It's not that I hate all drunks. I'm too big a Bukowski and W.C. Fields fan for that. It's the pathetic ones I can't stand. Slobbering, slurring, sentimental, urine-stained and staggering through life helpless, hopeless, eternally impaired, careening 80 miles per hour across all four lanes of whatever actual or metaphorical highway you care to imagine. Smart people become stupid, and those already stupid descend into the antediluvian muck with a shit-eating grin. Tell them the toilet's a buffet, and watch them actually eat shit. Hand them their car keys, pour them into the driver's seat, then stand back and wait for the entertainment to begin. In a perfect world, they'd only crash into another drunk. This is not a perfect world. Maybe you've noticed.
It's enough to drive you to drink.
Instead, try staying cold sober as everyone else around you gets sloshed sometime. Observe. Voices grow louder, faces get redder, actions become ever more demonstrative; more, more, more of everything you didn't want in the first place. Every uncorrected personality trait on parade, every sozzled emotion spilling out with 80 proof tears. Drunk guys pull out wallets and cry over pictures of the wife and kids. Wallets they just found in the bathroom, lost by other drunk guys, who are across the room crying over that.
Dry drunks are possibly even worse. Alcoholics Anonymous addicts clinging to that ole God grant me the serenity song and dance. Seems you must first have been brought to your knees by the booze, if not brain damaged by it, before you start spouting such malarkey. Sure, A.A. works for some people -- the dumb ones, who can only trade one crutch for another. At least drunk, they were free to dream their own poisoned, predictable dreams. But now they march in lockstep with the Wet Head Congregation, white-knuckling it every day. One day at a time. The motto for folks who until recently had trouble naming the day of the week. Easy does it. As though getting plowed was some difficult task.
Alcoholics Anonymous won't tell you this, so I will: On his death bed, the founder of A.A., Bill Wilson, begged for several shots of whiskey. For days he was pleading. In the end, all he wanted was to get drunk one more time. The people surrounding him, great humanitarians all, denied him this final request. Didn't want to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the program. Didn't want to face the obvious: once a drunk, always a drunk. The only true cure for alcoholics is not to become one in the first place.
Hello, my name is Danny, and I'm not an alcoholic. Never was. I drank normally for years, before it started making me fat. Plus I'm practically the only member of my family who doesn't have diabetes, or pre-diabetes. Booze being about the worst carbohydrate ever, it seemed a good idea to stop. So I stopped. No big deal. No roomful of former booze ghouls endlessly talking about what must be constantly on their minds. Problem is, when you don't drink at all, some people assume you must've at one time drank a whole hell of a lot, making me a magnet for mooks. It happens all the time. Former gin sponges slide up beside me with knowing winks, reeking of defeat, bending my ear with bonehead notions as I count the broken capillaries on a face lined like a road atlas.
If I buy you a drink, will you just go away?
It's enough to drive you to drink.
Instead, try staying cold sober as everyone else around you gets sloshed sometime. Observe. Voices grow louder, faces get redder, actions become ever more demonstrative; more, more, more of everything you didn't want in the first place. Every uncorrected personality trait on parade, every sozzled emotion spilling out with 80 proof tears. Drunk guys pull out wallets and cry over pictures of the wife and kids. Wallets they just found in the bathroom, lost by other drunk guys, who are across the room crying over that.
Dry drunks are possibly even worse. Alcoholics Anonymous addicts clinging to that ole God grant me the serenity song and dance. Seems you must first have been brought to your knees by the booze, if not brain damaged by it, before you start spouting such malarkey. Sure, A.A. works for some people -- the dumb ones, who can only trade one crutch for another. At least drunk, they were free to dream their own poisoned, predictable dreams. But now they march in lockstep with the Wet Head Congregation, white-knuckling it every day. One day at a time. The motto for folks who until recently had trouble naming the day of the week. Easy does it. As though getting plowed was some difficult task.
Alcoholics Anonymous won't tell you this, so I will: On his death bed, the founder of A.A., Bill Wilson, begged for several shots of whiskey. For days he was pleading. In the end, all he wanted was to get drunk one more time. The people surrounding him, great humanitarians all, denied him this final request. Didn't want to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the program. Didn't want to face the obvious: once a drunk, always a drunk. The only true cure for alcoholics is not to become one in the first place.
Hello, my name is Danny, and I'm not an alcoholic. Never was. I drank normally for years, before it started making me fat. Plus I'm practically the only member of my family who doesn't have diabetes, or pre-diabetes. Booze being about the worst carbohydrate ever, it seemed a good idea to stop. So I stopped. No big deal. No roomful of former booze ghouls endlessly talking about what must be constantly on their minds. Problem is, when you don't drink at all, some people assume you must've at one time drank a whole hell of a lot, making me a magnet for mooks. It happens all the time. Former gin sponges slide up beside me with knowing winks, reeking of defeat, bending my ear with bonehead notions as I count the broken capillaries on a face lined like a road atlas.
If I buy you a drink, will you just go away?
.
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