Getting drunk is fun – great fun. I love getting drunk. It's the being drunk part that's the bitch. Love the wedding. Hate the marriage.
Being
drunk is like night swimming covered in a blanket while your thoughts come to
you as if shouted into a distant PA system from who sounds like a Croatian
rapper reading an biographical entry about your life from Wankerpedia and trying to make a case for another trip to the
ATM.
I quit drinking about 9 months ago. Being
sober changes people. And like all newly sober people I’m desperately trying to
make sobriety a thing. Sadly it’s not a thing. It is, in fact, an absence of a
thing. If you look at modern life like a pool table it sometimes feels like
removing booze and its cohorts is a little like removing the white ball. The
instigator has been taken off the table and slipped into a football sock and is
now being used to batter the intestines out of my ability to socialize and withstand the socialization of others.
I’m not an 'alcoholic' but I quit drinking.
Or is that, I stopped drinking? Quitting drinking without being an alcoholic?
That’s not really anything. They say that alcoholics need to hit rock bottom before
they quit. In
lots of ways becoming sober was something new to do. So maybe my rock bottom was
boredom. You ever hear yourself talking and think, “Shut the fuck up!” I think that’s
boredom. And if that’s boredom then I did hit rock bottom. I hit it harder than
Charles Saatchi hits choco-covered TV chefs with fat arses.
Being drunk isn’t an excuse for acting like
a twat – but it is the reason you act like a twat. There needs to be an app developed that
measures blood alcohol – not to warn you away from being a twat – Siri could
lose her sexy robotic voice trying to tell a drunk chieften not to put his credit
card details into a gay webcam site (just to see what it’s like) or the key
into that golf cart. The app is for the aftermath not so you can make an excuse but so you can show the judge /
your wife the reason why you’ve woken
up on the couch with Black Bangers III looping in the DVD player and your sperm splattered
belly looking like an un-sold Jackson Pollack. The reason
you can’t go back to that pub with the burned down beer garden and the reason your workmates now know you're a fucking racist. Email the
result to a spouse or authority figure pre chat and lay the ground work for the
conversation. Give some context for why, today, you are the ruler of Kunt Kingdom. Why today your are the Emperor of Prickville.
Part of me thinks maybe I played this card
a little too early though. “I’ll quit drinking” is a great one time get out of
jail free card to play. Do something that can’t be fixed and play the “I have a
problem with alcohol / drugs. I need help. I’ll quit.” Boom! All that AIDSy
luggage is dumped into a little dinghy and set adrift. Unceremoniously kicked
into the mist by a sobbing loved one - and there you are reborn. Admonished of
all your sins like a big sulky baby with milky titty breath. You didn’t do it –
the booze did. You’re golden.
Until you’re not…
Being sober has made me desperately uncool.
All my pretentions of being one of London’s hip middle-aged crowd with
interesting media contacts and touches of grey on my temples letting Groucho
lunches turn into whiskey stoked 'content' deals are now dashed on the rocks like a big
glug of gin and a roughly sliced lemon. That’s what sobriety does to you. It
makes you unhip. Self imposed – but the opposite of hip. A nerd. At best I now
come across like one of those ‘cool’ Christians. The ones who swear. The one's who 'get it'. The ones
who wear GStar jeans tucked into their boots and whose crucifixes are worn on
choker length chains and look more like the X-Games logo than the ancient
torture device that normal Christians politely wear to give us all an early
warning as to the pointlessness of the human wearing it. The ones that wait
until marriage to have vagina sex but have nailed more arseholes than a San
Quentin lifer named Big ‘Killer’ Tank. One of those ‘cool’ Christians. Like that
one who wanted that African warlord Kony to be president and then had so much
of God’s love inside him he felt the need to wank it out all over the bonnet of
a Honda civic in front of news cameras. They might have a tattoo of some psalm
on their ribs and a £110.00 haircut -
they might even keep quiet about their weird, insane beliefs and they might
even have an inkling that their stone aged moral code is pointless kids stories
but they’re hedging against hell and it helps to have some thick black lines inked
on the paper to colour inside of – some rules from God to follow to save them
having to have a thought in their bread filed heads - and one of those rules
seems to be – Though shalt not get all mashed… (Maybe best for those people
lest they actually say what they think.) And now, for all intents and purposes,
like one of those lame 'happy' people.
My stories now are about what happened in
life not what I made happen in life.
“Hey guys. Guys. O Mi God! I saw the
funniest shape banana today! It looked like a banana but funny shaped!”
Or they’re an opinion. Just what the
world needs ANOTHER OPINION!
“Yeah.
