Drink

Is our everyday conscious life so satisfying it needs no holiday, our self awareness want no escape? Be realistic. Whether you’re blue, pissed off or your heart has been broken a drink helps. This is the remedy known as self medication. What you're supposed to do is Pull yourself together, Get a grip, Weather it. Or see a doctor and get some pills, one drug being better than another.

Perhaps you're in a unhappy marriage and you don't know it, another long evening with your partner and the clock slow to go round. Niggle niggle, you can't settle. It's the condition of man you tell yourself, existential angst, unaware you are over analysing. Drink darling? No thank you. I’ll have one on my own then. If you must. Where's my coat?

Or you live by yourself and drink takes the edge off your loneliness. Why who knows, tomorrow you may find that all consuming hobby, make a new friend or meet the love of your life. But not tonight. Worse you are old and exhausted, time is the enemy and you are filling the days before you die. You are not unknown at the bottle bank.

It's said those who see the furthest drink the most - list the writers - but don't flip the logic, it doesn't work, as lesser talents have learned to their cost.  Moderation in all things is what the philosopher advises. Too much drink can damage your health, that amount being more than your doctor drinks. My own habit is described as moderately excessive. I love it, do those words belong in the same sentence?

If there was no down side to good cheer I'll wager the New Puritans would still try to deny us, believing as they do that the pleasures of the flesh are a block on the path to spiritual perfection. Life is not to be lived without suffering is their credo for we shall drink nectar in the next. Lovely, will we get a smoke too?

I used to joke I drank because it made other people more interesting, now I've learned pub people really are more interesting. See above. Like the regular who was finishing up last night when I entered, he's downed three and he's going home to a nightcap, two cans of John Smiths and a rum and pep. He's cheerful, he's a hero and he's coming up to eighty. You'll kill yourself you will, I say. Yes, that can happen, he replies, one doesn't want to die young.