Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Wake-up gear

It was inevitable. I’ve known for a while that my break of a couple of weeks would be rewarded with a bag this weekend. I had factored it in. The Friday night ritual of bar and conspicuous nods and robbery would kick in and by seven I’d be happy. Well, it is Wednesday now, and the pace of anticipation has been shifting up a gear, as has my general happiness and sense of well-being I might add. Just like with fags or booze, it’s the knowledge that you can enjoy them that really lights up your day and not the actual moment when you do. And my good spirits made me a more relaxed husband and father, as well as less sociopathic in the workplace, a better cook and generally an all-around slightly nicer human. Although at the same time I am completely in the dark as to whether my positive outlook was, in fact, due to the looming prospect getting off my tits or the fact that after two or three weeks’ rest my dopamine receptors were starting to fire on time again.

Tonight, three days sooner than planned, I found out. It is thanks to a twenty-bag of the most potent gear I’ve tried, scored in civilized surroundings much closer to home than amongst the socially handicapped in the bar. The rest of the evening was a haze as I wandered around the house seeking purpose. At one point I managed to stagger outside to admire the rather odd looking moon, which was forming an unnatural looking upside-down crescent and which later turned a deep and eerie crimson. It wasn’t until the following day when I noticed the next day’s headlines such as “Lunar eclipse wows sky watchers” and “Best show for a decade” that I realized how far gone I must have been, to have seen the moon disappear and then turn colour without stopping to think why the Fuck that might be happening. How the fuck was I doing this every day for so long?

Anyway, the conclusion is that I have no choice but to use this stuff carefully, to ration it. And this surely presents a fateful opportunity to attempt to attain a working relationship with an addiction? This could be just what I have waiting for, the culmination of my year of abstinence, like a giant insane relay-race, the baton about to be passed from one to another: it is safe to drink again at last!

Yes, that’s it. I’ll stow it away in an out-of-reach place such as the garden shed though the week, pinching off a wee bit to perk me up at the weekends and feeling like the master of ceremonies. I will learn how to be able to have close to hand a substance to which I am addicted, to “just live with it” as a good friend helpfully pointed out recently.

I will then sail past the one year milestone with a summer’s project to start slowly reintroducing the drink. There would be no quiet frenzies of vodka and ice and citrus fruits to accompany a Saturday afternoon in the sun, nor steady-can-Sundays with the newspaper and the smell of cut grass. There will be peace at long last.

But, then, there is every possibility that I will cane this entire bag and its striking potential for vacancy in the next 4--6 days. And Fuck Knows what that is going to do to me.

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