Drinking

I have a few friends who have a problem with alcohol. Alcohol consumption, in fact, is something I know a good deal about. I know this from experience. Indeed, had a doctor not cornered me a number of years ago and presented me with evidence I couldn't refute, had I not quit putting alcohol in my body, I wouldn't be here today.

Yet I have profound respect for alcohol. I don't consider it a destructive drug so much as a gift from the gods. I belong to the Dionysian School of Alcohol. All gifts from the gods can be abused. The secret to drinking alcohol is knowing when and how to use it and to recognize when its spiritual gifts have been dissipated by wrongful use.

I have more respect for Alcoholic Spirits (there is a reason they are called this) than I do for the American treatment industry (Europe has a different view, as I learned while working in a medical library), which is part of a fashionable institutional wave determined to turn everyone into a victim. The first step in a 12-step program is to admit Powerlessness. In practice, this confuses the power of a spiritual experience with the decision to enter one in the first place, which is a matter of choice. Alcohol is like gravity. If you jump off a building, you land at the bottom -- but this does not mean you are powerless when faced with the option of jumping. You are powerless against gravity only if you choose to put yourself within its domain.

Those who drink tend to drink with different styles of consumption.

• Social drinkers. Most folks fall here. They drink in social situations but not to excess. They may enjoy a nice buzz but not get drunk except on rare occasions. They don't drink all the time.
• Heavy drinkers. They drink a lot but manage to keep out of trouble because of it. Many of these drink at home, minding their own business. They don't get crazy in any environment in which they can bother others. Or they drink with other heavy drinkers with similar inclinations, a regular at a bar, and more or less watch out for one another and mostly keep out of trouble.
• Closet alcoholics. A heavy drinker can or will stop short of passing out. Alcoholics cannot stop. There is something in their body chemistry that abnormally reacts to alcohol, triggering a mechanism that says more is better. They usually drink until they can't drink any more. A closet alcoholic does this alone at home. They usually are embarrassed by their behavior, which means they also are aware of it. I had an aunt who was a closet alcoholic. She died because she ran out of room in her studio apartment to hide her vodka bottles. Which is to say, every possible place to hide a bottle -- under cushions, in cupboards and closets, drawers, anywhere, was taken up. She either had to take out the bottles to the garbage or die. She died.
• Maintenance drinkers. These may or may not be alcoholics (unable to stop) but their drinking style is slower and more constant than normal drinkers. They sip throughout the day. They try to maintain a constant buzz on. The alcoholics, particularly as they age, spill over into a faster style than this, which is the problem a friend of mine is having now. She has been sipping white wine all day long for decades. Now her body chemistry has less tolerance than it used to have and she finds herself drinking more quickly to excess, flirting with becoming a closet alcoholic.
• Binge drinkers. They drink a lot, a hell of a lot, but in spurts. They have a cycle of drinking and not-drinking, but when they drink, it's a full time activity. This was my style of drinking. I drank to party, get wild, get drunk, and do all measure of crazy things. I stayed out of jail despite this -- in fact, I never even picked up a DUI even though I often drove drunk and drove while drinking. (The culture's attitude toward drinking was different when I was active: in the midwest, driving across the country, I even found a drive-in bar. I pulled in at the window and ordered a tray of gin-and-tonics on a blistering day in Nebraska or wherever the hell it was.) During my drinking days, I had two solo car accidents, each destroying my car but nothing else. Because I was a writer, and because through most of my life my income came from projects not a day-to-day job, the binge style fit perfectly into my work rhythm. When I had a deadline to meet, I didn't drink and met it. When I finished, I partied. I especially liked partying in the early morning, as soon as the bars opened, because that's where you met the "serious drinkers" and not the social amateurs. I liked hearing the stories of hard core drinkers. However, I quit before I became such a storyteller myself. I used what I learned in my work, not at the bar.

In my experience, these are the main styles of drinking. Those with a drinking problem need to face the science of alcohol, not the propaganda of the treatment industry. For some folks, alcohol is like gravity. Are you going to jump off the building or not? It's up to you.

I try to convince my friends with drinking problems that they are free, powerful individuals who can make decisions that affect their lives. They are responsible for their actions. There is no passing the buck. Alas, one of my friends has a mother who is big on traditional treatment philosophy, which has turned her into a complete enabler. The guy can get away with anything because "he has a disease." To me, that's like excusing the killer who drops blocks of cement on the heads of folks from a building because "it wasn't his fault, it was gravity." The guy has no motivation to stop because his mother is always rescuing him, first, and explaining away whatever trouble he gets into, second. She considers him the victim of a disease. I consider him a man making wrong, stupid choices with totally predictable consequences. He needs knowledge more than anything else. Not sympathy, understanding, excuses, or a Christian education. He needs to know how gravity works.

All of this came to mind because I heard from one of my friends with a problem. It's not easy to face a drinking problem. However, drinking is a young person's sport. The body doesn't wear well under its influence, no matter your style of drinking. For me, given the death warrant, the decision was easy but the execution was not so easy. I finally ended up spending over six months in a VA hospital and I don't think less than this would have gotten me across the river (the river Styx, no doubt). I had a great experience in treatment and had some great counselors. I'm also only one of two folks in my "class" who are still alive and sober over a decade after "graduation."

I don't agree with everything I was told in treatment. I remember the "good old days" of drinking, not the "bad old days" my counselors wanted me to remember. I had great times. Why deny it? I was lucky, sure, but I ended up in more comical situations when drinking than I'd ever experience sober. Excess has its advantages, despite the dangers, and if you survive, you have quite an arsenal of stories to tell.

I suspect I'll probably drink again before I leave the game. It's still a death sentence, I assume, so when it's time to embrace same, to decide the visit is over ("life is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there") I'll probably pour a Jameson's or mix a Blue Sapphire martini and thank the gods for such a surprisingly long and interesting life. The only part I haven't liked is outliving the several male friends closest to me, especially my soul brother. My best friends are women now, which isn't quite the same.