Dingleberry Gazette

Today’s title comes from Comic Book Guy, in honor of the Simpsons movie premiere. I’ll try to keep it light-hearted, but today’s topic is a serious one. The fact that it falls on the opening day of the Oregon Brewer’s Festival is coincidence. I’ve been meaning to address the subject for a while, and since I had a craving the other day, it’s time for a bit of self-realization and introspect.

“I’m a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings.”

I’ve alluded to the fact that I have a drinking problem. For the most part, I quit about nine years ago. I’ve had a few spectacular benders and a few slippages since, but I fight the good fight. I know I don’t drink the way most other people do, and if I do it, I plan ahead for the oncoming trainwreck. Still, it’s not as fun as it used to be, and the consequences can be severe.

My first taste of liquor came at about age five. My parents were teetotalers, as were most of their friends. One night during their weekly pinochle game, their friends’ son sat in. He was ex-military, a log truck driver, and he was having way more fun than the rest. He was smoking Camel straights, and this fascinated me. I wanted to try, so he let me have a puff. I coughed, put on my manly face and toughed it out.

He also had a pint bottle of whiskey, and was taking shots. I’d seen Humphrey Bogart do it, and that little glass was just my size! I pestered him until my mom said it was okay.

I don’t recall much about it. It burned a little, and tasted like shit. I didn’t see the attraction, but Tom the son was having a really good time, so I asked for another.

“Go ahead,” mom said. “Let him get sick of it.”

I took the second shot, and wanted another puff on the cigarette. At this point mom realized aversion therapy wasn’t going to work, and sent me off to play elsewhere.

My mom refused to drink anything. She claimed to have drank once, on her wedding night, and got so mean and out of control she swore never to do it again. She was fifteen. To the best of my knowledge, she only had a sip every few years, literally for medicinal purposes. She kept a bottle of gin with cloves of garlic in the fridge. I don’t recall why, but the damned bottle stayed in the fridge for several years.

Until I got hard up and killed it off. But that was in my twenties. Let’s back up a bit.

At about age twelve, I was doing the usual things of the day. Smoking cigs with my friends before school, passing around the only copy of Playboy in the neighborhood, etc… The neighbor kid and I found a twelve pack of Heidelberg stubbies by the side of the road, and we took it to our tree fort. We would have a beer each day after school, just like his dad did after work. It seemed so manly.

I got a job doing janitorial stuff when I turned fourteen, and the boss, a member of my mom’s church, would slip me drinks on the long ride to the ranger stations we cleaned. I developed a taste for Pepsi and Southern Comfort, and snuck off with many a stubby of Oly or Bud. The boss’s brother was always getting yelled at for drinking all the beer.

Sorry dude. It was me.

While I was drinking, I wasn’t getting drunk, or even catching a buzz. Just warm and comfortable. And feeling all grown up. It’s what real men do. Right?

By sixteen, I was driving, but smart about it. I kept my wits, and knew I’d lose driving privileges if I got caught. I’d been smoking pot for a couple years at this point, and preferred that anyway. A far superior buzz.

I’ve always been fond of the brain given me. I’d seen what glue-sniffing, speed and pills could do to a person’s mental state, and didn’t want that to be me. I was one of those guys who liked ‘taking a trip without ever leaving the farm.’ I liked the sense of adventure, and the new perspective on old things, but never got the whole ‘getting wasted’ thing. I liked keeping my pinky toe on the ground, just so I knew where reality began. It was mind expansion, not self-destruction.

Somewhere along the way, I lost that.The crowd I ran with drank, but they outgrew it. I was always the guy who would finish other people’s beers at parties. (Waste not, want not!) While they were getting ‘wasted’, I was bored. So, one night I decided it was time to get drunk.

I was sixteen, and the television broadcast premiere of Carrie was on. I procured a fifth of Black Velvet, and popped the bottle after mom went to bed.

While I’d been imbibing for years, I’d never been drunk. Since I assumed sizes were portioned, I figured a fifth oughta do it.

It did.

About 11:30 PM, I crashed into the hallway wall on the way to the bathroom. When mom asked what happened, I told her I’d tripped over the cat. I made it to bed, and the last thing I remember is spinning so violently I thought I was gonna fly off the face of the earth.

I awoke with a mouth full of sand. Or did I? Why so dry? My head throbbed, and I was still a little dizzy. What happened?

Oh, yeah. I picked up the bottle of Black Velvet. There may have been an inch left. I set it on the shelf behind my bed, and sat up. As I stood, I stepped in what looked like wet sawdust. I’d puked all over my bedroom floor.

I grabbed newspaper, and got as much as I could. My room smelled like rotting peaches, and I was having trouble holding still. But I had to hide the evidence, so it was off to the woodstove.

As I knelt, stuffing the awful mess into the stove, I tipped over like Arte Johnson on Laugh-In. Plop. My mom laughed, and gave my dad a look that said, “I think he gets it now.” Nothing more was said that day. I was two hours late for work, and spent most of the morning sleeping in the bed of my pickup truck. It would be a while before I drank again.

I got drunk a few more times, usually at parties when I didn’t have to go home. (I had the pickup with a canopy on the back, so I always had a crash pad.) But I’d drink small amounts whenever I could. A beer here, a glass of wine there. Everyone was doing it…

I got married, and my ex was an alcoholic as well. I’d try to keep up with her, and for a while I blamed her for ‘hooking’ me. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve come to realize I’d have become an alcoholic anyway. I liked it too much.

