Showing posts with label Alcohol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alcohol. Show all posts

12.28.2009

Books


In today's New York Times (online vesion) you can listen to six writers read brief excerpts from books that are essential to them. These are books they would never get rid of. (This being the end of the year, the notion of culling our bookshelves is present...) I'd never heard of three of the six authors (Frederick Exley, Scott Spencer, and Robert Burton.) And I'd never heard of four of the six writers asked to read. The link is here. In any case, books are books and I am forever plagued by the anxiety that I don't have time to read all the "important" ones. For whatever reason, I was intrigued by one of the selections, and, oh the joys of Google, within a couple of minutes my curiosity was satisfied. The selection was Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, chosen by David Matthews. Exley was mentally ill and alcoholic, and A Fan's Notes his first, and most successful novel. It's basically an autobiography. I read a review at bookslut.com. I don't think I'll read it. I'm not big on self-obsession, and Exley, from the very little I've read, sounds quite self-obsessed.
These days I've been juggling several different readings, including Daniel Boorstin's The Creators, which has been on my bookshelf for many years. I've picked it up often, never having made it through more than a few chapters at a time. I've had many failed attempts at keeping lists of all my readings. (They often begin in January.) Yesterday it occurred to me that perhaps I need to try a different way of categorizing my lists. Maybe I should make the list first: here are all the books I should read... then go about checking them off one by one. Maybe... In the photo, Frederick Exley. Finally, in looking for the photo, I came across this interesting reflection by writer and journalist Alan Bisbort: I drink...)

8.14.2009

On the Island-2

Last week when we went to the ball game I had an "interesting" moment, kind of a flashback to one of my favorite alcoholic fantasies: drinking endless amounts of beer while watching an endless baseball game on an endless summer evening when the sun is setting but never quite set. What happened? We were walking along the new 'boardwalk' that wraps around the outfield. The bar style seats facing the field look most inviting. Lots of people drinking beer. Damn, wouldn't I like to join them! An understatement: for a second I'm thinking I'd do anything, give anything to join them. It was just a moment or two, but for that brief instant I was seeing one of my great fantasies right before me: perfect summer evening, starched white uniforms against a backdrop of deep, lush green grass. Balls being tossed. And the beer stand not ten steps away. Perfect! 9, 18, 27 innings, play on! One beer, two beer, sixty thousand beers! I don't care if I ever get back! Unfortunately for my addiction, reality intruded in two ways. First, I recalled that my attempts back in the nineties to actually live this fantasy right there at City Island were doomed to failure and ended up filling me with dissatisfaction, anxiety, and a handful of nasty hangovers. Here's how it would go: drive to the game (alone! God forbid some reasonable person interfere with my meditations), drink, enjoy, drink, drink, drink. WAIT: I've got to drive home and they're going to close the beer stand anyway. One more! Or two... Then drink coffee! Make many trips to restroom. Pray that my blood/alcohol level has returned to a level that isn't too far above the legal limit. Walk to parking lot slowly. No hurry. Drive carefully, take back route home. Nuts!
Get home, celebrate successful return with a few more beers! Go to bed. There'd be fleeting moments when it was just right, but it always ended in frustration. Back to the present and the second intrusion, the clincher: I had promised myself in the morning that I wasn't going to drink that day. (Blessed routine, indeed!) It would have to wait, so there went that fantasy. Briefly, very briefly, I'm feeling the weight of a grand, cosmic injustice. No fair! For about thirty seconds I felt resentful of my own stupid promise, but that too passed quite quickly. But, oh those thirty seconds, really like being on an island, a miserable, stinking little pisshole of solitude. Luckily for me there are millions upon millions of swim instructors and it's easy, and essential, to get off. Fast. In a flash it's all gone, the notion of injustice turns out to be hysterically funny. So I want to join them? Be my guest, step right up. I think about it. Nope. Maybe another day, for another ball game. Experiences of this kind are quite infrequent for me, but it does happen every once in a while.

I write this entry in memory of Dr. Rodney Hough, who died last week at age 65. Rod recovered from hardship and addiction with great determination, usually with good cheer, and always with an unbeatable sense of humor. Rod, baby, you did good! Oh man, will we miss ya!

