Thirsty Thursday: Two Years

This past Saturday, we went to the Philadelphia Zoo. We're members (my grandmom gets the kids the family membership for Christmas every year), so it's a good day for doing something cheap. You don't have to pay for tickets or parking if you're a member, and if you bring your own food and drink, then you theoretically don't have to spend money on anything except gas. So that's what we did. It was a nice day. We saw some animals. The kids had fun and whined and laughed and all that stuff.

On the day we were there, the zoo was having their annual "Whiskey Walk." It was just something happening in the background to our experience. Groups of young adults clutching tiny cups half-filled with amber liquids, enjoying the sights and sounds just like we were. There was the occasional line to push the stroller around, but other than that, whatever, no big deal, let the whiskey people have their fun. 

Except it kind of bothered me, if I'm being honest. Not just because whiskey was always my least favorite liquor by a rather large margin. Not even because the activity made the zoo more crowded, even though I suppose it technically did. It just... I guess it was jealousy, if I'm being honest. I need to be honest, always and forever about this whole fucking drinking thing, fully and completely honest, and here is my honest truth: I was jealous. So let's unpack that.

I'm not the only one with a problem. I'm not the only alcoholic walking around sober and sad on this planet. I know this. But whenever I look around at large masses of people holding tiny cups of whiskey, I usually assume the following: none of these people have a problem. That's what I'm jealous of. I'm jealous of the type of person who can just be like, alright, today I'm going to the zoo and I'm gonna try all the whiskeys that they have, and it'll be a nice relaxing day, and maybe I'll go home just a tiny bit tipsy and I'll eat a hearty dinner and sleep it off and be ready for church the next day. If you don't have a problem, that's a nice day. I actually ran into a friend and her partner and they were doing the Whiskey Walk. They seemed happy. It was just something they were doing. It wasn't some fucking existential crisis in which whiskey represents their ultimate downfall or some bullshit like that. Just a little cup of warm liquid that makes you feel good in small doses.

The weirdest part about my jealousy is that I know now, and absolutely would have known back then, that something like the Philadelphia Zoo's Whiskey Walk was absolutely, positively not for me. As a sober person, I would've hated it because I don't drink, but as a drinker, I would've hated the Whiskey Walk too. But not even just because I didn't like drinking whiskey. But also the price, and the pain in the ass it would have been to wait in line just for a little bit of alcohol. Like, just imagine me waiting in like hopping on one foot and then the other and pacing around and complaining like FUCK I need another fucking DRINK what the fuck are we even DOING here we could be at home doing shots for FREE and etc. etc. etc.

It wouldn't be efficient drinking. That's what I specialized in. I knew how to get drunk quickly. It's more than just grabbing a bottle and drinking fast. It's more about formulating a plan that would be conducive to the drinking. Drinking whiskey and blacking out is sad. Having a party and gathering friends and doing the legwork and convincing everyone else to drink too and posting event details and greeting guests and organizing games and making small talk and making deep talk and gleefully cleaning up the mess while I'm coming down off my high, that was fun, and not sad at all. Constructing my life in that way so that I could do all those things all the time and continually justify the act of having Too Much Fun was great until it wasn't. But you see how I was able to justify it for so long, by making room for maximum contexts in which I could get maximum drunk under the banner of "maximum fun." That's what I mean by "efficient." The zoo's Whiskey Walk wouldn't have been like that, and I wouldn't have had fun.

So I was jealous that people could have fun like that, is basically what I'm trying to say here. It wouldn't have been fun for me and I felt so strongly about it not being fun that I went into overdrive trying to prove that it wouldn't have been fun, so much so that I was forced to strip away the opportunity to even try it at all. In a different life, I don't have the disease, and I'm comfortable sipping small sips, and I'm walking around the zoo with my family and my tiny cups of amber liquid, and we're laughing at the cheetah coughing up a hairball just like our pet cat Lulu does, and I'm sipping and we're smiling and the monkeys are swinging from rope to rope and the snakes slither along the glass to say hi and I'm just trying out the new Tullamore Dew because it's just something nice to do, ya know, with the family. But instead I'm walking around with a clear head and a heavy heart and I'm feeling that cold blackness of jealousy over some fucking drink I never liked in the first place.

This is the feeling that I've felt from the beginning. It's been exactly two years this Saturday, and it's lessened in that time, but it's never really gone away, and I fear it never will. It's not temptation, that shit is long gone. It's not regret, because I've made mistakes but I've done my best to fix them, and made peace with the ones I can't fix. It's just a small little pang of sadness that I get when I stop to think about it, the absence of drinking, and the wall I've constructed to keep myself out of harm's way. I know I can't drink and I think I never will again, but I still hate myself sometimes for getting to this point. I was just so fucking stupid to push it so hard. It was unnecessary. I don't know why I had to burn out like that. I knew it was happening and I fucking did it anyway. I couldn't have just, ya know, taken it easy a little bit? I knew for so long that I had a finite number of drinks within me but still I kept drinking faster and faster. It's like only have one tank of gas and then pushing the pedal down when it hits E. It doesn't make any sense. I could've just had a few beers here and there. I could've gotten tipsy on a quiet Saturday evening with friends. I could've sipped whiskey at the Big Cat Falls exhibit. Don't you see what I pissed away? Nothing important, but also everything.

I allowed myself one paragraph of histrionics here in this blog post. Sorry about that. I had to do it though. Only one paragraph, because it really isn't that big of a deal. It only feels like a big deal during those small, intense, and rare moments that it hits me. The dark thought hits me as I open the fridge and see the tall colorful can of high-intensity locally brewed ale and I'm hit with the cycle of "What if...?" and then the immediate playing forward of the tapes and imagining the carnage and destruction that would come to my life if I cracked that can and the act of saying no makes me feel so goddamn sad because it's my fault that I have to say no in the first place, and grieve once more all the times that I could've had but lost because of my own stupid actions, and have to once again face a future in which I feel everything and get numb to nothing and have no aid and feel awkward and feel out of place and have to try really really hard to get comfortable and then just locked out from certain things and freak out about others and feel embarrassed about everything because I'm the fucking jerkoff who put myself in this position and I'm the fucking jerkoff who chose sobriety even though it's hard and I hate it.

Okay, sorry, there's another paragraph of histrionics for you. Whoops. All that happens in a moment, all those dark feelings in a dense little ball and it rolls around in my brain for just a single, solitary moment, and then... I just let it float away. The moment passes. It comes back to me that I didn't have a choice, that it's my fault but that it's also my fault that I'm alive, that that's a good thing, that there actually was a choice except that choice was either get sober or die and I chose correctly and I am ultimately happy with that. 99.99% of my life consists of moments that feel this way—happy, content, proud, at the very least, I dunno, manageable I guess? But that other 0.01% has happened over the past two years and it'll continue to happen for the time being. And the pain and sorrow in those tiny, fleeting moments is almost too much to bear.

But not, at the end of the day, too much to bear, or else I'd just start drinking again. I can bear it. I can bear sobriety. I've been doing it and I don't know why an annoying pesky little ten seconds per week in which I hate my life would ever be enough to change any of that. And, crucially, if it does, then I know I have people to talk to about it before I take a sip, so there's that.

I'm gonna tell you about something kinda fucked up that happened to me during my second full year of sobriety. It's gonna look like I'm talking shit or am holding a grudge or something, but I'm not, and if I tell this short anecdote, then I need you to have grace and patience and forgiveness for the other person in this story, because I'm not telling the story to make him look like a villain. I'm just telling it because it's part of my story.

Last summer, we were at the fourth annual M******* family vacation with Pam's family. We traditionally spend a lot of around the table at the end of the night just talking shit and letting my in-laws bicker and all that. I've already written about this vacation week in the Thirsty Thursday column. I can confirm that this past summer was even better, in sobriety. I feel more comfortable around that table, now that I am of sound mind. I feel like the beer-addled mind of drunk Joe would get agitated very easily, and would be prone to stating my position in the form of drunkenly yelling. Heated discussions can be an art if you have a clear mind and conscience and are performed in good faith and cheer.

Anyways, one night, my father-in-law was asking about my sobriety, and not necessarily in a kind way. Which is fine. I actually welcome anyone who doesn't feel like pussyfooting around the issue. But at the end of the night, he points his finger at me and say something along the lines of: "I guarantee you this: you will drink again in your life. It might not be while I'm alive, but I'll know if from my grave, and I'll say I told you so. You will have another drink."

Interpret that as you will. I don't really know how I interpret it myself. I know he was pretty drunk when he said it, but saying something like "he just wishes he could be sober like me and is lashing out" lacks humility to a degree that I'm not comfortable considering that explanation. Knowing my father-in-law, if I asked him about his saying this, he would have no idea what the fuck I was talking about. Which probably makes it worse. I alone have to live with being haunted by something someone said to me. 

Am I ever going to drink again? I can say "no" in the here and now and mean it with every fiber of my being, but it can't ever be true, simply because we just don't know the future. I suppose it's slightly ironic that I feel less inclined to drink now that he said it, because a part of my motivation becomes having to "prove someone wrong," which is not healthy if that's my only motivation, but it's not, and so it just strengthens my resolve. I think it's always gonna stick with me, his sentiments, simply because they are my own fears vocalized. That I am proud of two years but that in the grand scope of a life it ain't fucking shit, that I still have a long way to go, that I doubt myself and my resolve over a lifetime. I'm feeling good now but I worry about the long-term future.

But I don't worry that much. Two years is enough to become entrenched in an idea like sobriety. If I gave up now, then it would be like I wasted the last two years of my life, ya know? If I'm gonna drink then I might as well have drank every moment I wanted to drink the past two years. If I drank now then the regrets would instantly stack up way too high. I've made peace with my decision to not drink during the moments I don't want to drink, and if I then drank, even one beer, then I'd be tearing that peace away and stomping on it and lighting it on fire. Just seems stupid to even consider it at this point. I'm in too deep.

When we passed through the entrance gates to the zoo, the attendants were asking to see who was participating in the Whiskey Walk, and all those who were took a slight left and lined up. As we were walking down the main path, I overheard the guy in charge of getting people checked in for the Walk say the following: "All my fellow alcoholics, this way!" I understand that this was just a cheeky way of referring to those who like to drink. I'm not offended in the slightest. But I can tell you that no self-respecting alcoholic is gonna be caught dead sipping tiny cups of liquor out in public for an exorbitant fee. That's just not how we roll. It's either get your own bottle so you can drink at your own pace which is much too quickly and hide some servings in private and do this as many times as you can before you die an early death... or just keep walking, stroll toward the PECO Primate Conservation Center, don't think about it, don't think about it, just live your best goddamn life and be present and be thankful and be okay and let the bad feelings fly into the sky and away from here, just like the 6ABC Zoo Balloon once did, many years ago.