I’d get drunk, and follow the Jim Morrison school of thought. “I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer…” A couple of sixteen-ounce Rainiers made the world a wonderful place, especially if I smoked a joint with it. After a while I became dysfunctional, so I’d skip the joint and eat four or five crosstops. Nothing like beer and amphetamines to get a body up for work!

My first detox came at age twenty-one. I thought I had pneumonia. It took three weeks to feel better. As soon as I felt better, I was off to the park with a doobie and a couple of motor oil cans of Fosters Lager.

My twenties were knockabout times. I knew I was wandering into dangerous territory, drinking all the time. I was sure I could quit if I wanted to, but I sure as hell didn’t want to. I was never lonely when I had a beer, and it made music sound so much better!

After a six-month homeless stretch in my late twenties, I got a job and could afford to drink full time. I’d get a hearty buzz on each night after work, and have a forty for breakfast each day. When off-work, I’d be drunk three hours into the day. It’s what I do.

This went on for most of the ’90s. My health was going, I was fat beyond belief, and had started using crystal meth to make it through the work week. I got away from that, and quit smoking cigarettes, but I was never without a beer, even at work. I can kill a sixteen ounce can of Olde English 800 in about thirty seconds. (And that includes the mouth rinse and application of the mints. Two swallows, one burp.)

That got to be cumbersome, so I carried a flask of gin as well. (It went well with Altoids.) Between work and after work, I was drinking a fifth a day, along with about ten beers. Had to save two for breakfast, you know.

I thought of the guys who had to tie a necktie around their wrist, run the tie over the back of their neck and work it pulley-style, so the shot would make it to their lips, first thing in the morning. The shakes are a bitch.

Eventually I got them. If I went more than about four hours, my fragile world would begin to shatter. I hated doing things when people would watch my hands; I was way too young to be having that Parkinson’s…

Then came the hallucinations. This shit would have been fun if it hadn’t been so scary. I’ve done psychedelics and enjoyed them, but this was not a fun trip. I’d be laying in bed, eyes squeezed shut, yet could still see the room. Spiders, crabs, alien beings, would fly in my face and run up my legs across my chest. The rushes of panic, the sweating, the urge to scream. After a while, even the booze wouldn’t chase the demons away.

My friends had thinned out too. I was a bit too extreme for most of them.

Another drawback? It was a lot of work keeping up with my buzz. Keeping the necessary amounts in stock was a part-time job, and as time passed, I stopped feeling the buzz. It would take two quarts of malt liquor just to feel ‘right’. It was like training a wolf with meatballs. NEVER run out of meatballs…

Eventually, it became clear to me I had to quit altogether. (My friends and family had known for years, but I wouldn’t listen.) It sucked at first, it was like my best friend had died. But after a few weeks, something strange happened. My brain started working again. I felt good. (How’d that happen?) As time passed, I became proud of my new sober self. I didn’t feel like I was missing out.

It helped the creative factor as well. The notion that all writers have to be drunks is ludicrous. After a couple of beers, I can barely type a legible sentence. And those hilarious thoughts that made me burst into laughter in the middle of the night? After reading them in the morning, I can only shake my head and wonder what the fuck I was thinking.

Do I have regrets? Some. I’m glad I did it, and glad I got over it. (Sort of. You never get over it.) I regret that I can’t walk into a bar, have one drink and go home. I’m going to miss sitting on the front porch with a can of beer on a hot summer night when I’m an old fart. I miss sneaking a bottle of vodka into a double feature, and being barely mobile on the way out. I miss taking my date to the tallest bar in town for a couple nightcaps before going home.

Some facts-

You never lose your tolerance. It still takes an assload of liquor to get me to where I want to be. My last drunk, over the course of a long weekend, involved two bottles of whiskey, four bottles of gin and a case of pale ale. And that’s just what I had at home and in transit. I had a few drinks in bars too.

What did I get out of it? Domestic turmoil. Long hard looks at work from my bosses, who knew something was wrong. Guilt for not being as strong as I should be. But the most sobering, scary thing?

The chest pains. The kind they warn you about. I prayed they would go away, and they did. But not before I had a good scare. Spending all my money so I can feel like shit and then die was getting less appealing all the time.

But I have the memories, and I will share them. I don’t want to glorify alcohol and drug use (and abuse) but truth be told, I had some damn fun times under the influence. Would I have had as much fun without it? Maybe, maybe not. These days, reality is way more of a trip than the chemically imposed illusions induced by poisons.

I could give the usual “Drugs are bad, mmmkay?” lecture, but would anyone listen? I didn’t. What pisses me off these days? The fact that alcohol and tobacco are legal, and addictive and WILL FUCKING KILL YOU! The government makes big money watching you die. Yet they still jail people for marijuana. I guess they can’t count on the income, because it isn’t addictive enough…

My advice to today’s youth? Learn a little about reality before you start bending it. With booze, that buzz you’re feeling are your brain cells dying. Pot makes the world cartoony, but it will stunt your emotional growth if you start too early. I know eighteen seems a long way off, but please wait that long if you must do it. It’ll be worth the wait.

Especially if you have a few brain cells left to expand…