I deliberately haven't had anything like vodka

[EngLearner]

Suppose John is an alcoholic. He drinks a lot of strong alcohol every day. He wants to test his willpower, so he decides to attempt a whole week without drinking. After a week passes, he calls his friend, who is also an alcoholic. They meet up and go to a pub. After getting drunk on vodka and whiskey, they step outside, and John tells his friend the entire story:

It’s been an entire week since I last drank strong alcohol. Seven days during which I deliberately haven't had anything like vodka, whiskey, or brandy. I’ve occasionally had soft drinks, but I've been trying to keep the amount of those to a minimum. According to my phone's notebook app, which I've been using to track my progress, I’ve had just two bottles of beer and a bottle of apple cider in a week. That’s compared to the couple of bottles of something strong like vodka or cognac that I typically drink per day. It’s felt pretty unusual to me.

I made up the scenario and wrote the text above. Is it correct to use the present perfect for the bolded verbs in this context?

 

[5jj]

Past tenses would be more appropriate. The week ended in the past, when the speaker got drunk on vodka and whiskey.

 

[EngLearner]

It had been an entire week since I last drank strong alcohol. Seven days during which I deliberately didn't have anything like vodka, whiskey, or brandy. I occasionally had soft drinks, but I was trying to keep the amount of those to a minimum. According to my phone's notebook app, which I was using to track my progress, I had just two bottles of beer and a bottle of apple cider in a week. That’s compared to the couple of bottles of something strong like vodka or cognac that I typically drink per day. It felt pretty unusual to me.

Have I used the correct past tenses?

 

[emsr2d2]

It's just a point of logic but it should be noted that if he was trying to go a week without drinking (which, because he's an alcoholic, we take to mean without drinking alcohol), he failed completely because he had beer and cider!

 

[EngLearner]

Is what I wrote in post #3 correct in the context of post #1?

 

[SoothingDave]

"Soft drinks" are non-alcoholic, like Coke or Pepsi.

Yes, spirits like vodka are called "hard liquor," but we don't refer to beer as "soft."

 

[EngLearner]

spirits like vodka are called "hard liquor,"

Is the term "strong alcohol" unidiomatic when talking about hard liquor?

but we don't refer to beer as "soft."

I should probably have said "mildly alcoholic drinks" when talking about cider and beer. Would that work?

 

[SoothingDave]

"Strong alcohol" is understandable, but not idiomatic.

There are basically three categories: liquor, wine, and beer. There's not really a generic term for wine and beer as a lesser strength drink.

 

[5jj]

Simply refer to whiskey, vodka, brandy, etc as 'spirits'.

 

[EngLearner]

It had been an entire week since I last drank hard liquor. Seven days during which I deliberately didn't have anything like vodka, whiskey, or brandy. I occasionally had mildly alcoholic drinks, but I was trying to keep the amount of those to a minimum. According to my phone's notebook app, which I was using to track my progress, I had just two bottles of beer and a bottle of apple cider in a week. That’s compared to the couple of bottles of something strong/hard like vodka or cognac that I typically drink per day. It felt pretty unusual to me.

Can anyone please tell me if this sounds right in the context of post #1? Are the bolded past tenses used correctly?

 

[5jj]

The first sentence is not very natural unless you have some sort of past-time marker, for example:

Until we met this evening, it had been an entire week since I last drank hard liquor/spirits..

Your passage is fine otherwise.