I’ve drunk heavily all my adult life. As an aging scion to an Irish-Catholic clan, my early life was rife with a litany of merry and morose boozers.
The booze wrecked any number of lives, but holidays, family birthdays and riverside picnics were usually exuberant.
Ever optimistic, I’ve laid off the sauce for the past several months, excited to see how my life improves. It hasn’t. My hands are still wrecked, my online news binges haven’t slowed and depression continues to assail. Worse, my short-term memory remains hit or miss.
Quacks would say I’m healthier. Despite nine hours sleep each night and afternoon snoozes, their view is constrictive propaganda. Hell, I don’t even have more of their promised energy.
I enjoy hot saki at Umami’s and wine with Luigi’s Veal alla Genovese and Spezia’s wood-grilled shrimp & scallops. No iced tea or water holds a candle.
I’m unsure whether sobriety or overindulgence lies ahead. Either choice or propensity is bleak. Perhaps both?
Yet in the immortal last words of Humphrey Bogart, “I never should have switched from scotch to martinis.”
This is stating the obvious, but as a proud Irishman (complete with all the stereotypes), you might not have considered it—at least your essay doesn’t sound as though you’re acquainted with the possibility. There is a vast middle ground between “sobriety” (which, by the way, many, many people don’t regard as equating with “abstinence”) and “overindulgence.” Why not shoot for somewhere in the middle, just for a change? Who knows? There might lie your sweet spot!