I was a slippery slope drinker. I didn’t have a drop during the week and could go however long without a sip. But once drinking began, there was no stopping. Oh Look, it’s The never elusive ‘binge drinker.’
By Chris Vizzini
I just read a quote that almost put me into tears. “Happiness is feeling it all. Even when it hurts.”
Most of you who know me might say I liked the spirits. A fan of the beverage. Tying one on. Smiling at the chilly prick. Getting a nice stiff one. Choose your poorly phrased euphemisms as you please.
My career as a binge drinker began innocently enough. Mary Mary, quite contrary to what most people know of my bar persona, I’m terribly shy and socially, well, special. The first time I had a drink, all the self-consciousness evaporated like a pest on a bug zapper. I thought to myself, “Holy shitballs, not only am I not shy, it feels awesome!”
Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat. For 15 years. Here’s what I learned of drinking thus far:
• Drinking is fun until it’s not.
• Picking fights with people much larger than you is a bad idea.
• Picking fights with two people much larger than you is an even worse idea.
• Police cars are much louder when you are in them.
• Nurses are much less inclined to help you when you call them cunts.
I could explain all of that, but I know the meter is ticking so let’s CliffsNotes this. shall we?
We all learned as kids that earnestly trying to place a cube through a triangular hole won’t work, no matter how delightful the idea. Well, I was trying to shove a Dodecahedron though the through the triangular hole. Repeatedly. It was fun until it wasn’t.
Add the shyness factor. I have these weird, idiosyncratic annoyances called feelings. I wasn’t particularly comfortable with them, and I chose the escape route in the bottle. It worked! Until it didn’t.
I developed this nasty habit of compartmentalizing feelings during the week only to go drinking sometimes on the weekend with the justification of blowing off steam. Then the feelings started to ramp up until “sometimes on the weekend” became “every weekend, all weekend.”
Emotions work much like nature; they figure a way to grow around an obstacle. You can try to drink, drug, shop, fuck, overwork or any other means you choose to avoid what’s inside of you, but the top will eventually boil over. When it does, there’s one hell of a mess to clean up.
Some funky shit has gone down over the last couple of years. I justified the trouble that drinking caused by chalking it up to “just drunken shenanigans.”
Until the top boiled over.
Nature took its course, and the means I’d been using to avoid feelings no longer worked. Nature grew around me. Or rather, through me. It was time to examine an unexamined life. Peeking a little further down the well-worn path I was traveling scared the shit out of me. So I quit.
A funny thing happens when you stop drinking. Beforehand, you have tons of friends and not a dull moment. When you quit, the party goes on without you. Sure, the calls and texts come flying in right after quitting, but cut to two months later. The cha cha is still cha cha’ing, and you ain’t there.
You’re at home feeling those weird, idiosyncratic annoyances that you’ve been dodging. You cry and think, and cry and think back, and cry and think even further back. Did I mention cry?
I quit drinking 150 days ago. Well, it should be 151 days, but I went out one night to test a theory based on this question: Was the cha cha that was still cha cha’ing without me the blast I remember?
I went out and had three drinks which is like an appetizer for my liver. And it wasn’t fun. I was missing nothing.
Not that my current trip is fireworks out my anus, but this dirt road will become brick, the brick to pavement. Make no mistake, though. It’s not for nothing. It hurts like a fresh cinder from hell landed right in your eyeball, but it’s better than binge drinking. At least for me.
I’m now just feeling the feelings, even when they hurt.
Chris Vizzini is a freelance writer living in Atlanta. Reach him via this magazine.