zenexistence

Today's one of those blogs that isn't funny, isn't cute and isn't light-hearted, so I'll just apologize in advance. When I came back to SG after an absence of many years I realized why I like blogging here is because I know next to no one so it frees me up to address things that I wouldn't air on other more public blogs. With that said, buckle up.

I used to have a drinking problem; I like beer.
That's Point One.
If anyone here knows me (and, as stated prior, most of you don't, soooo) I'm a huge cyclist. I ride everywhere. I had, at my pinnacle of culmination, about a dozen bikes.
So, you can say I used to have a bike problem, too.
This is Point Two.
Now lets combine drinking copious amount of beer and riding a two-wheeled vehicle. Odds are that this will result in grievous bodily injury at one point or another. Chances are also great that said grievous injury may result in more than a singular occurrence.
I'm proof positive of such occurrences.
My list reads like a bad ER episode; broken toe, broken thumb, a fuckton multitude of abrasions/contusions/lacerations/punctures/concussions (one resulting in brain damage combined with short-term memory loss) and twice getting hit by a car. What this list does not include is the mental injuries caused to friends and acquaintances that this drinking did. Nothing major on average, as I'm typically a funny, silly drunk but every year or so I seemed to become that asshole drunk that we all know and hate. Said Asshole Drunk reared its ugly head one night and I lost a friend due to the insensitive and shitty things I said during an argument.
I woke up after this argument and said to myself, "Self, you're kind of a retard. You're killing yourself a little bit at a time and you don't even realize it. You're also wasting time just spinning your wheels (to which I probably giggled pathetically at my own punny inner dialogue because I do that often) doing nothing of consequence. And, most of all, you're hurting your friends because of your own selfish vices and lack of self-control."
So I quit.
Cold turkey.
And remained that way for a year and a half.
Around August I decided to test the waters and have a drink again. All in all it's gone pretty well, I can go and have a single beer and be content sipping on that one drink. But what I forgot is how hard it is to do a single drink when you're in the company of other drinkers.
And Friday I was in the company of other drinkers.
Namely my brother.
We had two pints.
Two.
Then I went home, loaded up my truck for polo and then picked up a friend.
She and I had one pint.
That would be three pints in five hours.
I don't remember arriving at polo, I don't remember playing polo (oh, but I did as I have a bruise the size of Bolivia on my left butt cheek and a jacked up right ankle). Apparently I got in my truck at some point while polo was still going on and just drove away. No goodbyes, no farewells. I vaguely remember this part. What I do vividly remember is stopping to get fast food (I rarely ever eat such crap) on the way home and then "driving" home. This "drive" consisted of literally closing an eye at one point because I couldn't make things out clear enough with both eyes open.

What.the.fuck.

I am embarrassed and so completely disappointed in myself. To have gaps in my memory? To have driven home like a drunken asshole? What if I hit someone?
I thought I could handle my beer, I thought after this amount of time I'd grown up and could drink responsibly. I didn't eat anything but a salad for lunch and while that may have played a part in how significantly I was affected, my common sense should have dictated that I felt too inebriated after that second drink to even have another one, even if it was two hours later.
To have to recollect my night by checking my text history in my phone?
I'm kinda disgusted with myself.

I locked myself in my room yesterday, didn't leave, barely communicated and, effectively, just sat there and brooded.
The only answer that kept coming to me was that I'll just go back to not drinking again.
But even that answer makes me feel like an asshole in the sense that I failed.
I failed to control the way I drink.
"So you weren't strong enough, just quit."
It seems like the easy way out.
And for me it is, too. Looking back, it was easy for me to quit drinking. Always saying no to a situation is easy, it's as easy as always saying yes. I operate in a very black and white spectrum; all in or none in. The hardest path to walk, I find, is having the wherewithal and discipline to make a choice based on logic and self-control and follow that path from a moderation standpoint.
And that's why I'm upset, because apparently I couldn't do that.



I'll get over this in a day or two and realize there was "no harm, no foul" but it's bothersome.

If I had a pet otter I wouldn't have to worry about any of this because otters, as we all know, only drink Cafe Americanas.
And tea.
And apparently work on two- part harmonies to Pete Gabriel's song Sledgehammer while lying on their backs in a stream, as is illustrated below:




Love,
Scotty