Notes to Self
One horrible late Saturday morning, I learned that if you keep drinking and doing drugs, you’re going to kill enough brain cells to change you forever. Somebody was telling me that over the phone after I confessed about my previous night’s adventures, and she was like, “Don’t you know you’re killing brain cells?”
I must have known that. I’m sure I read it somewhere. But then she said that those are the types of cells you don’t get back.
And I was like, “Hold it right there!” If that were true, then I would never, ever drink again. That’s what I told her. I knew it sounded familiar. It was like the setup for a joke. But I meant it.
Everybody means it, but then the day comes when everybody is having a good time without you, drinking away while you’re sipping your soda. What’s the real harm in one drink? You explain to people as you spike your coke with whiskey that the point is not to follow the oath to the letter but to take everything in moderation. And not drinking at all is not taking things in moderation.
And when the next day, you’re recuperating from the worst hangover in history, you explain to those that are throwing your words back at you that by moderation, you didn’t mean for one night. You meant moderation in general, which you argue is a lot stronger than just being moderate on one occasion.
What the hell do you even mean by any of this? Yes, I mean that I’m with you that I didn’t practice this moderation because I lost control, but I am looking at the bigger picture, moderation through the years. So what if I slip one night!
Over the years, nothing changes. You recall old oaths when you mention those exact words, but this time, as a joke. “Damn, that Fourth of July thing was out of control,” and you tell your neighbor joshingly, “I’m never going to drink again,” and he immediately gets the joke.
But don’t you know you’re not supposed to drink so goddamn much? This is one of those look-in-the-mirror moments, when you are not so sure anymore if you’re pasty-faced because of last night’s bout or you’re just permanently pasty-faced like that old homeless guy you knew who looked fifteen years older than he was and had a liver the size of a medicine ball. No, really, time to stop.
And so it goes. When does it stop? Not likely to stop until some physical ailment forces it on you. Then it’s like I rest my case.
The problem about finding that you’re getting older is not that you’re getting older, and it is not that your health is waning. It is that you actually start to follow through with your oaths. Your conclusions become laws in your life. You discover that you don’t like water skiing, and now that option is no longer available to you. I will never do it again. And then it gets worse because there are things you actually used to like that you no longer tolerate. I remember the day when I decided I was never going to enter another nightclub again. It was long in the coming. Having spent hundreds of nights in clubs offered a slow dawning on your true position on such things. One day, you follow up on the slowly-curing conclusion.
(Note to self: Dovetail this nicely with a strand of things you don’t do anymore, like go to the barber shop or get together with friends. Better yet: Stop drinking already. Write it in notes you stick up in various unlikely places so they surprise you the first number of times before they start annoying you.)