GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #692: 347

Shortly after Gramps died I decided that my new Christmas or New Year ritual would be smoking a cigar and drinking scotch in commemoration of his ritual. On Christmas and/or New Year's Eve, he would sit in the front room, smoke a cigar and drink while looking at the Christmas tree. We haven't put up the tree in many years, and right now there's no place for it, but starting with the last cigar I bought for him, the one he never smoked, I started this ritual a few years back. I don't smoke, so it's a bit odd for me, but I felt it was important for Gramps.

Over the weekend I found the cigar I was supposed to smoke last Christmas, bought before I quit drinking. I had a lot on my mind back then, so it's not surprising that the ritual slipped through the cracks. Today is my 347th day without booze, so when I discovered the cigar I realized that was a ritual I'd never be able to do again. The cigar was on the brink of going stale. The wrapping probably helped it survive this long, but the cigar itself was almost hard as a rock. When I used the cutter on it, it almost fell apart. But I lit it up because if I didn't, then I was going to throw it out, and I hate wasting money.

While I smoked it I thought about how it's a shame that the ritual had to go. I'm not sure how many of you are alcoholics or know any, but the lizard part of the alcoholic's brain never goes away. I've talked to people sober for almost their entire lives, and they still think about drinking sometimes.

So *my* lizard brain said, why not? When Christmas comes around, maybe get a cigar. Get a pint of the Glenlivet. Nothing more than that. If it's just a pint, then you can't have anymore when you're finished with it, right? So things can't get crazy.

"And who knows?" I said to my lizard brain. "Maybe if it goes well, I'll do it all over again on New Year's Eve."

My lizard brain can't understand sarcasm, so it enthusiastically advised me that this would be a great idea.

And I thought about it for a moment. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea, after all. I mean, it was a lack of moderation that got me into this mess, right? Maybe if I exercised moderation, then I wouldn't run into any problems. I thought about a woman in my IOP group from way back when, and she said she met her husband at AA, and he somehow drinks in moderation now. Just one glass of wine every once in a while.

So why couldn't it work for me?

And then I thought about my conduct when I was drinking all the time. Did running out of booze ever stop me from going out to get more? No. In fact, to avoid going out to get more, I always made sure I had plenty of booze in the first place. Just in case, I kept a couple of emergency pint bottles around, and I stashed airplane bottles in various nooks and crannies. I'm kind of surprised I never found any forgotten pints or airplane bottles during my time going through all my shit. I must have drank it all. Good for me. Because if I don't smoke, and I decided to smoke a cigar to avoid throwing it out, would I have poured out such a bottle?

So I guess I'm not doing that. Although don't get me wrong. I have a list of things that could make me drink again. So far I've been lucky. But who knows?  As a wise man once said, "The future's uncertain and the end is always near . . ."

PS: It never occurred to me until this weekend to smoke the cigar using Gramps's old ashtray, so I cleaned it up and used it for the first time since he stopped using it about a year before his death. It was oddly a good feeling.