For four days now, I’ve been subject to a very strange feeling: sobriety. As in total abstinence, not a drop of wine, for 90.5 hours and counting. It’s not a feeling that I’m used to, and certainly not one I’d bring upon myself willfully. (A long weekend-long bender of progressive July 4 parties put me out of commission in this case.) But my haplessly clear-headed state has led to a lot of thoughts about the importance of wine in my life.

Here’s something of a diary of my temporary teetotaling. Pray to Bacchus it passes soon.

Tuesday, July 8, 4:30 p.m.: All I can think about is Gatorade, which is really odd. I never drink the stuff, or any soda of any kind. But I’m finally able to keep something down, and I feel so depleted, so I marvel at the color (neon blue), the taste (blueberry popsicle), and the effect (extra-hydrating). Whereas normally I’m appalled, today I’m grateful for how overengineered a soda pop can be. Wine is so simple in comparison; just grapes, maybe a little yeast to start the fermentation. Normally I find that simplicity so beautiful, so natural, so delicious. Right now, well, let’s not discuss it.

Wednesday, July 9, 8:00 p.m.: Not doubled up with cramping and nausea today, so that’s a plus. Still, as a test, I picture a glass of wine and feel repulsed. Perhaps that’s because it’s before noon, I think to myself, so I switch the image to Champagne. Alas, still repelled. Is this what suddenly falling out of love feels like? How disorienting.

1:30 p.m.: My first food (split pea soup and a piece of toast). This simple repast would be so perfect with a glass of sauvignon blanc. Instead, I’m forced to pair it with Gatorade A.M. Yuck. I just do not understand how a majority of my fellow Americans eat food with watered-down, fake-fruit-flavored fructose syrup. How do they enjoy anything with a sugary coke? I miss how eating a meal is made so much more special and sumptuous by wine — and vice-versa, how wine tastes more complex when it’s accompanying good food.

10:00 p.m.: My temporary sobriety has caused a steep climb in my productivity: I can’t believe how much work I got done today I paid two months’ worth of bills, walked the dog three times, balanced two accounts, picked up the wife at the airport and drove 45 miles to the wine country. No wonder the effects of alcohol filled the Protestants with horror. I could do more, but my smug self-satisfaction with my super-sized work ethic is wearing off, replaced by ennui.

I realize: I miss my glass of wine at the end of labor. I love how wine functions like a marker between work and play, activity and passivity. It’s the swoosh between the day’s yin and the evening’s yang.

Thursday, 6:00 p.m.: The thought of wine still makes me nostalgic mentally, nauseated physically. I begin to panic. What if I never again can drink wine? What if I’ve suffered one of those freak accidents, where some sort of physical trauma changes the body’s sensory abilities? My mother had a friend who, after she delivered her second child, suddenly lost her sense of smell. A friend of mine was allergic to red wine until she got pneumonia a couple of years ago, and now she’s fine with it. And everyone knows someone who got sick from drinking too much tequila and now can’t touch the stuff. Did I overindulge and this is my payback?

Friday, 8:00 a.m.: I woke up this morning and for the first time my stomach held course when I gave it the thought-of-Champagne test.

12:30 p.m.: I’ve been taken out to a lovely lunch at the El Dorado Kitchen. Although I do have to rally, I order the mushroom and goat cheese pizza and a glass of 2005 Patassy Russian River Valley pinot noir. And … it’s so delicious. Perhaps because my four days of abstinence served as the ultimate palate cleanser, all of the attributes of this wine seemed so clear to my palate. It was obviously a pinot: elegant in structure, light like a dance on the tongue, but full of cherry-strawberry flavors and some spice cake.

What a relief to be back.