October 18, 2007

One of the reasons I’ve never liked Alcoholics Anonymous is because, in my experience, attempts to deviate from the “Alcohol is a demon that rules my life and I am totally helpless and out of control” personal narrative are generally met with knowing glances and slogans about a river in Egypt. I’ve heard at least half a dozen people get up to address a meeting with some variation on, “I thought I was different, then someone got up at a meeting and told my story.”

I’ve been to a bunch of meetings over the past six or seven years, and no one’s ever gotten up and told my story. No one’s ever told my story because, for a long while, I’ve known that my overuse of alcohol was a symptom and not the cause of my problems. It’s an effective anesthetic. Take care of the pain some other way, no need for an anesthetic, done. I was irritated by the knowing “Yeah, I used to think that too!” attitude I encountered at a lot of meetings, as though everyone who drinks does so for the same reasons. Maybe that’s true for the majority of folks who are regular attendees, so they’re all validated within their 12-step echo chamber. Good for them, whatever works. But that’s not true for me, never has been, and I’m happy to give Bill W., his Higher Power, and his Big Book the big fuck off.

In San Francisco I had an interesting conversation about drinking with K., during which he said, “I realized that if I didn’t get my drinking under control, I wouldn’t be able to drink anymore.” It’s a wonderful paradox, and it has to do with forming a concept of moderation within a permissive culture of excess. Granted: that weekend, objectively, is a poor example of moderation. As James Thurber remarked, when dealing with martinis, “one is all right, two are too many, and three are not enough.” I had not quite enough martinis that evening, plus certain other minty drinks earlier in the day.

I’m self-aware enough now to a) recognize a failure of moderation; b) realize that it’s not the end of the damn world; and c) know that it is qualitatively different from my “problem drinking.” Problem drinking for me involves drinking a lot, drinking frequently, drinking alone, drinking in secret, lies, hurting people I love, and waking up the next morning with a knot of panic in my chest. Having too many drinks with a good friend during a whirlwind weekend in San Francisco is not a problem. End of story.

At this point, were I telling this story in a meeting, I’d be getting sympathetic glances from some people. Others wouldn’t be able to make eye contact with me. And someone would tell a tale about how they once thought that way, too, and then one day they woke up naked covered with cow dung in a field behind a truck stop in Omaha two weeks after they started binge drinking in Tampa.

I’m a bit of an Aristotelian, in that I’m interested in first causes. I used to think that drinking cost me my romance with Pea. It didn’t help, of course, but more important than the sucking down of 375ml bottles of Absolut in secret is the why of it. I realized, a couple of weeks back, that I was basically depressed for the entire course of that relationship—that’s over eight years, for those keeping score. After 9/11, things got worse. One of the terrible things about such black states is the hopelessness: it will always be this way, and there’s nothing to be done about it. You can see how this might lead to an affinity for mood-altering substances, if only to alleviate the monotony of that singularly dark state of being. It’s quite a vicious little trap, and I’m happy to say that I’ve broken out of it, at no small cost.

It wasn’t the drinking that ended things, it was the why of it, and the why of it was chronic, life-long dysthymic depression. Pea spent over three years holed up in a small house with a fellow who, many mornings, could barely get out of bed, when what she really wanted to be doing was going out, having fun with this fellow, and being a city girl instead of a small town homebody.

People in intimate relationships reflect each other in a constantly shifting dance of stimulus and response. I used to regret my drinking. What I regret now is that, because of my own misery, I never really got to see Pea truly happy. My experience of her was limited to what she could express of herself while sharing a house with a wretched, self-medicating lump. Similarly, her experience of me, and of how I related to her, was bent and refracted by the sort of fear that comes with knowing that you’re in close quarters with someone who’s not at all well in the head. The ever-increasing feedback between the two of us centered on the fact of my malaise, and you can’t form a lasting and healthy partnership in such a situation, although the gods know* we tried.

These thoughts were all prompted by a phone call last night. Seems Pea was coughing up blood. No, really…not arterial lung-busting embolism blood. Bronchitis-or-maybe-pneumonia too-much-coughing blood. Just a bit, from a torn-up throat. But, see, I’m the guy that held her the night before the first surgery she’d ever had in her life a couple of years ago, and I’m still the guy she calls to ask whether she should go to the ER at 2AM or wait until the morning and go to the doctor. That’s because I rock, and so does she, and despite everything—all the crap and pain and drama and so forth—we apparently have the kind of relationship that survives things like breaking up romantically and dating other people. She is, quite simply, my best friend, and I mean that in its most virtuous and Aristotelian sense. It’s cool. I’m proud of both of us.

Thus, when she reads about last weekend’s martinifest, she worries, because she’s seen me huddled in my shadowy little pit with my clanking vodka bottles. I told her an abbreviated form of what I’ve written here, but it’s a tough sell, because she’s heard it all before, too many times. I could hear the doubt in her voice, and I understand it completely. It’s difficult to convey the difference between now and then, but there is a difference, and I know it. It doesn’t mean that alcohol is never problematic or an issue. It means that I know where the lines are, I know when I cross them, and when I do, I’m no longer compelled to stay in the land on the other side of those boundaries.

So no, I’m not powerless, and my life is manageable. I like martinis, and I like being able to wake up the morning after having a bunch of them and say, “Hmm, probably too many drinks last night, watch that,” without feeling beholden to some absolute standard of inflexible teetotality, and without feeling like I’m tottering on the precipice of absolute ruination.

Next week: “How my freebasing demonstrates personal responsibility.”

*No, I don’t believe in a god or gods. I just say that because it pisses a certain kind of atheist off.