So I guess it’s time to be honest. Time to clear out the ol’ chest as it were and share a thing. Time to verbally vomit one of my deepest and darkest to the world. I’ve admitted this to myself as I move on with my plan to GTFO, but haven’t really offered it to many aloud. Those who know me well have talked the walk with me, resulting in little personal action of the latter and a lot more of the prior. And those who frequent the bar where I work have had many laughs with me about said furtive affairs the morning after.

Dangerous / risky / problem drinking. On the spectrum, anyway – and leaning hard on the needle toward the end of it as I go.

Booze has been a big part of my life for most of it, if I’m honest. While I grew up in a home that didn’t partake, I wore out the Jack Mormon title pretty good as a teenager in my own consumption. But by the time I actually hit the drinking age of 21, I decided to stop altogether- which worked out just fine given I would see two pregnancies in the space of the next three years. 

It was another five or so years before I began drinking again, a choice born of – what else? – stress. At about the same time I rediscovered pot, which I began smoking vigorously daily. Between the two – as well as a few recreational drugs over the years, I don’t think I’ve been fully sober in two and half decades. 

And then there’s working at a bar. More than five years I’ve been slinging drinks at Maxwell’s, and indulging in them myself the very second my shift ends. By the grace of so many of the 80-90% regulars we have, I am offered bought-and-paid-for drinks by the numbers – a lovely perk of the job, if you will. This has served me well, and not so much so. When my work becomes the place I play? I play. Alot. And after a long shift of serving others, I’ll let one of my cohorts serve me. 

I’ll likely hitch a ride home from a regular because my car “got drunk”, I’ll probably fall down at some point, and I most assuredly will have no memory of the events. And if it’s one of my five bookkeeping shifts? I’ll work for two hours before punching out of there and doing the same as ever – drinking, drunk by 10 am and headed home to lose another afternoon to a three hour nap. Really?

Stories abound of the bartender having fun post work- and I show up with humility and a hangover to hear all about them the next day. This is not what I want. 

So. Truth is, this whole adventure of mine and Trixie’s was borne from booze. I was hammered when I concepted it, and was tired of being hammered. I can’t possibly expect that changing my environment is the only step I will need to take when it comes to reeling in my alcohol consumption. But I can say that it’s a really good first one. 

Homer’s wisdom aside, I’m on my way toward actualization of many things in my life at the moment. Drinking, though, I see as a pretty big deal to deal with. And in all the trying I’ve issued over the years, it’s time to start doing. Word.