The Portrait of the Poetaster as a Man - Book VI - Relationship with alcohol

My use of alcohol was formative
(And formative - the way the word is meant)
It ruled my life for most of twenty years,
Addiction might as well have been my wife.
And when I come to talk of drink (the drug),
I fail to find the words and images:
I write restricted to the clichéd phrase,
I paint again what everyone has seen.
I used to think I was remarkable
And that my drinking differed from the rest,
Somehow in quantity (I drank the most)
Or quality (the greatest joy or woe).
But then a while ago and for some time
(The aim to win recovery) I mixed
With other alcoholics who were dry
And talked of sober, too of drinking days.
And thus I found that my experience
Was (in comparison) pedestrian,
Was nothing more (or less) than ordinary,
Was plain expressed, an (alcoholic) norm.
Although I think there were some differences:
It seems to me that then I didn't have
The social and the sexual complement
Of those who drank the same amount of beer.
But saying this, with both deficiencies,
Compared to sober norms, I think I lack,
And failings would appear as more to do
With my psychiatry than alcohol.
This alcoholic norm - decades weren't plain,
But if compared to one who drank as much
The similarities would make you think
That you observed development of twins.
And with this parallel, I work towards
The fact I could describe a shamed excess
(Which might excite the reader's appetite)
But this ignores the fundamental facts.
To question me on this approach is right:
I claim that my excess can be side-stepped
When dealing with my alcoholic past,
And if indeed it can, what can't, pray tell?
The fundamentals of relationship
Are lies, invented lies to tell yourself
Which can maintain the steadfast will to drink
And guarantee an alcoholic mind.
An alcoholic needs both myths and lies,
This, how I lived for years on end, so please,
Instead of tales of prurience and woe,
Let me debunk ten myths that laid me low.

Myth one - a drink will lead to happiness:
Of all the forced economies of truth
(And even knowing some sobriety)
This is the hardest one to overlook.
The problem is that much is chemical
As anyone who drinks a pint or two
(Not least if they have worked towards a thirst)
Will know fine well through feeling happiness.
To know the truth I need to understand
That pleasure cloys, effect habituates,
And in my case to reach that state of joy
I soon need ten where once the one would do.
I have to see that alcoholic drinks
Will act on mind and body 'naturally',
The feel (perhaps as nature would intend)
Is not because of this, less felt, more real.
To know the lie for that, I tell myself
A simple cause will have a plain effect,
But alcoholic factors interact;
This ease, not mine, but felt and in the drug.
These cons are my intellectual defence
(The kind of thing I'd think, were thinking right)
But there are other times when I rely
On gut reactions, those things like instinct.
And one of these that I appreciate
(Although I am not sure that it belongs):
The fact that mood (through will or chance) has changed
And though not good, no longer knows despair.
Those feelings of despair would often drive
A hopeless me to my first drink of more
When mixed with drunk's persuit of happiness
(Whose glow is gone now that my mood's improved).
The second is an attitude I rate,
Appearing times that alcohol will tempt,
And through considering the whole (not parts)
It puts me in a mood where I won't drink.
I, thanking attitude, appreciate
That I will know a flash of happiness
But too I'll find (with drinks I'll drink on drink)
All, all priorities reorganised.
And thus I see a total change in me,
One which outweighs a temporal happiness,
Judgement will keep my throat away from beer
And I am sober for another day.
As said, this myth of happiness is key,
If it still stands, then anyone will yield:
Disprove the other nine, and not this one,
You'll drink, however hard you try to shun.

Myth two - I'm no addict, and drink's no drug:
This one the easiest to prove a lie?
Perhaps for those who watch the supping drunks
But not for those with drinking goggles on.
As I consumed without the slightest pause -
Was insistent on using alcohol,
It surely would appear as obvious
These were the throes of drug and drug addict?
A painful truth is not to be ignored,
But I (the drunk, that it concerned) did this,
I fatefully ignored, when had I seen
Perhaps I'd had the sense to change my ways.
A drink or two is viewed as social norm
It's not surprising that I justified
Four times as much as four more norms the same:
Someone may walk a mile - if I walk four ...
The total lack of consciousness astounds:
The hopeless drunk is blind to self and world:
Illusions that are held, can be as great
As found in sleep with dreamt imaginings.
A senseless stone is just as self aware,
Perhaps more so, is on a higher plane:
The stone knows nothing, thus knows nothing wrong,
When I was drunk, all that I knew was false.
The drinker fails to even sense the drug,
And drunk or sober views normality
The way complete oblivion permits:
"Ten pints is usual - ten is 'normal' too."
The drug will blur the stages of decline
(Decline as steep as any rise before):
Perhaps the depths of dearth, I am not sure,
Appeared to make the scales fall from my eyes.
The means I found which could combat this myth
Was to obtain first hand experience
Of abstinence, and through sobriety
To learn to see the drug for what it was.
Because I was perpetually a drunk
I never noticed drink have it's effect,
I never understood the spectrum's range,
From tipsy through to 'merry', on to drunk.
I learnt something of drink, not through myself,
But through a sober observation of
(Now and again) my family and friends
Who drank in front of me (and showed the drink).
Of these ten myths, this lie endures the most,
I still perceive the drink and then the drugs,
My mind refuses to equate the two
And drinks retain the glow of 'Yes, we do'.

I've raised a thousand glasses to myth three
(And what a waste, if there was ever one!)
This blatant lie I loved in spite of sense:
"I'll be more sociable with alcohol."
Most realise the gulf which separates
The sociable from imitations of:
The talkative, or put another way,
The dreaded gift of gab, the garrulous.
And this distinction must be born in mind
When weighing up the gifts of alcohol
As those who court these gifts cannot discern,
Though others may soon see the fantasy.
A pint of lager never turned a drunk
To someone graced with social etiquette
Who could amaze with conversation's blaze
And knew the line between offence and jest.
The matter stands at quite the opposite:
A pint of lager often turned a drunk
Into the source of great and sharp offence,
The only social flair - embarrassment.
A drink is not the last ingredient
Of an old mysterious recipe
That goes to make a social acolyte:
Accessory but not necessity.
Indeed society accepts the drunk
The way a student would accept a debt,
Required, unpleasant, distanced from the self,
Then paid (and ostracised), soon as can be.
They're few the social skills requiring drink,
Ignoring clubs' initiation rights
(At sheer excess of which the most would baulk)
There is no actual need for alcohol.
Thus, socially sobriety's required
For most of everybody's everyday,
To function sober is the social skill
(Before all else) that no one should forget.
I've thought that drink would make me sociable!
Then drugs would make me cool and popular!
Each is a myth and must be seen as such,
Excess turns both to antisocial ways.
The pub's a friendly place to be, folk chat,
But then, mind you, so too are most restaurants,
Should eating food then, make me sociable?
Could senseless myth show lesser signs of sense?
Deceived in this I used to start to drink
In search of social bravery (which harmed):
And now I'm sober, I can still take heart,
And too, I now more often play a part.

Myth four - the functioning alcoholic:
Unless the function's to consume a beer
I cannot see most drunks achieving this,
Perhaps the myth exists, but not in me.
My metaphor - I have a parachute
And start off thinking that the jump goes well
Until discovering my rip-cord's cut:
I function as I hit the ground with speed.
Scenario is fatal from the start
So only ignoramuses like me,
Who lack important and required insight
Proceed to jump without first making checks.
Before the crucial stage (asylum's call)
It might be said I function (so to speak)
Although examination would reveal
A drug addict complete with problem drug.
It would be thought by definition that
Those substances that alter mind (like drink)
Do nothing but impede full functioning:
Conclusion is improvement comes without.
Let's try expressing this another way:
Some drink ten pints a night, some even more,
And function too, in holding down a job:
They'd surely function better soberly.
It's fair, perhaps, to view the drink as stress
Which some can take despite the quantity
This stressor leads in me (as clouds to rain)
To breakdown (seeds of which were always there).
I know some manage well compared to me
Also compared to many others too:
(Again by definition) these are not
Alcoholics, and if, a different kind.
I functioned drinking and obsessed with drink:
I'd just one thought revolving in my head,
The thought of alcohol above all else
Eclipsing any large or small concern.
So in this way I'd operate, and work,
Although for me the focus of the day
Would not be functioning, but my first drink:
The emphasis - firmly alcoholic.
Through drink I've known the psychiatric couch
(More to the point, I've known the hospitals)
Illness precludes consumption (so does sense):
I never function taking alcohol.
For those who drink, the myth is not in doubt:
And many drunks regard to function as
To ease or slake the thirst and drink a drink -
A step towards stability (they think).

