On Drinking

Let's face it kids, alcohol is a part of a our culture, it's a part of our souls.

Whether you love them, hate them, or are completely indifferent to them, alcoholic beverages shape a person's daily life in way that sometimes aren't even noticeable.

Say for instance that you go out on a weeknight, get totally hammered and then arrive late for work the next day and you lose your job. Exhibit A.

Or maybe you go to your local watering hole, and end up seeing the girl that you always had a crush on in high school. Her looks have faded slightly over the years, but hey, she's still a fox. After several mind-erasing cocktails, you end up having a wonderful and consensual tryst that evening. You wake up refreshed and full of life. Step 2.

Or it could be that your father was a raging alcoholic, nasty, abusive, and vicious. And that is the reason why you refuse to ever consume even a drop of the poisonous liquid. What do we have behind door number three?

In my case, it's kind of a mix of all three.

My dad's a drinker, not a nasty one or anything, but he can put them away. There was once a time when I considered him an alcoholic, and he probably was. But it didn't faze me at the time.

But then my formative years passed and I grew stupid. I partied nightly, drank heavily, cavorted with the ladies I now call "biddies." Frankly, I made horrible decisions.

I've had some hellacious hangovers. Ones that kept me in bed for days. On the verge of alcohol poisoning at least once.

Then I consider my role models.

My dad. A drinker.

Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemingway, my favorite writers. Heavy drinkers.

Hell even Humphrey Bogart (my favorite all-time actor) was a drinker in a bunch of his movies.

So that brings us to me. A surefire alcohol enthusiast?

Not anymore.

I'll enjoy a drink now and again these days. But my days of hard partying and stupidity are far behind me. And all it took was waking up one morning looking at myself in the mirror and not liking the person looking back at me. It was at that moment that I vowed to never be that person again.

Oh sure, I've had fun since then, but it's been a long time since that day.

And I've never once looked back or regretted it.