There are some people who suffer greatly at the hands of those who
incessantly overindulge in alcohol. It obviously affects more than just the
people who partake in said gluttonous behavior although I'm sure their livers
aren't exactly thanking them. There are others involved, proverbial innocent
bystanders who bear the brunt of another's inebriated stupidity.
People do all kinds of stupid, irreversible things when they're drunk and
incapacitated. They sing horribly at awful karaoke bars, they cheat on their
spouses, and they send ridiculous text messages fueled with middle shelf
whiskey and too many spelling errors. They kill people by accident because they
shouldn't be driving, they give dirty looks in the rearview mirror when they're
shoved drunkenly into the back seat of their own car, and they profess their
love to people they aren't even nice to and probably don't even like.
They confess all their wrong doings to someone very obviously untrustworthy
and then act all surprised when someone finds out. They break expensive rocks
glasses, threaten to swim home, become brashly confident and too brazen for
their red, Jessica Simpson pumps. Suddenly, they are able to do virtually
anything (except apparently, stand up straight). The only problem is, the
amount of alcohol consumed has made anything spewing from their lips quite
possibly flammable and their ideas almost certainly terrible.
Once, what seems like an incredibly long time ago, a girlfriend said to me
that she needed advice; that she was going through this really bad break up and
she needed some clarity from someone relatively uninvolved. I remember it like
it was yesterday. She asked me, very seriously, if I thought drunken words were
sober thoughts. Did I believe that posh old saying, "In vino
veritas"? (For those of you who know nothing of this and/or do not possess
Google Translate: In wine there is truth.)
A man's true character comes out when he's drunk. -Charlie Chaplin
When I was eight, my parents took us on this crazy long trip during the
summer. First, we went to Indiana to visit my mom's crazy large family. Then my
parents took us to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field (I barely remember that) and
then afterward, we went to this sports store on speed so my sister could buy
Chicago Bulls paraphernalia. I remember walking the Chicago streets with my dad
and vaguely roaming the front of Indiana University (where my mom attended
college). Gimme a break, I was eight and I drink a lot. It's fuzzy.
But what I do remember was after that, we went to Niagara Falls (Happy
Eighth Birthday to me!) and then to my "Uncle's" (aka, close family
friend of my high society, wine sipping, expensive wardrobe donning parents)
ranch in Buffalo.
Listen, all this foggy reverie isn't important. The main point of this
story is that one night, my dad got so drunk he played my uncle's accordion and
he laughed like I have never seen him laugh. Even to this day. That's what I
remember so vividly. A slick, tough guy New Yorker with scars on his right
knuckles from some guy's teeth and tassels on his cherry loafers. He played
piano in the White House (twice) and was in an awesome cover band in the
eighties that made enough money to get professional promotional photos done.
And there he was, his cheeks red from a mixture of alcohol and drunken
laughter, playing the stupid accordion like an idiot. Just an Italian American
living the dream.
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I'll be sober and you will still
be ugly. -Winston Churchill
But it isn't just about having fun. There could be any number of reasons
why people drink their lives away. Moments filled with regret and the
realization that life is just passing you by are reason enough to drink. I
mean, if you get drunk enough, it's as if all those mistakes never occurred.
What's that they always say? Drink until you can't feel feelings anymore? (And
obviously, by "they" I mean "I".)
There are some individuals who fall deep into the clutches of liquor's
sweet serenade. There are some people who possess such dreadful secrets that
the only way to comfort themselves is by way of some intoxicating, flammable
liquid. They allow all these things to fester inside of them until there is
nothing left but shattered dreams and broken promises. And even worse, in some
cases, a heavy burden of truth.
I remember this one instance when I was out somewhere with an ex-boyfriend
of mine. It was before I was twenty-one, so naturally I was forced to endure
the unfortunate task of designated driver. Anyway, my co-pilot was gradually
becoming intoxicated and I could tell very easily by the things ricocheting out
of his New Jersey bred mouth.
