coach wrote:
I was vegetarian for a year, then I left for Mexico for 4 months. About a day in I realized, "being a vegetarian in Mexico will be impossible -- both logistically (in Mexico, lard is everywhere) and because meat in Mexican food is just too damn delicious to pass up."
I never turned back.
Odd. I had this same experience, only I was a vegetarian for nine years longer than that.
When I got back from Central America, the snottiness of my former comrades made me realize some things about vegetarians.
Once, on tour, after having given up cigarettes for a couple of years, I called my girlfriend in Athens. I was at a payphone in Portland, OR. It was my birthday. She blithely informed me she was moving her shit out of my house and that the guy that I suspected she has been shacking up with was INDEED helping her move her shit.
I was a bit dumbstruck. I managed to stammer "But... but... it's my birthday....."
and she said "Oh, yeah. Happy birthday... I gotta go."
*click*
I walked into 7-11 and bought a pack of Camel shorts. Fuck a filter. I smoked for three or four more years.
Also, several years later, after having been off drugs for even longer than I was off cigarettes, my girlfriend talked me into smoking some weed with her. For those of you unfamiliar with the addict mind, this is what was, in my case, the top of the slipperiest of slippery slopes. One very short and SPECTACULAR drug binge later, even she was strongly encouraging me to climb back up on the wagon, for her own safety and mine. Eventually, I did.
Last year, I did not run a marathon because I fell off the "run frequently and don't eat six or more carne asada tacos a week" wagon. This year, I am trying to claw my way back into shape.