Guys, it says our lives had become unmanageable - not our wives.
The first time I drank alcohol was one Miller High Life in those clear bottles where the golden amber fluid glowed with a heavenly light. It didn't make me feel good - it made me feel normal. The reaction was so much more than a sense of ease and relaxation - the clouds parted, a beam of sunshine hit me and me only, and the angels sang. I was afraid and anxious and then I was not. I knew I had found The Answer. When I tell this story to an alcoholic I get a knowing nod. When I tell it to a non-alcoholic (I learned long ago not to do this) they back away as if I was Dracula.
The first time I got drunk was at a party where I spent an hour or two lying in the dark on a cement basement floor. It was not an uncomfortable experience. I didn't feel embarrassed or have the need to do something else. I was drunk and lying on a cool, cool cement floor. It made sense to me. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I had alcohol in my system so I was pretty comfortable doing what I was doing.
"Alcohol: the solution to and the cause of all of my problems." Homer J. Simpson
The unmanageable life was quite clear quite quickly but as long as I could numb myself with alcohol I was sure I was just about to solve everything. I didn't have the sense that things were spinning totally out of control in a way that I couldn't eventually fix. I was driving too fast on black ice while laboring under the illusion that if I just tapped the brakes and steered into the spin I wouldn't go off that thousand foot cliff. "Tomorrow!" I'd shout. "Tomorrow is the day when I get my shit together!"
Man, I didn't even know where my shit was anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment