Actually I think I've talked about this some, haven't I? But I was thinking about it Saturday and then never wrote anything Saturday. (Shame on me.) Now it's Sunday evening, and I thought I'd knock this out quickly before turning in.
There are actually things I don't like about drinking. I don't like that it makes me stupid. (This is a pretty common complaint, I suspect.) I don't like the woozy feeling when I try to walk, if I've really had a lot. Also, if I drink when I'm tired it keeps me awake longer – and the more I drink, the more of a stimulant it is. One glass of wine or beer will relax me; two will probably make me sleepy. But much more than that and it starts working in the opposite direction. And from time to time – a decade ago, when I drank far more than I do now – I used to have the terrifying experience of going to bed completely snockered and waking up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. Literally. I'd try to move my lungs and nothing would happen. I finally learned in those cases to roll over so I was no longer on my back – even to stand up, if I could – and make myself cough. When I coughed, I would start to breathe again. And I suppose it probably never lasted more than a few seconds. (How long can a person go without breathing before brain damage sets in?) But those few seconds were always very frightening. That hasn't happened in many years. The experience (and my figuring out that it was connected to overdoing the alcohol) was, in fact, one of the things that motivated me to cut way back. Well, ... that and the time eight or ten years ago that Wife asked the boys, in all puzzlement, "Why is the teriyaki sauce in the freezer?" and I suddenly remembered that I had been cleaning up the night before after everyone else had gone to bed and the freezer had seemed like an eminently logical place to put a big jar of teriyaki sauce. Yeah, actually that too was another sign it was time to cut back.
After hearing stories like these you might logically expect me to have cut out all alcohol permanently; but I haven't. Why not? Well, there are things I enjoy about it too. I enjoy the astringency of alcohol on my tongue and in my mouth. (I almost never touch mixed drinks or sweet drinks – nothing sweeter than wine or cider or brandy – and these days I generally don't even put ice or water in my spirits. So the astringency of the alcohol is something I can feel clearly.) I enjoy the warm glow in my throat as it goes down. And it eases a residual level of anxiety that is otherwise often with me.
I can't tell you what this anxiety is caused by, but I have learned other things about it over the years. It is not equally strong all the time. It tends to be stronger at night, when I go back to my apartment alone. (But sometimes being alone in my apartment is a relief from social anxiety if I've been too much out among people, so it's not just that.) It tends to be stronger if I have to go to work the next day. It spikes if I have to spend time around Wife or my father. Alcohol isn't the only thing that can mask it: so will food (though more fleetingly and not so thoroughly), so will reading (hence my tendency to pull down a book from my shelves and get lost in it ... "farting around" I believe I called it a couple days ago), and so will absorption in a task. Interestingly, the act of typing one of these blog posts is often absorbing enough to make me forget all about the anxiety while I am doing it (or almost all) ... but the plan or prospect of writing such a post, the very thought of it, makes the anxiety spike briefly and suddenly.
Where does this anxiety manifest? This is a question that my meditation teachers have said one should ask about any unpleasant emotion: where in the body is it, how large is it, is it warm or cold, and so on. The idea is to become deeply aware of your feelings, so that in time you can understand where they come from and no longer be mastered by them. Well, I feel the effects of the anxiety in the normal places you would expect: mostly as a constriction in my throat and another around my heart. But it radiates originally from an isolated pinpoint inside my skull. I can even tell you where. On each side of my head, start at the tops of my ears and move straight up half an inch or an inch. Draw a line through my skull connecting those two points. Then halfway across that line is the precise spot that the anxiety emanates from: in the exact middle measuring from left to right, in the back if you measure front to back, and in the upper half as opposed to the lower. Upper middle back of the skull. That's the place. And some time after I start to drink, after the warm glow in my throat begins to dissipate, I feel that spot get warm. Another drink or two and it feels quite free. And only then do I realize how much anxiety I have been carrying around and not noticing it, because only then do I set it down.
Probably if I got deeply enough into meditation practice I could figure out what causes this feeling. Deeper still, and I could probably melt the spot without alcohol or food or distraction. Thich Nhat Hanh's Fifth Mindfulness Training specifically counsels against losing yourself in consumption – of booze, drugs, or food, but he also includes shopping, entertainment, and the Internet as "drugs" that can be just as addictive as the more strictly pharmaceutical kind. He counsels doing exactly what I've said here: figure out what it is you are trying to escape from, and then figure out how to escape from it without using any of those things. I assume it's possible, because I hear people talk that way.
But I'n not that advanced. So in the meantime, I still drink. I watch how much I'm having, to make sure I put it down before I start doing stupid things. I don't drink if I'm anywhere that there might be unpredictable things happening that I'll have to deal with. I have learned to be scrupulously careful about things like that, so that it doesn't become a problem for me. Never again do I want to wake up not breathing – never, never, never.
I read somewhere a few years ago that moderate drinkers live longer than teetotalers, and so do even heavy drinkers – even after you factor in all the health problems that come from heavy drinking. So if I wanted to be funny I could claim it's all for my health. But then I remember a scene from the movie "The Big Chill" where one character claims: "Rationalizations are more important than sex. Have you ever tried to go a week without a rationalization?"
There are probably areas in my life where I delude myself by accident. I don't want to do it on purpose.
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