Too many drinkers have ended their stories in a blaze of shame and destruction. They burned brightly and feverishly and insatiably, only to burn out too quickly, too irrevocably. They provided the perfect finale, with the locked finality that left no room for another act, or even one last goodbye. Their fires raged until the very end, taking up all the air in the room and suffocating those who dared to remain loving them.
It’s such a difficult thing to love someone so seemingly hell-bent on destruction. I’ve often said that we can’t choose who we love – it’s our original failing as human beings – we are powerless in the throes of love. Even when we know better – and we all know better – we are abysmally weak when it comes to our hearts. I knew that then, and I knew my heart needed something to see it through the thousands of breaks it would have over the course of a year, a month, a day. How many pricks and cuts and fissures can we withstand before we all simply break?
Elaine Stritch once described needing a drink before she went on stage because it was too hard to go out there alone. “It’s scary up here,” she said. “You know, so… you’re scared, you drink, you’re not scared… I never put a foot on the stage without a drink. Or any place else come to think about it… Up here, two drinks. One before the curtain, another at intermission, a little back up and that was it. Well, three maybe. If I had the eleven o’clock number. I wanted a friend out here with me…”
I often felt that way about the world.
It’s too hard to go out there alone.
I wanted a friend out here…
My ‘FireWater’ project was a love-letter to drinking, and in that love-letter was the poison seed of a goodbye ten years in the making. Written in 2009, it hinted at what I feared might happen, what I dreaded might happen, and what I most wanted to happen. I planted the darkness, let it take root, and when it grew and bore all its rotten fruit, I cut it down and burned it to the ground.
In 2019, I stopped drinking. A decade after ‘FireWater’ was written. A decade not quite lost to the fire, and not quite spared from it either. Alcohol was my savior and destroyer. It gave me a false confidence that saw me through some of the darkest days – there is no denying it helped me when nothing else would. The cost, though, was dangerously high. If I could afford it, it’s just because I got lucky. Catching myself just in time, or maybe just realizing I didn’t need to be caught if I could stand on my own, I was able to stop drinking and not look back or miss it. There is immense gratitude in that – I’ve seen firsthand how difficult and sometimes impossible that is for others.
While I can make no predictions about never or forever (as doing so seems to be a curse and challenge) I do know that I don’t really think about or miss drinking. I’ve found other exquisite enjoyments, and don’t want to add a depressant that messes with my brain anymore. The thrill was gone, and I was glad to see it go.
During the ensuing years, it has felt felt like a fog and haze were slowly and steadily lifting. It didn’t happen overnight, but the very act of slowing things down became an exercise in mindfulness that I so badly needed. My ‘FireWater’ days had reached their end, and I was fortunate not to have burned out. Too many of us end up extinguishing our lives before we learn to live without the fire.
‘FireWater‘ ~ The 2009 Project
Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave., Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco, CA
Scene 4: Sunday mornings, Boston & Provincetown
Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA
Scene 6: Times Square, New York
Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, ME
Scene 8: Hollywood Brown Derby, Albany, NY
Scene 9: Holiday Cocktail Hour, Albany, NY
Scene 10: My Brother’s First House, Amsterdam, NY
Scene 11: A friend’s home, Stormville, NY