4.21.2009

Another False War

The War on Drugs. What a joke. And what a ter- rible waste of our resources, both financial and human. What sense does it make to keep arresting over a million people (yes, over 1,000,000) every year for drug offenses. As long as the demand for drugs is there, and it seems hard to imagine that demand disappearing any time soon, there will be plenty of people willing to work on the supply side. Control the borders? They've already wasted billions and it doesn't seem to do anything. Folks want to get wasted? Be our guests. Do we really think marijuana is more harmful than booze? Geeze, alcohol is only the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that in just one year (2001) over 75,000 deaths in the US could be attributed to alcohol. But no one is talking about making booze illegal. Of course not, because we know people want to drink. And a lot more people want to drink than want to smoke a joint, snort some cocaine, or do whatever other "recreational" drugs are popular these days. (I have little idea.) So let's just get this madness over with and legalize the stuff. We tax booze heavily, so let's do the same with all these other drugs people want. Share the wealth. And there would be plenty left over for some serious education, prevention, and treatment programs. I have no illusions--legalizing drugs is going to hurt some people, but the overall effect for society would be a great improvement compared to the current situation. (I don't think they're going to want me back on the Cumberland County Drug and Alcohol Commission any time soon.)  Do we really want to keep being a world leader in incarceration rates? Apart from what that says about our values as a society, just think about the human and financial resources wasted in this madness. By our government's own statistics, in 2007 alone there were over 872,000 arrests for cannabis law violations.  Hey, watch out, our children are all a bunch of violent criminals. The War of Drugs is a very lucrative business, overall a scam of gigantuan proportions. Why aren't people scandalized? Check out the "Drug Sense" website. They present some interesting statistics.  (http://www.drugsense.org/)

2.24.2009

Postscript

After Asun and Daniela left for Madrid on Sunday, I returned to an apartment still dressed in the typical rags of "party aftermath". I didn't have the energy to really clean up but felt compelled to get started with some of the basics. At the least I wanted to get the bottles and glasses out of the dining room and back to the kitchen or to the recycling bin. Lots of half filled (never half empty) glasses, and several bottles of wine in various states of consumption. And a bottle of uncorked Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage that was still almost full. A little part of me thought, damn, that's a forty dollar bottle of champagne gone to waste. That's no good. (Well, maybe if I had served our friends the bubbly before 1 am they all would have had a second glass...) I had a brief flashback to a former reality, thinking, hey, throwing out this stuff is a sacrilege, it's got to be drunk up. But of course, I didn't touch it, and I smiled to myself as I paraded the bottle to its date with the drain of the kitchen sink. My decision, my choice. Celebrating 50 stone cold sober. Who coulda ever guessed it? Not me, not some time ago anyway, not, for example, at 40. For most people it's an insignificant detail. You drink a little, you drink a lot, or you don't drink at all. Doesn't matter. But for me, I decided it does matter. And some days it feels almost as if I've forgotten why it matters. In any case, I clinked bottle to faucet in a strange, solitary, and satisfying toast. Having already made toasts to family and friends, I could now make one more: to the inebriation of Málaga's sewers! It was actually a good laugh watching those bubbles disappear, gurgling all the way down. A simple postscript to a good party. And postscripts, coming on the heels of endings, are always beginnings. 

1.07.2009

Before Your Time


Everyone goes through times when they fear death. I just saw an article in one of this morning's papers about the actor Patrick Swayze's fight with pancreatic cancer. He talks about the fear. Then I read another article by Jim Atkinson in the Times, in the Alcohol and American Life series. Atkinson recalls the epiphany he had his third day in rehab. He asked about a fellow rehabber who had disappeared and the therapist explained that he had just died as a result of complications from his heroin addiction. The therapist told him, "This business about this stuff killing you is not just a slogan." How true. Atkinson decided he didn't want to die. I am reminded this morning, with a mixture of sadness and affection, of a friend and an acquaintance who have died in recent years, Mary and Stoney. Stoney was an alcoholic. He was a little younger than me. A very nice guy, but with some serious demons. I remember him talking real nonsense and sometimes it was scary. There were times when he seemed to be doing real well and in those periods he was a sweet guy with a gentle touch. He hadn't been successful with formal schooling but he was smart. Then one day he snapped and put an end to his life with a gun. He had appeared to become isolated in the days and weeks before that, so maybe it's true that people do die of loneliness. (It requires an effort to attend to others with the respect and dignity they deserve. It's easy to be dismissive - I don't know you, I'm not interested, you're full of shit, I don't care... How often we fail. I'd better stay connected. That, of course, is my true good fortune-the human connectedness. Save the physical suffering of a child, I can think of nothing sadder than a disconnected individual. No doubt that is why Goya's incredible painting of the semi-buried dog sends such a chill through me.) Mary was a good friend and a dear soul with a tremendous sense of humor and an infectious laugh. I can hear it perfectly as I write this. She maintained a tough exterior and had a strong independent streak. Stubborn. She had been sober for several years, but her distinguished drinking career took a deep toll. Cirrhosis of the liver is not a pretty sight. I admire her dignity in those final weeks. To know what's happening to you and to deal with it with poise and grace, that's a lesson to be treasured. Thanks to Mary, to her friendship and encouragement, I feel a little less afraid. Maybe fear is like a pest, it's there but you have to be somewhat dismissive. It can't be all about introspection, we'd go crazy and wouldn't be able to function. (Thank you Hubble telescope and science reporters! I like being reminded of the true scope of things. We just aren't a big deal. Wow, our little solar system is spinning around the center of the milky way much, much faster than previously thought. Someone get me a new seat belt!) So I can identify with Atkinson. None of us know when our time is. (Thank God-wouldn't that be a nightmare!) I feel that were I to go kaput today it would be before my time. Not an outcome I'm enthusiastic about. Hell, my desk is a mess. But I like my chances for today, and given that I don't have this all figured out, I'd rather not die. Not yet, anyway.

