#218

Regular people drink, moderately or heavily, for a lot of reasons, a broad array. Alcoholics drink for a much narrower band. I think just four: genetic honeytraps, existential panic, total emptiness, and profound emotional trauma.

Some people, the bottle was just the wrong thing to grab, period. Poison candy. I have heard of lucky folks who recognized this immediately and put the candy away on a high shelf, never to be taken down again. Others, bright, alert, civically-minded individuals, with happy stories behind and a limitless future ahead, do not put the candy away, and all that shit is for balls now. It belongs to the bottle. A sprung trap laid was right in the weave of their DNA; neural pathways light up like a nightmare string of Christmas lights garlanding a haunted house, and that house is where they live the rest of their days. Unless they can quit.

Existential panic and total emptiness are the manic and depressive aspects of the death drive. Probably it's all more complicated than that but this is on-the-ground reporting, my shit and the shit of the people I've known, so I'll keep it straightforward. Alcoholics drinking in existential panic drink because their performance anxiety about life, the task of living, becomes overbearing and unbearable. Drinking is a pressure release. Eventually enough pressure is released that the anxiety is gone, because drinking is life, and life is finally thus contained, made harmless and eminently livable. Alcoholics drinking in a state of emptiness have the opposite problem; they are soaked in life, saturated and cannot take in any more, a sensation both leaden and untethered. There is nothing in life that holds attraction. Everything in it comes predigested, covered in shit, no points, no punchlines, no significance. Only drinking makes one feel warm, makes the heart beat like a human muscle instead of sitting in the chest like a cold rock in a river that has stopped flowing. You don't feel much better, usually, but less like a walking corpse. More able to keep up the performance.

Emotional trauma speaks for itself, I guess. One could write a great deal about its mechanism, and I mean to, but this is also where things get very subjective. Too many words for one post, too many bases to cover.

*

My whole deal is a spicy blend of all of the above; my uncle drinks. Most of the clan is made up of regular people, but here and there, like raisins in a porridge, an alkie, a suicide. Incidentally, few smoke anything to speak of, either; my uncle, though, enjoys cigars. That's a mother's side uncle. On  my father's side, my favorite aunt smokes cigs. And me, the favored heir.

Obviously, the death drive and I are old companions. Incidentally, I am already smoking cigs again. Fuck it. No guilt. It's blissful. As I told a dude yesterday as we smoked before dawn, a man needs a death ritual, or he'll die.

Next post, I'll dive into the emotional trauma that drives me to drink. Strap in! It's gonna be a barrel of laffs and a slap-happy half.  

*

Saw Joker. Movie of the year, movie of the decade, maybe the best fucking movie I've ever seen in my life. Just thinking of the sound engineering alone gives me a hard-on.

May everyone, eventually, get the joke.

*

Finished Doctor Sleep, read through The Institute, Everything's Eventual, and The Cycle of the Werewolf. Reading Dreamcatcher now. The King binge continues, and shall continue apace; let's see how many I can do in October. Gonna focus of the big bastards for awhile; Needful Things is on deck, then, Under the Dome. If I can do one more after that before November, I'll be happy. Still working sixty hours. 

Oh! Did a little interstitial with Caitlin Doughty's Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, lent to me by a coworker. Pretty good stuff. Pretty funny.

*

Listening to a lot of The Offspring. Playing lots of stuff to listen to in the kitchen, all kinds of stuff, particularly Funkadelic, Janis Joplin, Muddy Waters, and Santana, but what I want to be listening to for myself the last couple weeks is The Offspring. Feels like taking strong supplements of a long-neglected vitamin; the world feels brighter, food tastes better, and my attitude is lively. The Offspring reminds me that I have balls, basically, a good fucking pair that's seen me through some shit. Amazing how that gets away from you.  

*

It's been the most beautiful day. October is the most beautiful month there is, on average, in my limited experience. 


--JL