when I set a hard commitment, with realistic goals in mind, I can take good long breaks from drinking, and recently I've noticed an acceleration in the return on time spent on exercises as the result of such a commitment. It's a different mental state to be sure, but one worth exploring: rediscovering the beauty in clarity of mind.

Just as drinking is pretty often a habit for its own sake for us, so are our perceptions, including the way we hear our bass tones. Breaking the drinking habit up may very well refresh your ears, freed from the wall of PBR dampening the punchy mids and newly hearing the sort of tone that sits nicely in the band mix. It's weird but the human brain is weird, so hey.

Keep at it, and I suspect you'll get good results. We support it here.

 

[Diddywah]

Drinking and playing confuses my conception of what´s going on and I loose any sense of how good I´m actually playing....
But I remember a very good bassist in our area who always was quite drunk on stage, he played very well, so you couldn´t really tell, but you realized he was drunk when you talked with him. Someone asked him how he could play all those fast lines (Jaco inspired stuff, funk, jazz...not just root&five lines) being drunk.
His answer was; you have to be drunk when you rehearse too.....

 

[JW56789]

I wasn't some goody-two-shoes, I just can't drink: I get REAL drunk REAL fast, then what most of you call a hangover leaves me sick as a dog and in bed all day. Drugs terrified me: Buying who knows what from criminals and sweating the cops and playing with fire and taking my money all at the same time just did not seem realistic to me. Tony Montana did not send his stuff to the FDA, and I didn't want some clown cutting my s**t with rat poison, which I saw more than once in the Cocaine Cowboy days.

Now bear in mind, I didn't really care if somebody in the band had a beer or blew a little reefer outside between sets . . . . . except that humans are wired incorrectly and soon enough you're at the 'one's too many and a hundred ain't enough' point, and we're off to the races.

I watched drugs and/or alcohol wreck most every gig I ever played, especially galling as I'm watching this while drinking cokes, not snorting them. But when you spend a lot of time in bars, the 'occupational hazards' offered in the midst of crowds of already-there drinkers and druggers, a lot of guys slide into the deep end without ever seeing that rope with the floats at the end of the wading side.

This is a hard, cruel, heart-breaking world and people will do whatever they can to find some solace in the midst of the horrors of it all, I know this. But I will say what I always said after years of watching the toll add up in front of me, night after night ( . . . . which finally drove me out of gigging once and forever):

IF I could have found just one guy or girl musician that the ingestion of whatever combo of intoxicants really did make them play better, and be faster, cooler, and sexier, I can only imagine what I'd have offered to be let in on their regimen. 25 years later, I'm still looking for the first successful one. But I do know ( . . . . . or used to know before they died) lots of cats on their 3rd or 4th rehab, their 2nd or 3rd marriage, their birth-defected children, their AIDS battles, and more than a handful of funerals, divorces, DUI jail terms, and wrecked lives all in the pursuit of a party and being like the other cool guys. What a lie they bought. I just loved playing with that guy who would pass out/doze off standing at the mic in the middle of a set. . . . .

There is nothing compelling in alcohol or drugs, unless you look at the historical record of famous dead musicians, and then you should feel compelled NOT to go there. There are only problems and more problems and dismantled lives. Do you really want to be as successful (and dead) as Whitney, Michael, and Elvis? I don't. It's a bad road to nowhere.

What really bothers me is I never touched that crap, and STILL it wrecked my gigging. What a world . . . . . .

 

[Don Hergert]

... Here's an interesting link about bass and drinking:

Alcohol and the Loud Bassist: A Cautionary Tale

That's an absolutely fascinating article... Thanks for posting!!!

I've been lucky, due to a fairly conservative religious upbringing I've never drank, never smoked, never did any kind of drug, learning early in life to live a very clean lifestyle. Growing up as a teen in the late '60s and early '70s, lots and lots of my secular friends did it all, so I primarily grew up around friends at church. Not that I'm at all a perfect sample, but I'm glad I grew up that way.

However, as an aspiring musician in the late '70s and early '80s, and not wanting to be around a lot of drinking/smoking/whatever, it sort of limited the venues that I wanted to play for. And it had a large influence on changing my career path.

I was lucky there too, I found a useful career in another area that I really liked, a career that allowed me to continue a side-career in music in select venues, where I wasn't dependent on musical income. And now that I've retired a little early, I can concentrate more on that musical side-career.

I'm not unsympathetic though, and my personal non-substance related lifestyle isn't a measuring stick for others. But I do think I personally play better and enjoy music more because of it.

I wish the very best for any musician who is trying to be sober for any period of time, and especially for those who are trying to permanently stop substance habits. From the experiences of all of my friends in music who have fought this battle, I know it's a hard but rewarding road.

 

[RedWire75]

So what's a not drinking practice? Giving it up for a few hours? What do you call it when you decide to not drink for real?

I haven’t had a drink in a week. This was just the first practice we had since I stopped.