About three months ago, I left for Montana on a driving vacation, with no real destination in mind other than Glacier National Park, which I would up not even visiting. At the time, I hadn't had any real time off work for seven months, and was very tense and fatigued. I could have stayed home and bought a spa package, soaked in mud and applied cucumber slices to my eyes, but I needed to get out of my home/work/home routine, and put miles beneath me.
Typically, I try to avoid grand pronouncements, but I decided on the trip to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and all other intoxicants. Permanently. I was and am proud of my decision to refrain. This is a noble ambition, surely, but over the time in which I looked reality unblinkingly in the eye, I came to a realization: Absolute sobriety is miserable. In fact, I was even more stressed and anxious without drinking than I was when I was enjoying alcohol before my decision. My thoughts weren't any clearer, and I got no more accomplished than polishing furniture and tidying up my apartment like I had OCD.
My relationship with drugs/alcohol is and probably always will be fraught with guilt and uncertainty. From word one, I had it pounded into my head that: alcohol is poison and that a solitary drink can make you an alcoholic. This is a terrible way to live, in constant suspicion of those tonics that not only make life more tolerable, but have an endless capacity to enhance it. I remember my father saying 'you know, son, there's nothing wrong with having a few beers,' after another anti-alcohol sermon. He's right. Why can't I shake the guilt, and the fear that I'm going to have a Budweiser and wind up on the street? That I have to justify every. single. beer. I. drink. makes me more than a little angry, and in time, I hope this impulse fades.
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