When I first quit drinking, I told myself it was only for two months. (Secretly, I knew better. I tricked myself.) One night shortly after I began the two-month experiment, I was at my sister�s having dinner. She was telling me about a friend of hers who had some big plan to not watch TV for a month, in the interest of bettering himself. I was feeling cranky, and said rudely that I thought my sister�s friend�s plan was stupid and pointless, not to mention snobby and elitist. Not surprisingly, she replied, �Well, aren�t you doing the same thing with drinking?�

I was stunned. It�s not that I thought she believed what she said -- I think she was just responding to my rudeness -- but that I kind of believed it myself. Was my life so pathetic that I had to invent a drinking problem to get a little attention and inject some drama and meaning into my existence? If that�s the case, well� I guess it worked.

Anyway, I went to a party last weekend. I know! I can�t believe it either. It was one of my sister�s friend�s birthdays. It was fun. Everybody drank and I smoked like a fiend. Then, about two hours into the party, I went to the bathroom, walked back into the party, and thought, �I�ve got to get out of here.� I couldn�t deal with having one more chat about work or even making eye contact with one more person. I couldn�t not drink one more drink. I said good-bye to everyone and left. I couldn�t help feeling like the party would really start rocking now that I was gone. I walked home, alone, in the rain, thinking: �This is my life.�

As usual, I felt much better in the morning. I tried to figure out what had gone wrong at the party, and this is what I came up with: nothing. As in, nothing had gone wrong. I stayed and enjoyed myself until I was tired and then I left. Some would even call it a successful night.

I think my problem is that I need to update my definition of a �party� or even of a �night out.� Just because I didn�t get totally drunk, offend five people, spend all my money, close the bar, stumble to someone�s house for an afterparty, beg the hosts to make me a huge drink �to go,� get home some way I don�t remember, pass out before I could even drink the �to go� drink, call in sick the next day, drink the �to go� drink at 10 a.m. so I can make it to the grocery store to buy a six-pack, etc. -- just because all that didn�t happen doesn�t mean I didn�t have a good time. It�s a different kind of good time. It's more subtle. I�m still not used to it.

prev // next