Absinthe...

So I was walking the other day and this thought landed:

“If I ever relapse, I am going to drink Absinthe...”

Where did that come from?

Alcoholism, still alive and well inside me. Again, still...

And also, that romantic notion of sitting in some Spanish cafe, drinking Absinthe with some chap that looks and acts like Hemingway, or Fitzgerald.  And I, of course, would be Dorothy Parker.

I mean, that can never happen.  Those people have already lived their lives and are dead.  And I am still here, sober and leading a quite lovely life.  But I have to own that the romantic notion of drinking, fucking, writing and traveling does still appeal to me...always has.  I mean, when I was drinking, I never met anyone Hemingwayesque and while I was a foul mouthed drunk, I was still no Dorothy Parker.  I did share her love of booze and bad men though, but I mean, who doesn’t?

Hemingway said, “opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy,” saying, “It’s supposed to rot your brain out, but I don’t believe it. It only changes the ideas.”

I mean who doesn’t want that???

Me, truly, I do not.

So why would an idea like that land in my head and stay there, prompting me to write this blog about it?  Well, because that is just how sick I am.  And I write about it to air it out.  Nothing like a sequestered thought that is contrary to my whole fucking life to make it burgeon into a full blown lifesized barn burner.  We are, after all, only as sick as our secrets...

So I give it to you, this weird, somewhat insane and totally inane thought...that if I should ever relapse I shall drink absinthe...but really, this would likely happen.  After 31 years of living on a daily basis seeking truth and understanding and sobriety, if I drink, that would evince that I was out of my ever loving mind. So if I did partake, I would be back on the superhighway of self destruction...so why not absinthe?

And is it really all that different from whiskey?  All alcohol can induce seizures, madness and murder.  Which is why it is totally fucking nuts that I would entertain this notion, even for a second.  My life with alcohol was a not so slow spiral to a bottom of mortal, spiritual and physical bankruptcy.  The next 31 years have been an ever increasing spiral towards, well, I am not completely sure, but I know I am trending upwards.  My moral character and fitness improves, sometimes in spite of myself, but I know it does, improve...

So as romantic as a Spanish cafe with Hemingway and I locked into an Absinthe fueled debaucherous scandal, I will pass.  I may not have ever been to Spain or with any man worthy of a close comparison to Hemingway, or had Absinthe be the basis for all my insanity, I have found, that if you pour enough whiskey on top of any bad relationship, you can produce prodigious results as far as insanity and depravity.  And I guess, even though I do not want that in my life anymore, there will always be a part of me that will.  And today, I have room for that in my psyche.  I have become a vessel that is able to hold steady the licentiousness, the wantonness and the profligacy and keep it in check with my own moral fiber and quest to evolve above and beyond my most basic, bespoke ascent towards enlightenment.  As with all spiritual quests, it would seem, one must have the experience of dissolute intemperance to have its alternative become a viable option for transcendent transformation...

Again, still...