Ex-Mormon Stories

While I’m waiting around for more people to submit their stories to me *cough* HINT! *cough* I thought I’d write up my thoughts on the Word of Wisdom, and what’s happened with me since I’ve left the LDS Church.

The very first day that I took off my garments and told my husband I didn’t believe in God or the Church anymore, we went out to eat to celebrate.  (NOTE: This is not the normal reaction from a spouse when you tell them that everything the two of you have ever believed in is a lie.  I just happen to be extremely lucky. :-D)  As I’ve already said, I tried coffee with my meal that evening, and it tasted like wet dirt.  With cream and sugar in it, it tasted like sweet, wet dirt.

Undeterred, I have tried it multiples times since, thinking that THIS time, I’d like it.  I’ve tried the plain coffees and I’ve tried fancy coffees (I would tell you the names of them, but I can’t remember so I won’t even try) but even when the coffee was supposedly flavored to taste like Milky Way candy bars, it still tasted like slightly chocolately wet dirt.

I’m just not seeing the draw here.

Then I moved on to tea.  Surely tea would taste good, right?  But unfortunately, that’s stuff so weak, it’s like trying to drink watered down water mixed with a little unidentifiable somethings.  I like my flavoring strong - when I make hot chocolate, I use twice the mix that normal people do.  One 8 packet for 8 oz of water?  You’ve got to be kidding.  Let’s try two packets with 6 oz of water - now we’re talking!

So no, no tea for me.

I was telling a friend this, and she suggested chai tea.  I thought, “Tea, chai tea…What’s the difference?”  But, I figured I might as well give it a shot and see what happens.

Oh. My. God.  I am in LOVE with chai tea.  I found this brand called Oregon Chai that I absolutely adore.   Oh yeah…When I mix up a cup of that, it’s what I imagined coffee would be all those years: Sweet, strong, warm, and absolutely yummy.  If you ever want to try out chai tea, for the Original kind and try that first, mixed with a little milk.  A little piece of heaven right there in your mug.

Then there’s of course the biggie: Alcohol.  When I was a teenager, I always felt virtuous that I wasn’t drinking.  At EFY’s and those kinds of meetings, I was constantly hearing talks about how you shouldn’t drink and that I needed to resist the social pressure, blah blah blah.

Well you know what would have worked even better than that?  Simply giving all of the kids in the group a sip of beer.  One taste of that NASTY stuff, and they would never be tempted to break the Word of Wisdom again.  Here’s my rundown of all of the different types of alcohol that Deej and I have tried since leaving the Mormon Church:

*Beer is this nasty yeasty crap that leaves an awful taste in your mouth. Yuck and double yuck.

*Rum tastes like rubbing alcohol.  Ever opened a bottle of rubbing alcohol and breathed in the nasty fumes?  Now imagine drinking that.  Yeah….

*Wine and champagne taste like rotten fruit.  Seriously.  If you let grapes go so bad that they started growing mold, and then you ate the grapes, then you would know what wine tastes like.  Champagne is the same.  Why do people purposefully drink this stuff?!

The only beer that we’ve found that we like, is beer that doesn’t taste like beer.  There’s a surprise. But we’ve found that Mike’s Hard Lemonade is great - it tastes just like a carbonated lemonade drink would taste.  The lime version tastes just like 7-Up.  We also tried Smirnoff and really like the Wild Grape flavor - it tastes like grape soda.

So why drink alcohol if it just tastes like sodas?  Well because unlike sodas, these will give you somewhat of a buzz.  I say somewhat because it is hard for me to drink enough to get even a small buzz going.  The alcohol content on these is so low that I’d have to start drinking in the afternoon in order to by drunk by nightfall.  Not going to happen.

The good news is, I am not drinking to get drunk.  I have never been drunk and I don’t plan on getting drunk anytime soon.  So what’s the point?  After I’ve had a really hard day, I like to pop open a Smirnoff or Mike’s, put in a movie, and relax in the couch.  It’s a good way to unwind.  I only do it once a week (twice a week on a really crazy one) so I’m not exactly in danger of becoming an alcoholic anytime soon.

I haven’t tried cigarettes yet, and can’t honestly can’t imagine what would ever induce me to try one.  I suppose if I was paid enough (like in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range) I would smoke one whole cigarette.  But since I sincerely doubt anyone would be stupid enough to pay me that kind of money to watch me cough and choke my way through a whole cigarette, I think that’s more of an academic exercise than anything.

As a whole, I think cigarettes are nasty, expensive, cancer-inducing pieces of crap that literally no one I have ever talked to is happy about being addicted to.  Have you ever met someone who said, “I’m so glad to be a smoker.  It makes my life so much better”?  Perhaps I’ve just been hanging around the wrong people, but I have yet to meet someone who felt that way.  (I am not bashing people who smoke cigarettes.  I’m just saying that for me, it’s not happening.)

My husband said the other day that he always thought cigars looked like kind of a cool, and smelled different (in a good way) but he didn’t know if he’d ever smoke one.  I’m there with him - I think cigars are more “exotic” than cigarettes, so they have a mysterious appeal to them.  Still doesn’t mean I’d actually want to smoke one (or be married to someone who smoked them).

So that’s been me and the post-Mormon Word of Wisdom world.  Has anyone else left the Church and been disappointed by what they’ve since tried?  I’d love to hear your thoughts below!