The Last Time.

I don’t want to have a beer for breakfast. But after a long day of running around, it feels relaxing to have a few. Like three, for example. That’s how my previous drinking moderation kept itself motivated, at least until late June, when I decided I’d stop for a bit. I called in sick on a Friday after drinking on Thursday night. I had consumed a mere three beers. Okay, perhaps it was four. Perhaps they were also 20oz German monsters of hoppy enormity. Sure. Fact was that I drank them faster than I should have, and was wobbly the next morning, when, after almost vomiting into my breakfast, decided to make that call. Or, as history might have it, that email.

The sick day is a bit of a flexible concept, one that might accompany a vacation, or a mental health need, or perhaps, a stroke of spontaneity to leave town and break the drab routine of everyday existence. Certainly it provides an avenue for escape from all that is not desired. The only issue remaining is that, as a sick day taker, you may always choose to break down and go to work should your conscious catch up to the level of guilt you may or may not experience when forsaking some modicum of responsibility like work. I couldn’t go to the office that Friday, no matter what I wanted, and that spurred some minor to medium-level guilt, I’ll admit. Not because I love my job, but instead because it was again time to admit that didn’t control myself.

Control is also a flexible concept though, one that seems regimented and fully applicable upon the first whisks of intention that occur at the electrical-neural level. The three beer idea being within the controllable realm, one that posits greater levels of control for the beer drinker overall, which provides some comfort, and the ability to enjoy the consumption process—i.e. not drink while simultaneously capitulating to the fiendish thought process that one must not, indeed, drink, which may cause further drinking in one sitting. More than, say, a moderate drinker who truly seems to drink slowly, not desire a second glass, and decide to stop drinking upon returning home. That moderate drinker may enjoy the one glass more than the problem drinker enjoys his/her three or four. Maybe.

On that day, the beer was so ultimately delicious in my head on the walk over that there was nothing to do but drink it by the time I arrived. I had gone on tasting the shit long enough. Might as well get the deed done. Somewhere around the third drink I did indeed lose my ability to feel guilty, and that, for a good forty minutes prior to hellishly hot subway ride, certainly felt like an accomplishment.