Excuse me, let me get out of my way, please.

I’ve got a lot of projects going on at the moment. It’s a good way to go about things as long as you don’t mind other people watching the snail’s pace to completion packed with their judgements the whole way to finish line. My routine has improved over the last year, and especially since giving up hard drinking and drugs. I haven’t been completely shitfaced since May 2021. I don’t plan to go fanatic and quit drinking all together, but I’m happy to be back to what I consider a “normal” amount of alcohol consumption.

I’ve had two great periods of getting drunk in my life, and both of them have occurred while living in Texas. Seems to me, outside of this place, people are less likely to get shit-faced in order to go fuck or fight anything that moves. While living in Oregon, I’d have the occasional IPA at Ninkasi Brewery. One would be plenty, as the stuff is like motor oil and a meal in itself. You can literally chew the beer while consuming. Living in Spain, alcohol seemed to be a constant presence, yet no one was ever noticeably drunk. Even in the wee hours of all night drinking, there was rarely a fight or even the mere suspicion someone was totally fucking blacked-out. The only times in my life where I’ve had a daily beer have been while living in Spain. Una caña is a small 4 oz pour of beer. Yes, four ounces. That’s it. It costs about 1 euro and is served with a tapa - a piece of bread with a slice of Manchego cheese or jamon Serano. Sometimes, the teachers would even have a small beer and a tapa at the 10am snack time. Ah, yes, adult snack time - the Spanish are surely the artists of the world.

I’ve always been a go-with-the-flow kind of guy and rarely show resistance until it’s far too late. If life is a river, I float along until I meet some passerby, and then I float with them, going with the flow. While living in Oregon, the social life was more at the coffee shops and the parks. A lot of the coffee shops even took a stance against alcohol with a sentiment resembling that of poising the native Americans. “Alcohol killed my daddy!” someone would say as we sipped our 7th double espresso shots of the afternoon. I liked this stance to alcohol, but still had an occasional beer in the park or while watching a show somewhere. It was sensible.

Now, living in North Texas is a little different. If you want to meet people and talk to them, the bar is the only place. Buying a shot for someone, even a stranger, is a way to show love and build a bridge. It’s the equivalent of the Oregon smoke-sesh, or the Spanish 4oz. beer and snack. For me, I could easily buy 10 shots a night, as I could easily meet ten new friends while out bar hopping around Fort Worth. So that’s actually 20 shots; ten for me and 1 for each of my new friends. You can see where this can get out of hand. One can still stand after 10 joints, provided there is the near refuse of a bed and the option to pass out any moment. Also, there are little to no effects on a person who’s consumed ten-four-ounce-beers over the course of 3 or 4 hours, especially with the little piece of bread and slice of meat or cheese served up with each pour.

Macolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers has a great chapter in it on the subconscious effects of getting drunk and what it really means to have lowered inhibitions. I always thought it meant you wanted to have sex more, girls would be nicer, and friends were easier made. That’s all true. The deeper thing going on is, when drinking, your mind forgets about the future. The autonomous functions keeping you going toward a future in which you are not living in total degradation, simply, turn off. Those high standards you have for a sexual partner, gone! That savings account you’ve been filling to buy the kids something nice, cleared! Any notion of going anywhere or doing anything that is good for you - out the window. For me, it takes around three shots to get to this point. I know because I’ve practiced a lot.

Almost as if by magic, as the third shot clears my liver, I’m calling the coke dealer. And it’s not just calling in the cocaine, it’s calling in the reinforcements to a good time. Prior to that third shot, I was in control, thinking about my future, passing up the drunk girls who wanted to chat with me and ignoring that plate of bar food, that while sober looks like a family of maggots reveling in their own shit (chili cheese fries). The me, the I am, this autonomous force that directs me towards the future, was driving and doing a great job. But, when those inhibitions lower, when I become intoxicated, when my liver can’t keep up with the poisoning, the me is gone. The idea of who I am, or rather, who I will be, forever vanishes and it’s only now. Right now, baby! Right fucking now. The monster of right now arising to fill itself in sheer abandon.

It gets more difficult to come down the higher you go, the more you let the monster out. These langoliers sent forth to consume the past, erase all time. Each drink or snort is fuel to the ever-growing army of monstrous time eaters. First the past goes, then the future. Then the present is like a nice warm bubble in which anything is possible, and nothing matters. But you probably already know that. It’s hard to admit it or even acknowledge it unless of sober mind. But then again, what fun is it being sober? Life is boring if you’re just playing it straight all the time, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?

I guess that’s what has got me back on the wagon. I have to presume this wagon is always going toward success, I mean why else would people say all the time, “oh, my. He’s fallen off the wagon, again.” The again always makes me laugh. It’s like, “Well, here comes that wagon of success again, guess I’ll get back on.” As if anyone could be successful if they could just stay on the damn wagon. Might bring some railing and a seat belt with me this next time. The fall does hurt. To be riding high on life’s ups and sink back to the bottom of a whiskey glass in some dim-lit Texas bar, staying up with strangers all night and sleeping like you’re 16 years old again. But yea, I’m in. I’ve climbed back on for another go at the wagon. And there’s booze on here too. Not much of it, but in moderation they say. The wagon to success. I see it like some vintage hayride to happiness.

It’s easier now that I’ve got that monster tamed again. Pray he stays locked away, I must. I think it will happen this time. I have value now. I’m the owner of some things I never thought I’d have. When you have nothing, it’s easy to spend a hundred bucks at the bar to quell the aching loneliness and incessant idle hours of the metropolis. Between work shifts it’s not only easy to blow your wad on booze and drugs while working a nine-to-five, but also imperative. I mean, how else could you do it? Back when this whole working-your-whole-life-for-someone-else-thing started, and people began to die because of too much work, the water was undrinkable in most cases and the only way to hydrate enough to live was to drink beer and alcohol. Our entire way of life is built around being drunk. I dare say the only way to survive a feudalistic oligarchy is by numbing the senses as much as possible. The lashings are not solely metaphorical. Neither are the rape, torture and subjugation to sub-human treatment.

Being fucked-up is a great catalyst to escapism, and the fantasies we construct while under the influence of future-blinding chemicals, impede our sober direction and thinking. Quixote’s windmills, the residual mirages derived of his addiction to bookworm, plagued his reality with phantasmagorical ghosts of a life created while experiencing the pleasures of intoxication. Even sober, his pursuant jaunt toward a more meaningful existence became littered with the excrement of his inebriated, and thus undirected, thoughts. One cannot direct their thoughts toward a real life without considering that you will be alive for a while. A sage was once quoted as saying, “Live like you’ll die tomorrow, but plan as if you will live forever.” It is the second part of the equation inebriation knocks out. There is only right now.

For me, the routine of getting drunk and high was akin to going back to a dream you were having but accidently woke from. The forceful, yet gradually decent back to the dream land in hopes you might meet the same visions you had just recently been shook from is a slippery slope, to say the least. The naiveté and senseless expectation something grander and more illustrious awaits you at the end of each sip, and the stupidity to imagine you can return to that vague something more you merely only feel you experienced in the past, is a marvel. Or is it addiction?

Oh yes, this tricky brain, ever trying to avoid the pain of existence, will say, “You’re dying.” in an attempt to get what it wants. But what does it really want? It wants more of what you feed it. More of what the you decides. So, who is the brain when the I am vanishes? Or rather, what is this monster with no thought to the past or future. This present persistence to give in to every moment’s desire like a dying wish is insatiable and must be disciplined.

Am I getting it now?, Strother Martin.