I saw the most powerful movie the other day. Iranian cinema has come a long way
considering story telling is the domain of a secularist society in this day and
age don’t you think? Guys? Guys?”
Look at your crappy little life. It’s
probably like the prick at the next desks is. Basically the same every day. Just a series of ginger headed Mondays and re-run Wednesdays. Choosing between Pret or EAT for your lunch isn’t free will. Deciding
whether or not to watch X-Factor this year or not isn’t rebelling (Okay I’ll
just watch the auditions but I’m not getting sucked into this year. Not after
1D came second!). That’s where booze comes in. It’s the randomizer button. You drink
the little potion and the needle skips across the record. Adventures happen.
You are young! You have available funds! Your dick will get wet. You will make
new friends and shed those old friends like a snakeskin of Borat catch phrases.
You are an adventurer!
Until you’re not.
Then you’re older and the adventure becomes the same adventure over and over only slightly different. Like a cheap, rushed out, straight to DVD sequel…
Then you’re older and the adventure becomes the same adventure over and over only slightly different. Like a cheap, rushed out, straight to DVD sequel…
CUE INDIANA JONES THEME SONG:
Di da
ni neer – di na neer. Di da ni neer – di na naa neeeer!
INTERIOR
LONDON PUB DAY
Indiana Jones and two of his mates sit and
sip their first pint.
INDY:
Remember
that time when…
JUMP CUT
INTERIOR
LONDON PUB 22 MINUTES LATER
There are now six empty pint glasses on the
table. The friends have had exactly two pints each.
INDY:
Shall
we… Call a guy?
JUMP CUT
INTERIOR
EAST LONDON FLAT 6:30am
The same three friends are sitting round a
coffee table joined by a dead eyed wastrel of a woman and her (maybe) boyfriend
and some guy no one knows the name of. Lines of ‘cocaine’ are cut out on a
chipped dinner plate.
INDY:
And
that’s when I realized. Maybe I’m too good at my job.
Maybe
that’s what it is. And you know the government is controlled
By
big oil – always has been. And we should all totally go and see that thing at
the TATE tomorrow. You know just really get back to basics eat right and get
fit. You know? She never really got me, man – we never clicked. His earlier
stuff was so much better than the shit he’s pumping out now, you know.
(Breath)
Does
anyone have a guy that will still deliver?
These are the adventures you no longer find
yourself having when you are sober. Neither do you find yourself atop
scaffolding pissing on a steeple or fingering a goth chick dressed in black in the back of a
black cab to the tunes of Black Sabbath. It’s because when you’re sober a part
of your anatomy atrophies and disappears” Your Fuckit gland becomes wizened and
lifeless like the legs of a paraplegic. And you just stare at it useless and
ugly but unlike a paraglegic your view isn’t even made prettier by a pair of
(forever) box fresh sneakers at the bottom of the broken match sticks – your Fuckit gland just looks pathetic. My Fuckit gland used to pump blood and lava and Thor spit and I used to run the streets with the other young people holding
kebabs to the sky playing roulette with our genitals and singing from the song book
of the very, very drunk.
Fuck it. Fuck it Fuuuuuuu-uuuuuuuuckkkkk
iiiiiii-iiiii-tttt!
(Sung to the tune of ‘One Nil’)
But now I’m sober. I listen to the songs
and judge the singers. I’m (of course) now a hypocrite. It’s an inevitability
that comes with sobriety. When one turns in ones jaunty-drinking-hat and is
given a sober-safety-helmet one becomes the most insufferable cock sucker on
the planet. Is there a human trait worse than hypocrisy? Hate is honest at
least. Hypocrisy is confusing to witness. It’s plain ugly – surely uglier than
an angry drunk confused by the movement, neon and the intentions of those around her and definitely
uglier than a hangover. But that’s what it is. That’s what I is. A sober look
at life that now can’t be avoided and without the beer goggles the bitch is sometimes plain ugly.
But. But. It doesn’t matter does it? Drunk. Sober. It’s all just a long, long,
looooooooong shoeless walk.
Is it better being sober than being drunk? Depends who you ask. Ask me - the privileged soft-bellied toddler with a bank balance and the a world of diamond-dusted stuff in his view - and I'll say yes - it's at least something to fucking do. That's the irony of this life of infinite possibility and instant this and on-demand that. At least for this giant fuck-ape, the ability to do anything got boring (boo humping hoo) and the only thing that could save me from the being a 20p coin stuck in a tumble drier was the option of doing nothing.
I've been drunk since I was 16-years-old. I guess boredom introduced me to the bottle as a teenager and pushed me away from it as an ‘adult’.
Hiccup.