CW: substance abuse (H2O); do NOT try this at home.
Back when shops were open, I was browsing a Traid when I was stunned by one of the most arresting statistics I’d ever seen about water use – the fact that it would take me 12 years to consume as much water as is required to make a single pair of jeans. A single pair. I don’t think I’ve ever been as profoundly affected by a sentence as I was by that one.
The message was clear to me: I had to drink more water. If these companies are getting through over a decade of my water consumption with one pair of trousers, I need to pull my socks up and get drinking, for the good of the planet and my body.
The first steps in my noble march towards a better life in involved some maths: since there are 4383 days in 12 years, I therefore had to drink 4383x more water each day. At the time, I was drinking about 2 litres of water a day at a push, and so the transition to drinking over 8,000 litres more daily was certainly challenging. And I won’t lie to you – there were moments when I doubted the efficacy of what I was doing.
Since I’m awake for 16 hours a day, I was having to drink approximately 548 litres of water per hour to keep up with my goal. However, these statistics changed slightly as I ended up being awake for 22 hours a day, because my sleep was interrupted every minute or so by a need to urinate. Handily, this brought down my hourly consumption to a more manageable 400 litres per hour, which is only about 7 litres per minute. This left me with some time to pursue my hobbies and other interests, such as vomiting water and wishing I was dead.
It wasn’t long before the compliments started to pour in – ‘Olley, your skin looks amazing!’, ‘Olley, that’s a really nice lorry full of water you’ve got following you around!’ I have to say, I was looking great and feeling great. And, before you start complaining that I hired a diesel fuelled lorry to constantly accompany me, don’t worry. I made sure to offset the CO2 released from this by only breathing out once or twice per minute, and not using as much concrete recreationally.
As I bloated uncontrollably from water filling every tissue of my body, I felt comfortable buying larger and larger pairs of jeans and burning the ones which were now too small for me, knowing that the sacrifices I made for a better planet were being rewarded by a great wealth of denim dungarees, jeggings and of course – jorts.
I also found that donating blood helped to reduce my blood pressure and general osmotic load, however, after a while I was told that my blood was ‘basically just a thin consommé’ and would ‘actually make anyone we put this into even more ill’. My blood type is O+, but I have to say, this O was feeling pretty negative. People used to beg me for my blood – now no-one even wanted it for free. The whole experience was becoming a bit of a downer.
But I kept my head up. Because I had to. Because if you’re drinking 8,000 litres of water a day, you pretty much don’t have a choice. If my head wasn’t up, the water backing up my oesophagus would have drowned me. As I looked at the sky and saw the clouds rolling by, serene and mostly water, I realised that I was closer to a cloud than most people would ever be. And I did not wander lonely, because I always had the lorry full of water with me.
It was a matter of perspective. I was saving the planet, employing a patient man to sit in a lorry all day, and learning about the limits of human biology in the process. The world is a safer place now, and the fashion industry can continue to practice as it wishes, employing and enrobing millions, because of me.
If someone tells you you’re too small to make a difference, I say try increasing your volume by hundreds of litres and seeing if they still dare to insult you when the hydrostatic pressure within your wrists is enough to produce a jet of water that could cut a plane in half.
Olley has been vegan for 6 years and performing comedy for less time than that. He strongly believes it’s ethically wrong to cause harm to sentient beings for your own personal enjoyment, which makes it hard to explain why he’s still doing comedy.