Myth five - opposed by all and everything,
Believing this suggests I had no brain:
I used to think that there was not a link
Between the drink and sanity's decline.
It can't be said that my psychiatrists
Have always kept opinions to themselves:
They have professed with utmost clarity,
And what was warned has almost come to pass.
Today it seems to me decades ago:
I gained discharge (with harsh diagnosis)
Freed from the first asylum I had known
And leaving I was given this advice:
If you so much as ever drink again
Your future stay with us (psychiatry)
Will be lifelong - a frightening prognosis:
Uncomprehended, likely soon fulfilled.
Perhaps the man on purpose tried to scare,
Perhaps he had discerned my love of drink
And knew if drinking I'd exceed excess:
Whatever motivation, he was clear!
Though when it comes to clear, how's black and white?
It always was, and is, and will be 'plain'
It's printed on the label of my pills,
Without assumption: 'Avoid alcohol'.
The meaning? Commonly interpreted:
If drunk and lying under serving bar
Please stay alert for falling halves and pints
Avoiding them in case they land on you.
And otherwise: avoid as best you can,
Not in the way you would avoid the plague,
But in the way you would avoid a spouse,
Enjoy their company less frequently.
It's true the meanings seen in these two words
Will range from orthodox to opposite:
In spite of views of those who choose to drink
A child could tell in this 'Avoid' means 'No'.
Not seeing this for much of most of life
I drank a lot and then would be 'surprised'
On my admission to a hospital:
Again? Oh what bad luck I seem to have!
When ill, with elemental innocence,
I'd think that someone poisoned drinks of mine
And this (the myth was true) explained the fact
I could not take the alcohol I drank.
To my regret, I knew a way of thought
Which comes with drink, and which is not a norm,
It elevates my mood, with pleasures buoyed:
Paradoxically, this, I should avoid.

Myth six - I spoke of social grace through drink
Though further, drink would make me normal too:
Because I'm weird, so is (surprise, surprise)
How I define the word 'normality'.
The strange but simple definition is
Majority are normal, then there's me,
I feel the most abnormal of them all,
A feeling I would love to exorcise.
If found, the cause of abnormality
Were same as finding long lost holy grail:
It is a feeling, and I've said of these
I cannot deal the way the novice can.
But when the feeling's one familiar to
Psychiatrists (a symptom or a sign)
Such emotions will tend to realise,
And thus will make a mess of reasoned life.
Attempts at explanations put aside
I am convinced (with certainty) I'm odd
Though I have found that if I have a drink
The feeling leaves (cruel introspection stops).
And thus subjectively I'm better off
(Although somehow unconscious of myself)
Objective state is quite another thing:
Subjective feelings prove illusory.
The facts surrounding this, the 'normal' myth,
Are somehow similar to 'social' myth,
Which tells of talent, not a feeling felt,
Thus easier to demonstrate as false.
The 'normal' myth is much more similar
To myth of 'happiness' (that drink brings joy)
And superficial similarities
Might well suggest the two are both the same.
This like is countered by the differences:
The joys of 'normal' myth don't start to cloy
And though normality and happiness
Are feelings (in this case), they are distinct.
This myth is linked to my psychiatry:
I haven't asked the drinking sane their view
But still I'd think that most believe this myth
(Although in passing, not with passion's gleam).
Having know sobriety, with hindsight,
I see that I'm not normal when I drink,
Although before I knew sobriety
I saw the lie and knew no consequence.
In truth, I drank believing in this myth,
And then I drank when it had been disproved:
So with, and only with, sobriety
Disproving this helps part the pub and me.

