Day Five: Historic Landmark for my liver and (still) yer Sunshine...

-the author, clad in beer saturated maroon shirt, playing beer pong at Bradley University, May 2005

Status:  It has been 112 hours since I cracked open my last cold one, shot-gunning the libation into the corporeal essence of my anatomy with the finesse of William Tell plucking an apple-oriented bow.  Five whole geometric squares where I didn’t feel like I was imprisoned by the key-hole heralding date winking in the right hand corner of the monthly calendar frame.   Five whole days where I made the conscious choice (it was a choice, and yes, I struggled in herculean huffs) not be manacled to the glass neck of a daily twelve pack (+) while flagellating drunken sentences into the canvas of the computer screen in front of me. Five whole days where I wasn’t spotted ferrying a fifteen dollar cube of beer back from the liquor store every morning, as if a metaphysical pharaoh were dictating that I construct a pyramid to my dreams passed over by the angel of premature organ-failure.    

 This is the longest I have gone sans pouring an ablution of alcohol into my body since May of 2005. Eight years ago.

 In the last six years I have been administered to the hospital twice on alcohol related issues. 

Both times after I was discharged I didn’t last this long.

Not even close. 

Physiology: Intermittent pastures of irritability.  Blood pressure seems to have detumesced as has my waist line. My heart no-longer feels like it’s vying for first place in the Brooklyn national double-dutch competition. Still have some sort of cyst cosigning tightness in my right jaw but maybe I just slept on it funny.  I went on to my moms on my day off to dry out and I think Cece the schizophrenic cat slept on my face (That explains all those hairballs I’ve been coughing up).  The right hand side of my ribs no longer feels punched or bruised. I haven’t felt the subtle-tingle that usually almost always seismically arpeggios into the full-blown shakes in about 12 hours.

Gradually the lethargy that becomes anxiety one minute and reverts back to languor the next is also starting to wane.

The most salient note is perhaps neurological and my thinking is somehow tinged with a lick of clarity. Before it felt like I had a corona (the halo, not the beer) of consciousness encircled around my brain composed of a basketball rim festooned with dorm-room Christmas lights sifting over the top of my head flickering in incendiary bursts of creativity before spawning a campus-wide blackout every time I sat down to write. Now it feels like the cortex-halo is composed of swaths of cotton.  Like horse blinders were placed over both sides of my skull occluding my thinking and have now somehow been completly removed.

Rungs scaled (i.e. conquering shit that could more aptly be classified as personal fear):  Today is the first day since I can remember that I didn’t hightail it to the liquor store the moment my paycheck was freshly deposited in the bank or head straight to a bar after work on a Friday morning (Country skillet Breakfast with a beer or five at either Last Chance Bar or the 801 club in Bartonville is the best) flushing away arable funds into the oak altar of the neighborhood tap, into emptied beer receptacles, into fruity shots that look like plastic Barbie pregnancy tests for incessant 140 character twittering trollops in a futile endeavor to get laid. 

Today was also the first day I was able to go inside a liquor store and buy a pack of smokes and not even think of about buying booze for myself even though I had more-than-sufficient funds in my pocket and for years’ having more-than-sufficient- funds in my pocket meant that I needed to imminently invest in as much booze as humanly possible.  The best way to avoid the temptation of purchasing  booze when you enter a liquor store en medias withdrawal is to reassert your concentration on something else. Since my dear friend Sunshine has been a diligent employee at the liquor store and since I have monopolized thousands of dollars in sales over the last year alone I decided to focus solely on Sunshine’s boobs.

“Focus on Sunshine’s boobs. Just focus on Sunshine’s boobs.” I repeated to myself over and over again, like I was trying to memorize scripture for a vacation bible school sticker. I didn’t purchase any beer, I bought four packs of my cheap cigars and my most benevolent Sunshine was kind enough to inquire if there was something on her chin that I kept unassumingly staring at.

(smile)

Apres ogling Sunshine’s cleavage (I also gave her  two tacos, ‘one for each, cup’ from that new kick ass Mexican restaurant on the corner of Heading and Western) today was also the first day that I ( kicking and screaming and kicking and screaming and hurling tampons) sucked up my pride and went to an AA meeting. I actually went to two meetings in a row since I got confused at what time a buddy of mine was chairing the meeting.

I have nothing against AA. I did not want to go and rationalized every excuse not to amble the three petty blocks down the street and attend the meeting. I'm glad I went. Nothing moves me more than being surrounded by individuals who want change in their lives and who desire nothing more than to grow and to somehow, seek to spiritually till that growth in the soil of others.

As I was walking out of AA I noticed a skeletal pamphlet stand that looks like it was left over from the late 70's. There was only a few pamphlets arrayed but on the bottom of the stand was the omnipotent masonary-traingle eye of the AA motto followed by the words, LET LITERATURE CARRY THE MESSAGE, TOO.

I simply smiled.