It’s not easy being drunk all the time;
Everyone would do it if it were easy.
There’s a wide gap between a “social” drinker and an “alcoholic”. It’s a regrettably coarse span of choices found on personality inventories. Most who do imbibe can honestly choose the first. Some might convince themselves that because they drink to be social, they are social drinkers. Few wish to admit to the latter, which is more a medical diagnosis than a choice or a description of a lifestyle.
In casual parlance, “being drunk all the time” would be a fair definition of an alcoholic, even if it discounted the hours of work and sleep or required vigilance wherein the being was just the hope of an eventual scratch of an angry itch behind the throat.
During most of my term in the jail of marriage, my drinks consisted of beer and wine, which are the metals of the medals of lesser ranks on the drunkard ladder.
In the end years, when coming home from the office meant an hour of cold misery with my gaoler before a few of genuine love from angels plucked from peace into life– during those times, the beer was relegated to a pastime during grilling, and the wine poured in greater quantities as the sun set. However, after the girls were asleep and before their mother came home to sleep in her hammock, the mainstay was a good Scotch whisky redolent of peat.
Once, their mother asked what I’d do if she left me. I said I’d likely get a small apartment and get drunk every night. She broke a bit there, and cried. It was near dusk, and my eldest peeked outside to see what was happening. I hushed her back inside. It was over by then.
The marriage, that is. The drinking was just beginning.
Enough of the back-story. Today, I buy more alcohol than I do milk. I probably drink more alcohol than water. Indeed, besides the bubbly that issues from my SodaStream, there is rarely any other beverage in my apartment but vodka.
A few months ago, I began infrequently joking about being an alcoholic. When a chuckled bit of occasional self-deprecation becomes a daily statement of wearily wry fact– well, it’s not a joke anymore.
A fierce disclaimer before I go any further: My girls are my reason for living, and their safety and happiness will always dry up any thirst for alcohol. I will not risk any lapse of vigilance when they are in my care. Let that be noted and acknowledged as an overriding clause for any future statements.
Most nights, I’m drunk within an hour of leaving work and arriving “home”. That is, I’m well on my way toward an inebriation that will eventually erode my impulse control and sway my physical balance. It’ll be a few hours more until I’m near slipping and/or slurring on my spelling, my grammar, or over my own feet– but I’m drunk in at least the sense of being legally bound as either passenger or pedestrian for any travel.
It’s Easter morning as I write this. I’ve finished re-watching Game of Thrones, and the scene that leads this post prompted me to start writing … something. I’m not drunk now, and won’t be for at least another six hours or so. Friday, I started at noon. In any case, I’ve forgotten my point. Was there a point? What good reason could there be for my public admission of “alcoholism” when doing so could result in losing access to my girls? Nothing else matters, but that’s a very dear and important matter.
Let’s put this one to sleep for now.