Myth seven - poison didn't poison me:
Much like my views on drink and staying sane
I thought my heart, my brain and arteries
Were free from risk of drinking alcohol.
In part, to think that I'd escape from harm
Was youthful stance of immortality:
Unlike my views on sanity's upkeep,
They haven't been repeatedly proved wrong.
By this I mean I'm lucky, and so far
I'm neither diagnosed (nor seem to have)
A physical disease that has been caused
By drinking more than guidance would permit.
I, saying that, call fingers crossed, touch wood:
Although, admittedly, I am not young,
Remaining are some years ahead in which
The fact I've drunk so much may cause disease.
No reason, but I thought myself immune,
And this as much applied to cigarettes
As to my love of beer: irrespective
I start to see the fairytale in this.
And so to think that drink's a pathogen,
I've learnt to know this of a cigarette,
But to extend disdain to alcohol?
(Though it's required to see the lie in myth).
The risk is there to see (and smell) in smoke,
Though pint of beer still seems so innocent:
A pleasant tasting drink which quenches thirst,
It cannot be that this would lead to harm?
And here, perhaps, my youth's naivety
Has won the day and overcome my sense,
Who said it must seem bad to make you ill?
When talking myths, this is another one!
Though being fair, compared to other myths
This seventh is the most innocuous,
As if this myth is held, the end result
Is not increase, but lack of shying from.
The grounds of health are good as any grounds
To drink less alcohol (or none at all),
Although to give the lie to other lies
Was greater spur to make me abstinent.
Debunked, this myth will surely motivate
Those individuals with a love of life,
Or maybe those who look to future times
Without that to me well known sense of doom.
For me, if life improves as I invest,
This lie shown lie will keep me from the drink:
I think the pros and cons of this are met,
I don't see health as an advantage yet.

Myth eight - there's friendship to be found in pubs:
You need to have a pure naivety
(Mine I have mentioned once or twice before)
In order that you would believe this myth.
To take equation and rework to truth:
Friends meet in pubs (by this I mean meet up):
This does not mean that this is where they met
And rarely is the pub the bond which joins.
I failed to understand, appreciate,
That people drink together and although
The drink induces 'sociability'
The man who raises glass is not your friend.
I never was a judge of character,
And drunk in pubs, my discernment vanished,
So I would put my trust in anyone,
And many times that trust was proved misplaced.
With this in mind, in pubs I would mistake
The self-assurance drinkers gained through drink
For evidence of worth, for inner good
(In others - I'd not feel this trait in self).
With nous perhaps you'd make some friends in pubs,
But I admired the drunk for drinking drink,
And with my sieve as coarsely set as this
You needn't guess the kind of friends I'd make.
I think I am perhaps the only one
Who entertained this myth and for so long:
It only takes but slight experience
To learn to separate the chaff from grain.
It was a streak of pure naivety
That meant this myth could hold me tightly grasped,
Impose rose-tinted views I held of pubs,
And lead me to mistake the foul for fair.
Requiring you suspend your disbelief
It simply can't be overemphasised
The sheer degree of my credulity,
The faith I placed in this unlikely myth.
My optimism knew no earthly bounds
I (drinking alcohol) would see the good
In any fellow man (who drank a pint)
Who would exchange a friendly word with me.
Perhaps I wasn't wrong, perhaps I was,
Perhaps one fact could best be introduced:
Of all the many folk I've met in pubs
There's few remain as social contacts still.
Of those described this is the daftest myth
Disproved by slightest bit of common sense,
But to believe is not as dumb as that
I've heard that people think the world is flat.

Myth nine - the myth that I was in control:
Surprising numbers think this of their life
And for a lucky few the myth comes true
But for majority this myth's a dream.
My myth I held: that I controlled a drug
When actually this had control of me,
And here we see opposed alternatives
Which would suggest judgements are relative.
So drink controlled my life, or opposite?
To find which better fits I think I will
Investigate my motivations, but,
Helped by hindsight and kept sobriety.
So did I want to piss my every pence
Against the wall? I think I did, and that
Now demonstrates to me, not my control,
But lack thereof (the drink controlled my mind).
So did I want to spend my every hour
Just propping up the bar? I think I did,
Which demonstrates to me, not my control,
But drug which held dominion over me.
So did I want that every thought concerned
Consuming alcohol? This didn't strike
As strange when drinking, now this demonstrates
That my addiction knew control of me.
With these examples we begin to see
Exactly how the pros and cons weigh up:
Thus to believe the substance of this myth
Requires a monumental bias shown.
Mind over drug - for some this comes to pass,
Not for alcoholics - and I was one:
I neither knew a moderation's grace,
Nor mild intoxication's balm which soothes.
Drug over mind - this often comes to pass,
And did for me, although I didn't see:
I knew and lived excess to its excess
(This word 'excess', here viewed pejorative).
Control - more prime example can't be found
Of those who think that they control something
When they're in fact controlled by that same thing
Than drinkers and their drink which rules complete.
Control - regaining it requires the shift
From drunkenness to sleek sobriety
With fundamental change of attitude
To cause to loathe not love what goes with drink.
Avoidance as a form of management
Stops short of cure as such but cures the same:
For me control arrived through abstinence
And thus to stop at none is best defence.

