It's been one year and one hundred and ninety-three days since my last drink. You know me. In that time I have consumed a lot of books and movies and TV shows and such, and while I noticed this before, kinda-sorta, I didn't really recognize it for what it was until recently.
Fiction, no matter the medium, is full of people struggling against themselves, but I want to look at recovering alcoholics in particular. I've found myself watching characters relapse and feeling the anguish they should be feeling.
But it didn't really come home to me until I watched the episode of Succession where, after a heated battle with his father, Kendall goes to a bar and orders a drink. He hems and haws a little before drinking it, and the whole time I was thinking, don't do it, man. It's not worth it. Kendall's kind of a dick, so to have me saying something like that means something.
No matter who it is, I always feel bad when someone struggling with their own addiction succumbs to it. It's kind of weird for me because I don't really struggle with my alcoholism. Every alcoholic I've ever known struggles every day. I don't. I could walk into a liquor store and walk back out without buying anything. I could go to a party or a bar and not consume anything with alcohol in it. It's easy. Sure, some days I think about booze more than I should, but I can promise you that if you put a glass of Wild Turkey 101 on the rocks in front of me, I wouldn't drink it. I think I'd be terrified to drink it.
I've said it before, there are certain things that, if they happened, I would go get drunk. But those things are so bad that getting drunk wouldn't matter. For example, if I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, boozing it up won't matter.
But I don't like saying this is easy because it's almost never easy for anyone. I don't want to be the guy someone listens to and they go, hey, he says it's easy. It probably is. I'm not going to put too much effort into this. I don't want to be the reason someone else didn't take this kind of thing seriously enough.
When I was still doing my meetings, the subject of at-least-you're-here-now came up. The idea is, you're trying to kick the habit, but you fail, and then you come back to the meeting the next day. Which is good, I'm not knocking that. Just because you fuck up one day doesn't mean you fucked up the whole thing. But in that meeting in particular, one of my fellow addicts said that was the last thing he wanted to hear if he ever relapsed. Because he didn't want people to take it easy on him. He wanted someone to shame him so that he'd feel guilt the next time he might find himself on the precipice. Which I totally understand. I think I'd want someone to shame me, too. But more importantly, what if that drink is the one that ends his life? What if, after he takes that first drink, he keeps going and going? Because I'm pretty sure if I took another drink, I wouldn't be able to stop, and that would bring me to my demise.
All right, I've got one more day to get my shit together, and then it's time for surgery again. I stupidly said I'd see everyone next week in Good Morning, Fuckers!, which is not going to happen. Probably. I'll be forbidden to type anything out, so maybe I'll do a mini edition on Sunday, but I'll have everything typed up already so all I have to do is hit send. One way or the other, this is the last GF column until I get cleared by the doc. Be good to each other.
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