Decisions, Decisions

There are many reasons to drink, and “just because you can” ranks highly amongst them.  There will, however, always be consequences arising from having that drink, and although most of the time we dive in headlong and heedless (and quite rightly so), the fact that there will be consequences can be harnessed, by the experienced drinker, to suit his own ends.

More specifically, having that drink may clarify what it is that he wants, and make the actions which would make whatever it is come to pass more likely to happen.  In other words, drinking facilitates the making of what, to the sober self, may appear to be bad decisions, and in general I have found that one should always defer decisions until one is not in a fit state to make them.

Now, in positing a distinction between drunken and sober selves, I should make clear that I am not speaking of that massive change in personality indicative of a problematic relationship with the gods of grape and grain.  Rather, I am merely drawing attention to the fact that the drunken and sober selves see the world, and the self within that world, in very different ways.  The drunken self tends to see things more clearly, and certainly more intensely than the sober, and is less likely, perhaps less able, to foresee complications.  It is a world where between the conception and the action, the desire and its resolution, no shadow falls.  Or at least, not a very big one.

Many times I have woken, broken in the morning and desperately hungover, and found notes I have left for myself about what is to be done that day.  These are directions from the drunken self to the (nearly) sober, aware of the problems it will be facing at time of reading, and doing its best to help from its vantage point of clarity.  (That is the respect my drunken self shows to my sober self: it suggests, it advises, and on occasion it cajoles, but it doesn’t commit.  And since to “call her” would be such a phenomenally bad idea that even my drunken self has its reservations, it is a respect for which I am grateful.)

The sober self, however sensible it may perceive itself as, is not a fool.  It is aware of the nagging desires that assail the human soul, but has the advantage over most in that it knows it has a (fairly) reliable handmaiden with which to realise them should their nagging become too much to bear.

For instance, when money is tight (and for the drinking man, money almost always is), but you really want that bottle of expensive rum, a few pints in the pub (which you will justify as a legitimate pit stop on your meanderings about town) will break down the resistance between you and it.  You may wake the next morning anxious and regretting the money spent, but you will be aware that when evening comes and you have your philosophical nightcap, that that bottle, and the pause for thought it enables, will make you happy in a way that the mere presence of money – or more accurately, the absence of quite such a degree of debt – never can.

Even the agonised process of writing, hampered as it is by the strictures of hangovers and the inertia of sobriety, can be facilitated by strong drink.  The trickle, the slow drip of words can be transformed into a mighty torrent, a process I am watching happen now, as I write, a couple of pints down in the hushed stillness of an afternoon pub.  It is, it must be admitted, a torrent often in need of a good editor [Editor’s note: in dire need], but that is a service the sober self is happy to perform, out of gratitude if nothing else.

Alcohol is the medium through which two ways of being can reach each other, through which the cold world of reality and received wisdom, and the world of the heart’s desires, can mingle and mix.

Right.  I’m off to buy an expensive bottle of rum now, and maybe, who knows, I might just call that girl.  Cin-cin.