I got drunk!

So, as everyone under 20 seems to start a sentence (50 year-old Scott’s introductory “so” was edited out by me https://www.activate-deactivation.com/post/scott-s-story), you must be starting to think of me as a hero, a god-like being who has learned from their mistakes and has set sail on the ship to success.

I must break some bad news: I am human, as fallible as any mortal.

After two tobacco-free years I’ve been puffing away for six months like Thomas the Tank Engine on steroids. There’s also the occassional drinking. I don’t see it as having fallen off the wagon, more leaning out of the window.

Two weeks ago was one of the times I drank, the allure of the booze in the supermarket triggering a deep-seated desire in me which had to be acted upon.

“I got drunk” isn’t much of a headline but it’s quite an event for someone who spent around 25 years drinking to blackout almost every day, who fucked up so much along the way. It’s not something I take lightly any more.

After opening the bottle of wine and putting the beers in the fridge I decided to document what happened.

The prodigious literary giant Ernest Hemingway once wrote that one should write drunk and edit sober. He was also depressive and shot himself so I chose to ignore his advice and present to you the ramblings I wrote as I drank. It may or may not be interesting but, as I sit here again with a beer, it’s unedited.

“15:45 3 beers in fridge, 1 freezer

16:00 Anticipation mounts as I ask myself if I’m doing the right thing. No, of course I’m not, but fuck it. I’ve decided.

Pour the Erdinger lager into a Guinness pint glass, a memento from my pub, take a gulp. My God that tastes good! It takes me back to the Fox pub where we would meet. No mobiles needed, just a “See you in The Fox ´bout 8 on Friday”, a pint and 50p pieces for the pool table, winner stays on.

Opposite The Fox is Blake’s cottage where the visionary poet and artist lived for around a year and left without paying his bar bill. Maybe I was the sick rose he wrote about, all beauty within me drowned in liquor. Tiger, tiger, burning bright.

16:16 The first pint always goes down so easily as if my stomach is the centre of the Earth, gravity at its strongest. I think of one of my heroes, another visionary, John Balance, one half of the music group Coil. Coil’s music accompanied me on psychedelic teenage nights, their song Love’s Secret Domain quoting Blake’s Sick Rose.

John was an alcoholic. “Excess makes the heart grow fonder”, he once said. I once met John and his private/musical partner Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson in a bar in Soho’s Old Compton Street. We got chatting before I knew that they were heroes of mine. Sleazy and I shared the same nickname. John and I drank before we got into a taxi and went to a club somewhere in south London.

All I can remember is the blue lighting, blue where the shadows weren’t black, black apart from hard, hungry eyes checking me out.

Another taxi was my Pegasus for more excess in someone’s house before I staggered across a park to the next road, thumb out until some semblance of sanity told me that hitchhiking in Brixton at 4am was not a good idea. A night bus came and took me somewhere near home as I got back before my Bognor-in-Leyton housemates noticed I was gone.

A few years later I was living in Germany. I recall buying The Guardian from the railway station, an important link to Blighty in those pre-internet days. The €3.80 was worth every cent.

It was Novemebr and it was snowing in Passau. There was a short news story, barely longer than a small-ad. John had died. He fell drunk from upstairs in their house. My heart was (illegible), my eyes were wet, the newspaper yellow on my lap under the bus’ lights.

I drank to him that night.

16:45 Pint number 2 is almost history but I extend its life by going out for a smoke.

One good thing about not being in London is the price of drinks. 5 or 6 pounds for a beer? 13 pounds for 20 of my beloved gold-wrapped Benson & Hedges? Are they, “The Man”, trying to make going out something for the elite? Are they attempting to push the proles into taking illegal drugs in a form of mass junkification? Gentrification for the poor. 8 pints and 40 cigarettes 70 GBP but 40 GBP for a gram of the finest Columbian marching powder? One evening in a West End bar costing the same as a week’s worth of speed? The “drug war” is doomed but I’m sure they know that.

It’s enough to turna person to supermarket beer so I’m off to the fridge.

17:02 Pop! Numero tres! The last remaining blockades are gone. The beer has awakened my bladder. There’s nobody here to nag me. Well, my stepdaughter is home and we’re good buddies. She ain’t no snitch.

I need to repot my cacti/cactus plants.

I’m married to a nurse and my last relationship was with a social worker. Both are prone to over-analysis. In these fields there tends to be no grey-zone. Some of the worst drinkers, smokers and drug users I’ve known have done these jobs. They also see the harm, the damage bad habits cause. However, they both think that they know (this) better than I do myself. Yes, I know why I used to drink but today I just feel like it. My anxiety is all but gone and all I want to do is have a few drinks. Is that too much to ask?

Yes! Why? Because I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve just had “one or two”. I really mean that. One beer motivates me in a way nothing else ever has motivated me. I can concentrate (this is the proof) and move any mountain. Ha! That was a song by The Shaman, a track from my raving days so I play it now: aged badly. Shit pop-rap. Oh dear.

No, I’m not unhappy, nothing bad has happened. I just feel like drinking. Even donkies like to get drunk on rotten fruit.

17:22 Cigarette

17:28 Have to take the bins out. “

After that I stopped writing, distracted by mundane things which suddenly seemed important.

I get drunk very quickly these days which is no surprise considering the infrequency of my drinking. Ironically, when I was a walking disaster, I also got drunk very quickly but remained at a certain level and could continue drinking until the sun came up, drinking myself “sober”. Now, the speed at which I feel drunk is due to lack of practise. Back then it was probably due to a messed up liver.

I’m not sure if this is interesting to anyone but I enjoyed typing up my scrawl, finishing the 4 beers I had in the fridge.

I’ll post this before I get too carried away with the cheap red I just opened.