1. I Drink Therefore I Am
I Drink Therefore I Am
“If I had all the money I’d spent on drink, I’d spend it on drink" (Vivian Stanshall)
When I drink it is pretty much all I do. From the moment the wine cascades into the bottom of a large glass and swirls around its glorious clear bottom that is it for me.
The glass will be placed an arms length away and I stare at it for a few moments like the eyes of a cat on an absent minded mouse. It is mine and I can have it anytime I want.
It is now game-over for thinking too much and game-over for achieving, game-over from self inspection or being a “productive” human being. Thank God I made it to this liquid full-stop.
The trouble is that the craving gets worse and the time between the drinks gets shorter and at the end of one of these phases I could pretty much dispense of the pleasantries of the glass.
Like the line delivered in Apocalypse Now by Robert Duval to Lance the Surfer. “Son you either surf or fight”. For me it becomes “you either drink or think”. The wine washes its way through the dormant thought crevasses and clears a path through the worry ravines. It erodes active anxiety and swills it all out to sea. It leaves me firmly in the present shouting mindlessly at the TV. “who the fuck does that shite-hawk think he is he’s no better than me?”. The level is reached where I can say I am better than “he”.
Drink levels it all and gives the drinker exactly the level they crave. It is the balance of the bubble in the window of the spirit level. It flattens and it makes familiar what is at first chaotic and confusing. I know how this is meant to feel and dead-certain when I get there, I am not so clear on how the rest of it should pan out.
The rest of it and the energy it takes, this is what I am not clear on. What should life feel like? I get exhausted trying to work out what people want from me. Probably nothing, it's just me here in the centre of this ego field I created juggling imagined perceptions and the weight of my own expectations. I am tired of the constant self inspection and the excavation of personality. When I drink I can put down the controls of the drone that are mapping my faults from above. Time off from contouring the cracks and crevasses in myself.
It is so much energy to tag thoughts and categorize feelings. I haven’t dealt with the last one before another comes along and they stack up, waiting to be sorted and like an overwhelmed librarian on their first day on the job. Have a drink Mr. Librarian it won’t matter as much. You see how your need for energy subsidies? Who really cares if that book goes back in the right place. You probably won’t make the grade and then someone else’s problem.
It may wash away worries at the start, but they are there again in the morning and the drink washes more of you away than you planned. It envelops the subtle nuances of self and the lovely lumps that make me who I am. It is like the abandoned village that gets flooded for the new reservoir. Eventually the roofs on the smaller houses go, then the old school and finally all that is left is the crumbling church spire and bell that gently gongs in the breeze. Uno mas, uno mas, time gentlemen please.
So I can’t go on like this. My relationship with alcohol has become unbalanced. No one thing can be relied on to supply us with the force we need to continue apart from maybe love. So from the spire of the church I launch the flare of self-care.
Self-care is the number one place to start. People make sounds like they care, but if you don't care then really you can guarantee no one else does. Why should they in a way? You are asking them to come to see a movie you have reviewed so badly. You are asking them to eat the food at your newly condemned restaurant. Please come and see the live production of Self Pity the musical and we are sorry we can’t afford the music. If you care, someone cares, that is the only place to start. You know in your heart no one can help you. Yes they can say nice encouraging things but someone cannot talk you hungry if your stomach is full. Yes l can lay around like a dormant computer program waiting for the magic piece of code that links all the broken lines together. Or I can shut down that life and begin a new one without drink or the need for it.
I drink because I am bored and I am boring because I drink. Your fear is becoming boring but that is the very thing you become. I always think of the “Fun Guy Bobby” character in Friends. They cannot wait for him to arrive because of the crazy chaos that blows into town with the arrival of someone not in control of their life. He gives up drinking half way through the episode. He is sad and introspective and well just not fun anymore. So I told this to a friend and he said it was quite the opposite with me. The times he remembers me being my funniest and the best version of myself neither of us had had a drink.
Drink in fact creates the very boredom it promises to solve, but you are drunk so don’t notice as it arrives unannounced. It will happily sit beside you on the sofa and keep you company as your creativity decides to leave because there is no room here for new thought. Those things are unwelcome as they throw your self image into contrazoom. (Like The Chief in Jaws as he realises the shark is close to the beach). Refocus through the lens of the booze, now it is better to look like you never really wanted it or even better make it look like you came “this close”.
To be bored is so Bourgeois isn't it, so very Western? I’m not dodging bullets or walking eight miles for water. No I wouldn’t be bored then so is boredom a good thing? Is it the sign of a success? Does it mean we are safe, safe to destroy ourselves from within? The nurses patch up the artists, the drunks, the scholars and thieves alike and then send them back out to carry on with their poison of choice.
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