Alcohol

Alcohol got me this far without killing me. I can only imagine how bad I would have been within the past year or more had it not been there to take away the pain of being alone. Alcohol or suicide.

It makes me forget to be hopeless. It makes me forget a lot of things.

I love alcohol. I have long worshiped it as a liquid idol, a medicinal cure-all, a social tonic, and, on those best of occasions, a magical potion of sorts which can give the imbiber a second sight into the depths of life's Big Picture.

However, even the most beautiful and pleasureable things in life are usually not without their dark sides. It seems, indeed, that the more beautiful and pleasureable a thing can be, the longer and harder a person clings to denying a thing's inherent flaws.

It's a funny point reached in life when you realize that something you have for so long considered nothing but good is capable of tearing the floors and ceilings from your world. When this thing -- this good thing -- suddenly crosses the line in the sand and changes sides on you, you can be swept off your feet. Booze can stare you down like an enemy, and the saddest thing of all is that the stare can come from the glassy eyes of your lover and best friend.

Sometimes I feel like alcohol has stolen the soul of the boy I love the most. Many nights I feel left so alone and abandoned...sober but somehow feeling guilty for it...as my lover's mind sinks in an ethanol-sea. He passes out, pisses the bed with inane frequency. He doesn't understand when I tell him he's not really there -- HIM, the mind, the body, the soul. No, HE is reduced too often to a creature anaesthetically deadened to life and its many events and emotions. Booze is great, to be sure, but for me it is a double-edged sword which has truly shown me the best of times and the worst of times.

I know I am not alone in feeling this way. I know the sentiment is probably much more common than is actually admitted; alcohol is wonderful, and simultaneously the most fucking horrible thing that humanity has known. It sings siren songs to unsuspecting wanderers and robs them of years upon years of life and love.

Sometimes on Wednesday nights, when my boy is sprawled upon the bed after almost a gallon of wine under his belt, I sit and stare at his closed eyes and wonder what we might be talking about if only he could open them.

Alcohol makes me win at life. I'm more confident. Sober, I suspect I'm super awesome, and sexy, etc. Alcohol makes me know it. I'm genetically bred to drink. I'm an alcoholic, but psssh, big deal. I'm an all-kinds-of-substances-aholic. Rotgut whiskey is my best friend. I wash people who I can't have away with it. I drink and drink, and then replay painful memories in my head until I'm callused to that particular experience. Between the alcohol and the opiates, my liver is fucked.

alcohol strips people to their bare expressed emotions. no longer is the minor irritation felt by a friend's habit repressed; it is magnified, directed, vocalized.

gone is social politeness. parties become the jungles they often so closely resemble.

it is a de-evolutionary, returning us to our animalistic roots for nights of hedonistic pleasure.