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Alcohol�no problem, no worries

January 26, 2002 ~ 12:40 p.m.

Recently, I discovered a fellow traveler named Writingmark who frankly mentioned his alcohol consumption. He drinks moderately, with caution, and is disgusted by blatantly drunk people, as am I. But I am reminded of my own history with the stuff. It has not always been a smooth one.

My first ever taste of an alcoholic drink was that of red wine at the age of 7, when my dad allowed me a shot glass of wine with our Saturday steaks. �Drink it, kid,� he�d say, �It�s good for your blood.� My dad seemed to know something at the time that scientists didn�t, and he was right. The studies on red wine that exist today, which state that red wine in moderation can lower cholesterol and help prevent heart trouble, didn�t exist in 1976. Yet, in that very year, I was introduced to it. These days, at age 32, I remain faithful to it, drinking it regularly.

As I progressed into my teenage years, I would take the occasional glass or two of red wine, but I was generally oblivious to alcohol. My biggest vice was the one or two tokes of marijuana that I would smoke with the thugs on the morning school bus. I wasn�t a bad-ass myself, but they liked me and let me smoke dope with them. Fearful of getting on their bad side, I willingly did so. It was during this time period when I acquired a taste for heavy rock, but otherwise remained clean. My dope habit didn�t affect my studies or my athletic activities, and I had nothing more to do with marijuana after leaving high school.

However, the advent of my 22nd year, combined with a self-loathing depression, drove me into an alcoholic binge that lasted all day, every day, for most of that year. (The year was 1992, which is why my writing at the time was so ... in a word, strange. One example already exists, and I�ll introduce more later.) I insisted that I was having fun, telling myself that it was simple self-medication. But in reality, I was spiraling down a slippery slope toward full-blown alcoholism. I never became physically addicted to it (no morning drinking, for example), but I was definitely psychologically addicted. The summer of �92 was the worst. I would sit on the back steps, in the hot sun, drinking cold white Zinfandel all day long. I drank on my college campus, which�luckily for me�the administrators never noticed. I drank whenever and wherever I could. And whatever I could get my hands on: beer, wine, brandy, gin, schnapps, scotch. It didn�t matter. How I ever managed a 3.25 GPA in my studies at the time is a complete mystery to me. I credit my resilient youth at the time with that. There can be no other explanation. I worked nights in a supermarket and got good grades at the university. I really was a poor man�s Superman in my early 20s. I had to have been.

My boss at the supermarket noticed my sometimes erratic behavior on the night shift, and the fact that I would suck down a pint or two with the other boys after work in a nearby bar. He showed his concern by calling me an alcoholic. �Hey, alcoholic,� he�d yell at me. �How come your aisle isn�t stocked yet?�

I attended a few AA meetings late that summer. But it wasn�t AA who helped me. AA is a great institution and I don�t wish to denigrate it. But the fact that I was actually attending AA meetings at the tender age of 22 is what woke me up and changed me. That very fact frightened me. So, that September, I swore off alcohol and didn�t touch the stuff for six years.

I started drinking again by pure-blind error. I visited my pen pal (now my wife) in London for the first time in March 1998. During my visit with her, she had arranged a trip to Calais, France for us. While in Calais, we had lunch at a caf�, and I ordered an Irish coffee. It was the dumbest mistake I�ve made to date. I assumed they would use artificial flavoring, but when I tasted the coffee, I recognized the taste of real brandy straight away. I was horrified. But I refused to waste the equivalent of $4 that I spent on it, so I drank it. And that was when my penchant for alcohol returned.

I could say it returned with a vengeance, but it depends on one�s individual perspective. I have not returned to my level of drinking circa 1992, so this leads me to assume that I can drink in moderation. Yes, I�ve binged and yes, I�ve been sick. But my drinking these days still pales in comparison to my disastrous twenty-second year of life.

My wife got me a bottle of brandy for Christmas, but she issued the following comment: �Can I trust you not to abuse that?�

And here it is, the 26th of January, and I have only just emptied it. If I was an alcoholic, or even had a drinking problem, there is no way I could have made that small bottle last a month and a day. If this were 1992, I�d have drunk the entire thing within the space of a few hours.

Here�s a fact of my current existence: I like to drink. No�I love to drink. We are going to the pub today, my wife and I, and I will drink a beer or two. Then, I will buy a bottle of red wine and drink that as well. My idea of a great Saturday night is kicking back in my chair, listening to hard rock at a loud volume on my headphones, and drinking. But I do not have a problem. If anything, I�ll go deaf from the heavy music blasting out my ears than contract cirrhosis. But I do not have issues with alcohol; I don�t care what the psychologists say. I drag my ass out of bed every night for work, take care of my responsibilities, and generally feel OK about myself and my life. It�s true that I like the buzz and the escape that alcohol provides. It�s still a crutch for me in social situations, with which I have never been comfortable. If I have to talk with strangers, whose judgment of me I am fearful of, there will definitely be a glass of beer or wine in my hands. And the aforementioned fact that I like riding a buzz by myself on the weekends might alert others to danger. But, trust me, there is none. I am, therefore I drink. And I have a ton of fun. I am healthy, in shape, and stable.

Ask me about my drinking, and I will say that it�s in moderation. I realize now that I can never go back to my teetotaler years. I wish I could, but it�s not reality. That brandy-laden coffee in France nearly four years ago broke that streak, but I am not bitter.

Now that I think about it, I was a boring guy during those teetotaler years. God forbid, why would I want to return to them?

� M.E.M.

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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.

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