I miss alcohol for the same reason you’d miss any old friend: a way to spend the time between meetings. My favourite mixture was a White Russian, except with more vodka. I’d fill a whole Yeti® and savour the cafe I’d make up in my mind where it melds all around you.
The second best was a ginger ale with a generous patch of whiskey. Holding some honey notes even though the fizz blocks out any tastes at all. Helps sedate the ulcers when they do start piling up. They pile up with enough persistence and entitlement; to think it’s okay sporting a permanent buzz since everything else was a bother.
Waking up at 5 p.m. is sublime to those who never got off the holy decree you had to be up in the morning. Well, eventually you reach a point where you have nothing to be up for. Bottle of morning petitions Thoreau; I’ll have my bottle of evenings and living as a discarded being. You don’t have to integrate your shadow Jung, just become it instead. Become anything you want with enough indifference.
Is the troubled soul more interesting sporting some drugs? Lighting yourself up since sobriety is too much. Maybe there’s not enough for the straight-lace anti-hero existence. It takes a heavy dose of indifference.
It’s easy to be straight-laced nowadays. Instead of alcohol I have indexed files filled with a bitrot sugar. Making buggy eyes, making some nonsense to do nothing with.
There’s a departure unique to this time. It’s the one where you realize you accidentally became the virtual being. When you’re a virtual being, you no longer have any obligation nor upkeep. Let all your teeth fall out and waddle through piles of takeout – wear the same clothes a fortnight and more.
The more you dig the well so the more you’ll have to climb if you ever do. Triple chins aren’t the most comforting thing to see in the mirror before another meeting. It’s easier to axe all the meetings instead.
The trouble is, when you get bored of all the virtual things a virtual being can play in, then you become the non-being. To be a non-entity. Not for consideration, nor for any dignity: nothing left in its twitching.
You can convince yourself that you’re somehow sticking it to the world. That it’s all bullshit of course. Yet even when you’re right you still are the non-entity.
I miss liqueur for the same reason you miss going out: you could at least kid yourself you’re a part of something and you’re taking a break from it. By ditching booze one may ditch everything else too.
You don’t need coping mechanisms when you filter out all the stressors.