An ever-beloved ex used to have a blog that started out with that tagline. Today is the day. I think of it not every single day but many days. Will today be the day I quit drinking? The morning seems beautiful and leaning toward brightness after some clouds. My walk along John Street seemed spritely and positive despite the garbage strewn about and the homeless obstructing the paths. There were no fields of shit that littered this morning’s dreamscape. I don’t know where that came from but I found myself in a convention center where the floor was strewn with all kinds of fecal matter. Some of it was horse, other cat. There was lanternfly poop and llama turd. I had to dodge all of it, or so I thought. Some of it was clean and tan-colored enough to be sterile, while others was deep dark brown, even blackened, signaling toxicity and certain death should it even graze my flesh or its vapors enter my lungs. It was like walking across a physical version of the Internet. I had set sail on the sea of shit.
Things change with sobriety. Not all changes are positive. Sleep is a casualty, though I’d learned to enjoy the haptic (sp?) jerks and the jolting awake as the sensation of falling overwhelmed me.
Something made me think I can never quit, though. It’s happened too many times to ignore. It’s the triggers. I see ads for candy-colored cocktails and even low-abv beer and something in my gut squirms. It’s a reaction many people might have to the smell of bacon, or pastries, or whatever pleases them in the realms of primal olfactory sensuality.
I made video of myself showering last week, at night. It’s true. I have a spare Wyze camera and nothing else to do with it but document myself showering, masturbating, pissing onto myself. I want there to be evidence should I die in the shower that something happened there, that I died happy.
What triggered me from this video was the gimlet. It did what advertisements for hard alcohol do, and this was just a grainy 15fps appearance in a shoddy video of myself naked in the shower. I saw myself stir the gimlet with the metal straw. I did not see myself sip the drink, because my face is out of frame. But the sight of that gimlet made me feel a squirm in my gut, but this time it was a good squirm. This image of my gimlet was not as aggressive or hard as the technicolor advertisements for Hennessy and the many vodkæ. This was like the comfort of a friend, a friend who knows me a little too well, knows me even better than they could ever reveal in good conscience.
Reaction to beer are different. Beer is like piss. I start with beer as a way to numb the palette, to cleanse the tract. It goes down but feels like it’s clearing a path, emptying.
Can I ever fully stop with this? The thinking. I’ve stopped and it’s been no big deal but physiologically I fear the consequences. I don’t drink as heavily as in the past. By most standards 2 beers and a gimlet isn’t that heavy, unless, of course, you don’t drink at all or your standards allow no impurities whatsoever into your sacred vessel. But I’m a long way from where I’ve been, in toxic relationships where I was unwittingly trying to drink myself to death.
But that is not now. That is not this. Now the concerns are that the prescription drug cocktails are becoming an addiction, or at least a crutch. They get me through the day, that’s for certain. The only time I neglected to bring them to work (day after I switched bags and forgot to include the pills in the new bag) I had to leave early. BP was probably 200/100. Still, there was paperwork. As a probationary employee I am still treated skeptically. I was made to get a doctor to sign off some kind of Family Leave Disability something document. I submitted it. It was rejected. I wasted a lot of time and energy on this bit of paperwork buffoonery, but in the end my 4 hours of sick leave were approved.
I actually did have pills present but not enough. Their effect took a few hours to work their magic, by which time I got to my other pills.
The anxiety comes from alcohol withdrawal, which can happen first thing in the morning. It’s tempting to think withdrawal symptoms take time, and develop after days or weeks of quitting. But your body gets so used to the intake that the effects can develop very quickly.
My current doctor does not seem to know I drink. He does not seem to have accessed my medical records, which would of course include the infamous ER stay for “ALCOHOL ABUSE”. I would have called the reason for that ER stay “ATTEMPTED SUICIDE”.