He told me that he had made an enormous mistake by cheating on me. He
claimed that after all our fights and totally dysfunctional problems, he
finally realized what I meant to him. He knew how horribly he had treated me
and he knew that I didn't deserve it. He knew he was cold, hot tempered,
perfidious and typically insensitive to my feelings. But he believed that I was
the one and he swore it wasn't just the Vodka and Red Bull talking. I was
always "there for him" even though he absolutely never was for me. I
was a "good girl" even though he was habitually dreadful. He just
wanted to "start fresh because this wasn't over". And he kept saying
my name, Kate, each time with more emphasis, more possession, and more
desperation.
The truth was, I was done. He was losing me and he damn well knew it. And
for the first time in all of our years together, I actually believed what he
was saying. For once in his miserable, absolutely chaotic life, he was telling
the goddamn truth.
Because he was drunk and scared. His filter had evaporated like rain after
a storm. He was so drunk that he was actually stripped of his ability to
incessantly lie. And unfortunately for him, I was past the point of caring. I
didn't care how much he might have meant it. I didn't care how blue his eyes
were when the tears rolled down his rosy cheeks or how tall he still was when
he begged me on his knees. The bitter sweet part of all this is, it was the one
time he ever told me the truth and it got him nowhere.
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep
your mouth shut. -Ernest Hemingway
But the thing about alcohol is it gives you the courage to do and say the
things you ordinarily might not. It gives you the opportunity to drop your body
armor and let the truth come out. Or as my friend so eloquently put it, drunken
words are sober thoughts. It's as if all those feelings you've kept
harbored for so long flow freely when you're relaxed, slightly inebriated, and
numb thanks to a delightfully dangerous martini.
But for others, the arising of these sober thoughts perpetuates the
likelihood of suppression. It's like a coup de grace, with drunkenness allowing
these allegedly sober thoughts to lie forever dormant and unburdening. Like
Tommy Gavin: drinking enables him to successfully escape his life, his many
sordid mistakes, and his pain. When it's glaringly apparent that no one is able
to understand a person's sensibilities, what more effective way to soothe their
hurt feelings than alcohol?
Moral of the Crazy: From a very personal standpoint, I feel as though
alcohol brings me down to a more normal level. If there even is such a thing.
As much as this may surprise all of you (lol..?), I am very certainly tightly
wrapped. I'm incredibly neurotic, anxious and worry ridden. I get ridiculously
concerned about things that realistically should never even cross my crazy
mind.
I worry about absolutely everything and to be honest, it's probably taken
actual years off my life. I worry about my friends and their lives. I worry
about what chemicals are in the food I consume and what they're doing to my
organs and waist line. I worry about driving and getting a flat tire on some
dark, winding road. I worry about becoming absent minded and forgetting things
that were once very important to me. I worry about my computer crashing and losing
everything I've ever written. I worry about feuds I'm currently in with people,
no matter how absurd or crazy they are, and how one day I could wake up to be
sorry for my stubborn nature and Italian propensity to have the last word. I
could literally, literally fill pages with the incalculable things that I
incessantly worry about.
And that friends, is one of the reasons why I drink. The other
reason, in all candid honesty, is because I like to.
Maybe it is true what they say, that drunken words are sober thoughts.
Maybe it's that we are often too afraid to confront our demons when we're
sober. Maybe it's that throughout the inner workings of our day, we are too
preoccupied with things like working, going to class, doing our makeup and
cooking healthy dinners to even consider our more intimate thoughts. They blow
past us before we even realize it because let's be realistic: who has the time
for feelings? Who has time for regrets and reliving our past?
To be brutally honest, I always believed that clear headed sobriety was for
the very noble hearted. To be able to approach things with a level head and
assess them without alcohol fueled emotion is an enviable trait. It takes a
certain brand of person to be unwilling to drown their sorrows, to refuse to
sink.
But for me, I'm just not there yet. I prefer my feelings right where I can
see them: drowned at the bottom of a glass by triple distilled Irish whiskey.
I've been drunk for about a week now and I thought it might sober me up to
sit in a library. -F. Scott Fitzgerald
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