11.17.2008

The Second Law of Thermodynamics: faith on a shoestring

I've been around for close to half a century now and ever since I can remember I've been asking the same dumb questions: What is nothing? What is infinity? I still remember lying awake in the quiet of that big old house on Elmwood Road wondering what nothing might look like. The frustration! Everything was always something. No fair! Or sitting under that blue spruce trying to figure out how in hell I was going to count to infinity. And I'd conclude that it couldn't be done; it doesn't exist; infinity is a lie, so what's this all-powerful God stuff? At age four I was no doubt unaware that my metaphysical underpinnings (if you can't visualize something it doesn't exist) were perhaps somewhat dubious. But then again maybe I was on to something: everything that can possibly be can be imagined; I could imagine nothing, thus nothing was something and not nuttin'.) You might think that one would go crazy insisting on the same two questions over the course of several decades and never finding an answer. Alas, life intervened. Life and all its quotidian distractions. Maybe there hasn't been enough life the past several days: Emilio Lledó's essay and other readings derived from it have been threatening to drive me to philosophical despair. (Nothing matters! It's all pointless!, etc.) But, I'm easy to convince and this morning I think I've found an out thanks to zooming in on the word tendency as it appears in some definitions I've read of the second law of thermodynamics. Closed systems tend towards entropy. So movement towards entropy is 99.999999999999999almost adinfinitum percent likely to continue. I'm holding out! Hey, it's just a tendency. Don't count out that odd exception. Order may yet be restored. Shit happens. And besides, I'm not so certain the universe is a closed system. Imagine the Creator as an alcoholic: he's got a glass of wine and Mrs. Creator says just one dear, just one glass. Big Daddy nods. So she's relieved, it's a closed system and thus Mr. Creator can't mess things up more than he already has. But, in fact, Mr. Creator keeps adding wine to his glass on the sly. Mrs. Creator thinks he's just drinking really slowly, but in fact he's getting wasted. Because it's an open system! (This is one of those rare instances where skepticism can be an inducement to faith. I'm a skeptic; I've seen lots of lying about how many. So maybe what applies to booze holds also for the universe: God's got one hand on a big, big bottle we haven't seen yet. Maybe.) Double besides: in other writings, Lledó shows great interest in friendship, a direction that really interests me. Friendship is, well, it's not everything, but it is HUGE. I think I had at least some intuition in that regard all the way back when I started to discover the world of books in the Fells Library, shown in the photo. So many stories involved great friends and I wanted to be a part of that. (And why, oh why, do I so badly want to recover a book I read when I was four years old? All I remember is that is was the story of a frog and it had simple illustrations in green ink on a white background. Not remembering the title has been a big frustration. And I have no idea why. Who knows, maybe that frog had some answers.) Now, can we get Big Daddy off the sauce and somehow have him keep us in an open system?

9.16.2008

To give or not to give?

