Drying Up From The Sauce

The first few months I stopped drinking, one of the worst feelings I had was losing my history. Not that I was considering all the party days (and lonely drinking moments) as history. But memories. Memories equates to sadness. People think memories are good. They elicit moments of good, but for the most part, most people tend to remember things they can’t fix. Failed relationships, money issues, loneliness. Regret.

It seems the people who can drink and remember good times, function to this day as drinkers, and I envy them. But there is a distinction between drinking to lift up the spirits and drinking to force yourself into more pleasant memories. In my day, drinking was meant to get me motivated to accomplish things. It beats back intuition because I think it goes to the core of your instinct. The minute you sober up, your intellect takes over. Which is why a lot of times it’s believed you are most creative inebriated.

Yes and no, maybe. It’s hard for me to determine. I enjoyed getting drunk and doing stupid shit. Some of those lapsed brain cells tapped into the times when I was the most happiest. But, I HAD to believe that was just an anchor. Continuing to review the past is comforting, but it doesn’t progress you forward. SO many people don’t mind this “purgatory” because it is safe. The world sucks and gets worse every time you hear bad things happening. I think it’s funny the more internet interaction we have the more we’ve been convincing ourselves the awful nature of humanity. While you can simply turn off the world and disappear as one of my sister has, or keep being reminded that we’re instinctual angry animals in cages.

A lot of people will tell you that drinking dulls and hides the true meaning of your unhappiness. The fact that we are all on different levels of unhappiness until we die makes us more unhappy. It was a no-brainer that inebriation was the solution. I think at a certain point people do become content with living in the fray without believing there is more to life. I completely understand because I was so much more happier dosing myself to sleep and feeling the past, then sober and looking at the future. But…it’s better this way. I’m not trying to convince myself, because the proof is in the pudding. I’m able to function and do projects. In a drunken state, a lot of it would be garbage. In this state, I find myself with more time to do things (though the first year of dry-dom, was a ton of immobility, yes it sucks that bad). And it’s a relief to know substances don’t control me. It is actually liberating to know you can move forth without being in a fog. But, I also miss those memories…it feels far away and sometimes frustrating I can’t sense them anymore.