by Edward Hall

Created on: May 06, 2008

I am a lapsed drunk. That is kinda like being a lapsed Catholic without the guilt. How did I become a drunk, well it took some work but I had a head start. My Daddy was a drunk, so was his Daddy. Mom? You guessed it, another drunk; so were two of my Uncles and my maternal Grandfather. Nothing like good genetics to give you a leg up.

How did I get started on my avocation of trying to pickle my liver? How else, one drink at a time. Early on I noted that I had a propensity to try to drink the back bar dry on those rare times I binged but it did not concern me, I only partied every once in a while so why not let her rip. As I always say, "It ain't worth going if it ain't worth going over the top."

So I lived almost fifty years with no signs of the drunk inside me until I ran out of reasons not to be. I had decided late in life to mark "Paid" my obligations to society and others and go explore my Bohemian side. I wrote poetry, started a couple novels I still swear I'll finish, played good songs badly and sang better lyrics worse. Oh yes I discovered the curative power of beer.

"Hops does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man." I keep wanting to attribute that quote to Samuel Johnson but I am pretty certain it was not his. One of his contemporaries maybe. In my mind, at this stage in my walk I figured God had some 'splainin' to do. Since She was not talking I decided to use the formula represented in the quote above.

So I became the life of the party, then I became the life after the party, then I tried being the life before the party and finally, I had no life at all that wasn't wrapped around a sixteen ounce Ice House. Where'd the party go?

So, after investing too much time, effort and money in becoming a drunk, I decided to quit. Then I failed. A few months later I decided to quit again. Yep, failed again. Then I decided to try AA, it works for other people. Failed again. There were a few more times trying with and without help.

One day I woke up and, a couple hours later over my second beer of the morning, I decided deep inside that, "You know what? I am a drunk". This time I meant it. I was a Drunk in all its ramifications. Drinking was my life. Everything else; food, work, sex, love and life in general were also ran's to alcohol. There was no peace in my life that did not come in liquid form.

That percolated in my life for a couple weeks. It is one thing to drink too much, another to say you drink to much and a totally different thing to admit to yourself

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