Myth ten - the devil drink was friend to me:
Put otherwise - I liked my drug of choice
And thus I joyed to feed my love of drink
Ignoring fact this was addiction now.
I made a friend of every drunk habit
In any guise or form (this was the myth):
I guess myth ten is just embodiment
Of myths to nine in gross and craven form.
Myth ten is then perhaps a stone inscribed
With other myths that guided crooked ways,
An idol representing all that's wrong,
The gold that gilds the broad and easy path.
Myth ten was spur to sanctify the myths,
A call to high alcoholic worship,
A focus for perpetual thoughts of drink,
A faith, following which produced belief.
Myth ten, the devil drink the friend, became
A figurehead to guide the sinking ship,
The prow's projecting wooden scaled mermaid,
Addressing own, who would not sing to me.
Myth ten - my personal religion's god:
To form my Bacchus, other myths and drink
Rolled into one and deified to make
Drink incarnate, a power unto itself.
And with this deity (myth ten made god)
There were both rites and prayers, and miracles:
You doubt as Thomas, let me talk you through
Just three which should be good to prove the point.
Miracle one - mundane but of the heart:
Appearance of a bottle of spirits
Would be transformed to sacred shape which seemed
Of greater worth than any form or thing.
Miracle two - to see in parallax:
A month without, erring, I strayed along
Supermarket's dread aisle of alcohol:
My vision warped - far was near - shelving moved.
Miracle three - money's abolition:
All cash, credit, turns coupons clipped for beer,
Equivalence is all that matters now,
The currency is fluid measurement.
This myth, the last in place, and first to fall:
If you can see a pint upon the bar
And there's no sign suggests the holy grail
You are half way to your sobriety.
Disproof of myth requires a changed habit,
And not result of mind's conscious effort,
Me seeing lie in this tenth myth helped show
The other myths as lies ... small acorns grow.

I hope you guess that I (at least in part)
Am disabused of fronds of these ten myths,
If not of all, then of the major strands:
It's for a year I've managed abstinence.
Before I talk of what may be for me
Recovery (although I speak to soon
For any certainty) please let me first
Digress and share some thoughts on alcohol.
If I look back upon my drinking days
With those rose tinted spectacles I love,
I see a lust for drink, an urge to quaff,
Which was impossible to overcome.
Whereas if I look back on drinking days
Without rose tinted spectacles I loved,
I see the lack of that restraint required
To keep myself from drinking to excess.
At first the difference seems to have import:
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed or did he fall?
Was it excess of lust and drive and will?
Or did I lack the brake the rest possessed?
At root the question's psychological
And deals with motivations and their ilk:
But is the reason really that which counts?
As either way, I drank excessively.
I think with drugs (and drink remains a drug)
The will is less important than you'd think,
The crux is if you take, or if you don't:
Strong willed can lapse (no thought can change this fact).
And to have stood a year without the drink:
Sometimes I'm filled with pride by what I've done,
At other times I see what I've achieved
As but necessity's invented scheme.
Whichever way you choose to look at it,
Sobriety becomes an object owned,
A prized possession which you've earnt with work,
A something advantageous, yours alone.
And you can gift your friends and family
Some grace from this that is objectified:
And when you interact without the drink
You forge the type of memories that count.
Sobriety - the choosing of a choice:
To drink is not to choose but stays a must :
For most who drink too much the drug will force,
And too for those as me who thought they chose.
Sobriety - the spirit of my times:
My other times are soaked with clouded dregs,
Let day one sober mark both new found life,
And break with demon drink (with break, less strife).