Spain has a very rich tradition of alms' seeking (pedir limosna). Let's be blunt: begging. The traditional Spanish beggar plants him or herself at the door of a church and seeks the charity of people entering or leaving the temple. Some are vocal and others advertise their horrible plight with cardboard signs (I'm out of work, have four children who are hungry, and so on). Spain is now a wealthy nation firmly established in the Euro zone, so you might think that this practice would have disappeared. Not at all. The traditional Spanish beggars, of whom indeed there are surely far fewer than in generations past, have been joined in recent years by immigrants from the East, many of whom are Rumanian. The practitioners of this profession are quite varied, but seem mainly to fall into one of a few standard categories: the low-bottom alcoholic male, the mentally ill, the female who is clearly part of an organized group, the physically handicapped... But I'm not an anthropologist and and not really interested in trying to sort this out. In our neighborhood there is usually someone at the door of the local supermarket (not too much business at the churches these days), often a man of indeterminate age who is confined to a wheelchair. He spends his time with two younger men and the three of them pass their days drinking. Drink, drink, drink. They are homeless, unemployable, and likely mentally ill. Do I make a donation? I'm supposed to help, but I tend to believe that if I give them money I'm just contributing to an ongoing problem. (For the most part I don't give them anything, but a couple of times I have.) Where are the social services? I suspect these men have refused offers of help, that they prefer the street to an institutional setting, where they wouldn't be allowed to drink. But that's just speculation, the truth is I don't know. A couple of times I've tried to engage them in conversation but we never get anywhere. I tell them that, correctly or incorrectly, I do not want to make financial contributions to the maintenance of their addiction. The conversations have not prospered, so now I just look the other way. I don't feel good about that. An alcoholic who is not ready to put the bottle down should not be denied help. (Of course, many would argue that you can't help an alcoholic who doesn't want to be helped; true, in terms of treating the addiction, but sometimes there are even more basic needs that have to be addressed first.) Maybe we should have inpatient clinics where these guys (it's almost always men) can do some supervised drinking (that'll get them in the doors!) as a means of at least getting them off the street. The saddest and most tragic thing is to witness the complete loss of personal dignity in some of these men, manifested exteriorly in a total abandonment of even the most minimal personal hygiene. What are we without our dignity?

7.13.2008

A little more on Epicurus

I'm learning that Epicurus had a lot to say about friendship, one of the corner- stones of his philosophy. Here is one of his obser- vations: "Neither he who is always seeking material aid from his friends nor he who never considers such aid is a true friend; for one engages in petty trade, taking a favor instead of gratitude, and the other deprives himself of hope for the future." Interesting. Friendship involves a lot of trust, mutual trust. Today I feel extremely fortunate to be able to count on some friends who I know are there for me. I hope I can be a true friend to them. Many of the greatest pleasures come from friendship and the security we get from cultivating these friendships. Friends help us stay away from loneliness and with our friends we stay connected to the unfolding of our lives. The photo here is a detail from Velazquez's famous painting of The Feast of Baccus, or The Drinkers. I put it up because yesterday I was having coffee with a guy (not really a friend, not yet, anyway) who looks like this. I think Velazquez's portrait of this man, apart from capturing wonderfully the positive side of alcohol, also suggests that his subject enjoyed the benefits of real friendship. He has a real twinkle in his eyes that is always absent in the lonely. One of my big fears when I stopped drinking was that the party was over, that never again could I enjoy the great feeling of connectedness that is vaguely suggested by Velazquez in this painting. Thankfully, I learned that these fears were totally unfounded. And of course, I learned that the feelings of connectedness that can seem so transcendent at the height of a festive celebration were sometimes illusory, even self-delusional. What happens when the party is over? And that question could lead us back to Epicurus and the nature of pleasure... and around in circles we could keep going, but right now my dear friend Waldo is suggesting a walk along the beach.

7.10.2008

A toast to Epicurus

Yesterday I was trans- lating a poem from La siesta de Epicuro, a recent book by the Malagan poet Aurora Luque. So this morning I had Epicurus on my mind and I decided to google him, since I never really studied Epicurean philosophy and only have a very superficial familiarity with its doctrines. Here's one of his statements from the Vatican Sayings: "Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is little." To me that sounds like an excellent summary of alcoholism! (The Vatican Sayings, by the way, are so named because of the presence of a 14th century manuscript in the Vatican Library that contains a series of quotes attributed to Epicurus.) And last night I had a brief conversation on the topic of excessive drinking, so that is also on my mind. The alcoholic suffers because he/she ends up in constant battle with the desire for more. Consequently, the distinction between pleasure and pain becomes confused and quite paradoxical: we drink more to kill the pain caused by excessive drink which causes more pain, so more drink, etc., etc. In short, addiction. That's just my experience. So the answer is moderation. Simple. Yes, but not for me, and reading Epicurus reaffirms my understanding of the nature of my experience and condition: moderate drinking may be fine for a day, maybe for a week, but in my brain it was always "little". Little was unsatisfactory, and thus, not pleasurable. So moderation always ended up thrown to the wind. More! More pleasure, eventually leading to pain... But it's in our very nature to seek pleasure. Pleasure is good. So I learn that for me, and I'm not alone here, staying completely free of that whole dynamic is essential. Of truly vital importance. And I learned there are some things, even very, very simple things, that I can't do alone. But that's another story.