....Inspired by The Uncredited Polymath and Two Weekends Past...
"The devils possess nothing in this world and, therefore, since they enter the lists naked, we too must fight naked.If someone who is clothed fights against someone who is naked, he will soon be dragged down, since his enemy has something to get a grip on. And what are the things of the world if not a kind of apparel?" _ St. Gregory The Great
Recently/Roughly four months ago, I just decided to take a step back and tender my resignation from the helm of the Dedicated Drinkers Club. Desist from approaching anything with an alcohol content label on it. Just like that. Nothing motivated it. It was just one of those quantum actions like those that have pretty much shaped how the Universe is the way it is - a miniature big bang in the minutest of facets of variables that determine how I (one among millions upon billions of drunkards) contribute to tipping or upping the share prices of alcohol manufacturing giants such as EABL or The Trading House of the Heirs of P.A. Smirnov. I did it without considering how market pundits would react to this radical shift in this microscopic variable, or how it would hurt all my relatives and friends who owned these shares. It was what it was... That shit was hard, trust me.
The first month was full of green - rage and envy at those who placed odes to alcohol on their FB statii and tweets. The TV morphed into 3D quality when the Tusker and Smirnoff ads were on. My dreams were made of rivers of Malt and fountains of gin, and public utility taps spewing forth vodka. Governments resolved armed conflict over martini and ish. The guys from Inception were there too, taking me through this Utopian paradise, perhaps with the knowledge that I would listen to Ellen Page ever since I saw her in Juno and wished for half a second that it was I who planted that seed therein. Sure enough there was Ellen Page whispering deliciously into my ear every few minutes or so: "You must be STUPID to dump all this...when it brings much common sense to the world, gets the less-than-average-looking individuals laid, all those calories you guy, all those barley farmers in Uasin Gishu going to sleep hungry tonight because of you and your Dad has shares in EABL, boy how SELFISH can you be???" And so on and so forth...But Anti-Liquored Nihilism continued taking route...
The second and third months were full of grey - I watched the world in clinical detachment as they did the good tango with the Liquor...The kind of clinical detachment demonstrated by a lab technician in a secret facility in Tuskegee as he infected an unidentified negro with syphilis. Slowly by slowly, everything alcohol related began to feel like a distant memory. I couldn't relate to #drunktweets anymore, and I wondered what the heck all these concoctions tasted like. The complete confusion of a connoisseur. The stakes were high but I was no longer sure what I had bet on. It was like seeing yourself in a group photo in your album marked 'me and friends' and not knowing who your photomates were or where the pic was taken. The Minister of Finance read the Budget and upped the tax on drinks yet again, by why the hell was everyone making such cuckold noise about it??? I just couldn't understand...
The fourth month was full of glorious white - I was the only one left in the group photo from a month ago, just me and a sea of whiteness. A new clarity of mind that shone upon stuff I'd never thought existed before and in the weirdest of places. I discovered simpler pleasures and less taxing pastimes. Another dimension that left your inhibitions intact without subjecting you to an Inquisition about it at the same time. There was a clear distinction between I and They Who Had Been Whitened Out. I couldn't even see them... perhaps a few of their faint cries far out in the sea as I basked on the beach of Clairvoyance beneath the soothing rays of Sobriety. All a reasonable man inside a Clapham omnibus could wish for...
Then recently/a few hundred hours ago I checked back into the DD Club with as much ease as I had left it and for pretty much the same reason (so allow me to copy paste parts of the third paragraph)...Just like that. Nothing motivated it. It was just one of those quantum actions like those that have pretty much shaped how the Universe is the way it is - an absolutely earth shattering big bang in the minutest of facets of variables that determine how I (one among millions upon billions of drunkards) contribute to tipping or upping the share prices of alcohol manufacturing giants such as EABL or The Trading House of the Heirs of P.A. Smirnov. I was back in the game, and I played it hard. Zapped a Zappa bottle with the help of two friends, Smurffed two vodka halfs without as much as a second thought, pined a Pilsner or two, or three, or four, or five, or ten I'm not really sure...and just for good measure finished of with a Rémy quarter.
The consequent reaction was, well, different...quite unlike what I would usually experience in my former DD days. When I could indulge in 5 litres of hard liquor and eleven joints of weed between three with lots and lots of ease. The days when the buzz from a few pints triggered an intelligent #drunktweet or FB Note. This time, however, I was not the lyrical wag that threw quite a number of punchlines at will. My liver, which had long been shelved with the group of vestigial organs suddenly screamed out as if it had its own remote life outside my person. I was no longer impressed by the blue-yellow piss, or the equally blue no. 2 in the loo either! The shit that was previously jet fuel just slowed me down to an excruciating snail pace... Limbo...It was what it was...
Even as I am still processing that experience, what has become clear to me is that somewhere along the long ass night I'd have done anything to be back on that Clairvoyant beach, sipping my pina colada or fillling a puzzle. At that very point, the act of being able to consciously manipulate my own inhibitions at will was more intoxicating than ceding them to the unsteady wiles of inebriation. It was one of the soberest moments I have had when completely drunk...
I guess this experience can be extended to all our vices and guilty pleasures. They are just like the clothes we wear. Stuff we were not supposed to have in the first place but for our own (im)perfections. Stuff used to cover up the scars and warts beneath. Stuff that can easily be used to drag you down in beefs against your mental or philosophical foes. It is only when you are willing to appreciate that these things are merely complementary and also be willing to detach ourselves from these clothes and walk naked when need be despite all general expectation that sane people need clothes, only then can we get to wholesomely appreciate other things that Life has in store for us. That is what graduation is. Getting the marks that help to measure the quantity of reason and utility contained in each and every activity we carry out. Realising that the scars in our philosophical nakedness are just but calibrations against standard units of measure to help us appreciate ourselves and our imperfections...
All in all, one shouldn't really expect certain things that we have always held onto for so long to be exactly as we left them when we move away from them for even the briefest of moments. So, just like Drake says in that song, whether it be alcohol, drugs, sex, soap operas, haute couture magazines, piety, money, power, blue eyes, blonde hair, sad movies, midgets or even harajuku barbie dolls, whatever it is, when its over, its over...
I'm not saying its all over though...
Its far from over...
:)
