I was thinking of this thread earlier today when I read
this article in The Times, asking whether as a recovering alcoholic, it's ever OK to drink again. It's been on my mind lately. Playing mental chess with myself again, I've started to occasionally harbour dangerous thoughts, along the lines of how I'm such a different person now after 8 years of sobriety, perhaps I actually could drink again. I've made such a virtue out of giving up purely on willpower it's become tired. Maybe if I faced up to it it wouldn't be such a huge issue. Just go out for a pint of Guinness. I'm not thinking of whiskey or anything - that'd just be mad. There's a reason they call it spirit. It is the imbibing of spirits - possession by them, a giddy warm bloodrush where you lick the last drops of liquid fire from the glass. Maybe that's why they call it liquor. No, I'm not thinking of that at all.
Maybe there's a known condition called '8 years in' or something, which is when it starts to catch you out again. I don't want to feel starving hungry, hideously bloated on cheap lager (urp) as I so often did. But I'm so changed - I have a skill, a talent, a career, self-respect. In the old scheme of skewed priorities it was drink first, everything else afterwards. But now if I'm warm and have just had a good dinner, why not, with my cigar, enjoy a glass of John Jamesons finest golden liquid smoothness again, just a sip? But I'm just scratching an old itch there. I know if I ignore it it'll go away. Because otherwsie I'll end up like this:
“I couldn't resist the challenge,” says Claire. “Within minutes we had downed the first glass of whisky and then another and another until the bottle was empty. That was the start of a two-day bender that ended up in hospital after I knocked myself out. I understand now that I can't ever have just one drink. I never could stop at one.” [/quote]