verging_on_random

The demon drink

November 11, 2007 on 9:42 pm | In Uncategorized |

The whole Ben Cousins thing got me thinking about drugs and alcohol. I have to say my thoughts about booze are ambivalent … and what’s more I can see a lot of arguments for and against.

I grew up in the era before there were even breathalysers, let alone RBTs. Those were the days when people drove long distances and drank a great deal and then drove home again. The law, quaint as it seems now, prescribed that nobody could get a drink on a Sunday unless they’d travelled more than 30 (if my memory serves me right) miles … so thousands of us used to hop in our cars and drive to Wiseman’s Ferry and the Blue Mountains and Gosford just so we could sign the book saying we’d driven more than 30 miles, and then we’d drink piss all afternoon and drive home shit-faced. A normal Saturday night after cricket or football involved driving to a pub and drinking lots of beers followed by driving to a party and drinking lots more beers and then driving … well you get the idea. Once I drove with a mate from Killara to Terrigal about midnight Saturday to check out a rumoured party, and when we couldn’t find it we turned around and drove back. He went to sleep, the bastard, leaving me alone with the esky.

They were the days when people made jokes like “I had to drive, I was too drunk to walk” and it was a mark of distinction to have a story about doing something witless while blind drunk. My best effort was driving straight into a street sign in Manly after a solid day on the grog. The sign, which in those days was a hefty timber arrangement, bounced up under the Austin A40 I was driving and bent the gear linkages, so I only had 2nd and 4th. I still drove home to Normanhurst though … and my passengers thought it was hilarious.

It’s really no wonder the road toll has declined so dramatically since the 1970s.

For many years it was routine for me to get somewhere between tippy and off-my-face at least three times a week. I cringe now at the memory of some of the things I did when I was pissed. I was enormously lucky not to end up either badly hurt or with a criminal record or both; equally lucky not to hurt somebody else … and I know quite a few blokes of my vintage who weren’t so lucky.

And yet … and yet … it’s not like alcohol is all bad. I’m not generally a sociable person and there have been many many occasions which have only been made vaguely tolerable for me because people are drinking. After a few drinks I become a much more likeable person, and that’s not just a figment of my imagination because I know a lot of other people whose conversation is stilted and uninteresting until they’ve had a few, after which they get to be quite entertaining and enjoyable company. I think the value of a social lubricant as effective as this can’t just be disregarded, especially when we spend so much of our time in the wholly unnatural act of having to make pleasant conversation with strangers.

Moreover, there’s a positive side to the risk-taking that alcohol encourages. Sure it’s made me do some things that even now make me flush with embarrassment but it also gave me the courage to do a few things that paid off big time … things I never would have done sober.

Grog also helps me engage in contemplative thinking. I can still remember vividly the circumstances in which I took two of the biggest decisions of my life: both were made in an extended session of solitary drinking. Not paralytic-drunk drinking, just the drinking that brings insight and establishes priorities and provides sudden grateful clarity. It’s a mental condition that from my reading is also associated with some of the hallucinogenic drugs and it makes it easy to understand why they are so attractive.

These days I rarely drink much, although that’s an elastic term I suppose. Put it this way … I’d be happy to hop in the car and face a breathalyser just about any night of the week. Partly it’s because there are few occasions for me to drink much now and partly it’s for health reasons. My body I think appreciates the respite … I’m not so sure about my mind. While it’s true that I find it easier now to do a few hours work after dinner without falling asleep, I don’t believe I’m as creative as I used to be. Or to put it another way, my academic writing has probably improved but my creative writing lacks the spark of old.

All of which means that I am loath to find fault with anyone who uses drugs of any description. Except cigarettes. That’s just retarded.