While visiting family for Thanksgiving, I tagged along on a trip to the local state-run liquor store. We don�t have state stores where I live now, and while I know the system has its faults, state stores are appealing because they tend to be big and well-stocked. It�s like a department store for booze.

State stores take themselves pretty seriously, while still trying to meet the drinking needs of the entire local population. This results in funny little displays, like a shelf in the otherwise dignified wine department featuring every flavor of MD 20/20, lined up neatly in rows. Why is cheap alcohol so funny? I suppose it�s only funny to those who find humor in pathos. I�m still one of them, thank God.

I got a little maudlin at the state store. Browsing the aisles, I imagined each type of alcohol represented a different mood or facet of life -- all moods and facets I would never experience again. I�m really prone to this type of romantic nostalgia for drinking. I need to find a good way to defuse it. I tried to think of the bottles as hundreds of different ways to bring shit into my life, but I wasn�t having it.

In general, I think I need to focus more on positive reinforcement. Currently, when I catch myself romanticizing alcohol and missing drinking, my first reaction is to start a little PowerPoint presentation in my mind, featuring my most humiliating and heartbreaking drinking moments. But I�m starting to see that forcing myself to relive those moments makes me feel worthless and shitty and more like drinking (hell, what have I got to lose?) than a little nostalgia ever would. Once the bad images get in my head, it takes hours or even days to expunge them, and they make all the good and normal things I do feel like a joke.

I can vaguely see how a positive reinforcement system would work. For example, I often think about how I miss that feeling, at the beginning of a night out partying, that anything could happen and probably will. I could counter that with my PowerPoint presentation of non-fun crappy crap that actually did happen, or instead I could think about how wonderful it feels to wake up not hungover on a weekend morning with the whole day stretched out in front of me, and I can do anything. I could think about how I feel after finishing a long run -- disbelieving and exhilarated. I could think about my current, well-ordered life -- clean clothes, food in the fridge, money in the bank. These things are what I�ve gained, and I should focus on them as reasons to go forward, not drinking. Besides, everybody knows PowerPoint is just a way to make meaningless crap seem important.

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