Booze never fails puts me
in a good mood, and I often marvel
at its capacity to do so. Walking
into a pub and carrying with me all the petty annoyances of the day, it still
strikes me with epiphanic force when, usually about half way down my third
pint, a transformation occurs. The
miserable git who was sitting there a moment ago has disappeared, and in his
place is a cheery soul, propping up the bar with a grin on his face. This, it seems to me, is an innate
property of drink, its capacity to induce merriment and release the good mood
lurking beneath the foetid crust of quotidian concerns.
It’s a noble state of
mind, and one I’m always happy to be in.
But there are times when it’s not enough. There are times when the pressures of life have built up to
such an extent that you really need to cut loose; and to enter the realm of
unfettered euphoric Bacchanalia, there are other contingencies which need to be
addressed.
First amongst these is,
inevitably, money. Bar-propping is
an expensive business at the best of times, but to allow yourself off the leash
you must be able to forget entirely the financial consequences. The need to count pennies is a force
that runs counter to the full expression of the euphoria you are hoping to
achieve (and in fact, runs counter to most that is good in the human spirit),
and will always undermine it.
Second is time, and for
very similar reasons. If you have
to worry about getting up for work tomorrow, or even worry about calling in
sick, then you’ll be hard pressed to really embrace the course of therapy upon
which you have embarked, and following the evening through its labyrinthine
twists and turns, often into the next day and often into the day after that,
becomes deeply problematic.
Finally, and perhaps most
importantly, it’s the company you keep whilst on your merry way. It may come as a surprise, but there
are certain circles, certain pubs even, where drunkenness is frowned upon. This is not where you want to be. If you cannot fully commit to the course
you have chosen from the very beginning, then you may as well go home. If you are, tacitly or otherwise, on
the defensive, amongst people for whom drinking is a polite pass-time rather
than the highest expression of the human spirit (civilisation begins with
fermentation, after all – beer, wine, and bread*), then the essential
gregariousness inherent to the project is opposed, its freedom crushed by the
weight of staid disapproval.
It should be remembered,
however, that this is a spiritual quest, and not a case of mere mechanics. Like Eckhart’s dark night, the ground
may be prepared, but the Spirit may yet choose not to descend. That said, when I found myself on the
receiving end of a small piece of financial good fortune, it was only ever
going to end one way. A trip to
the city was what was needed, and an unfettered, euphoric, three-day
Bacchanalian binge.
And that was exactly what
I got. Off the leash and in good
company, chasing through old pubs and new, feeling the sense of liberation that
only undiluted alcoholic folly can bring.
A return to the fold, touching upon the divine.
All good things must come
to an end (or so we are led to believe), and now I find myself back in the town
of my self-imposed exile. Having
reconnected fully with my inner Dionysus, inevitably it is screaming at me to
keep the party going. But for all
the reasons outlined above, I cannot.
I must betray the god within, quiet him until the next opportunity
presents itself. This saddens me,
but at least I’ve enough money left to pop to the pub. It will all seem a lot better after a
pint or three. It’s a noble state
of mind, cin-cin.
*What Faulkner actually
said was, “civilization begins with distillation,” and there is a good case to
be made; for myself, however, I prefer this amendment, pointing as it does to
the moment we as a species raised ourselves above brute survival.
