Morning Friend,
Contrary perhaps to what is considered advisable, I spend a portion of my spare time in the company of people who drink alcohol regularly, and heavily.
The fact that many of them may be alcoholic is a fact not lost on one who most certainly is.
But the fact that we all share the same interest in shooting pool and shooting the bull is as inescapable as the loving clutches of a spry old Aunty.
In fact, the Sherbrooke Inn where we often congregate is one of this town's more nefarious old "Lush's Landmarks".
I've whiled and wasted many a dark day and endless night away there myself.
If I believed in such things, then the GHOSTS of my own lost spirit must yet be lurching through its' dank archways in search of 2 more draft.
Such romanticism and wonder is no longer on tap there for me, but the dour old dive still holds a familiar spell over a "regular" or two.
And since many of my old friends are mostly "regular", at least from a bar-going standpoint, I find myself once a week in "harm's way".
Now if you think my friend that this is about some kind of "whistle by the graveyard" affair where I'm flaunting mayhem and purposely risking disaster, you're being a little bit melodramatic, but the issue of advisability, does apply here.
I do get asked quite frequently, "what are you doing here?", "how do you stand being around drunks?", and my favorite, "are you SURE you're an alcoholic?", as if my healthy glow and clear countenance were incongruent with the considered model.
This is after all, a distribution point ( albeit a stinky one) for wine and spirits...it's a BAR!
It's a common room, a drinking establishment, a beverage room, a lounge, a club, a pub, THE bar.
One can easily see why it wouldn't be on the list of "advisable" places to be when one is alcoholic.
One look reveals why it's also not on the list of advisable places to impress a date?
The dilemma thus arises, and options with it.
The advisable "textbook" option is to simply stay away from anywhere that alcohol might be available, and get all new friends.
The textbook option is probably/actually responsible for keeping me drunk for a few extra years because it made sobriety sound about as appealing as low back pain.
But for many newly sober, or those still at a high risk for slips, it is the only option, and for some a life long one.
It's not hard to recommend to a burn victim, not to run into any burning buildings.
The "new friends" business is not so geographically solved, and requires not so much that they be new, so much as you are.
Many of my "new friends" are the same "old" ones.
I of course "weeded out" all of those who had been forcibly pouring booze down my throat and/or were a "bad influence".
But besides me if there's anything else new it's the friendship itself.
It's real.
Not like a textbook, but a just published tome with unfinished stories in it and chapters richly telling of love and fellowship and brotherhood and true friendship.
These are people with whom I've shared life, celebrated their young and buried their dead, and we all relish in the notion that they didn't have to bury me.
Witnesses to my darkest hours, they as I now bask in the joyous new brightness of an emerging light and daily reprieve from despair....so long as I don't "preach". ( or brag too much! )
The tradeoff is I try not to make sobriety sound so appealing and my friends in return, refrain from forcing me at gunpoint to drink.
I suppose if I was a "by the book" kind of a guy and wanted to see my friends somewhere where alcohol wasn't available, we could meet at the library.
But what the book doesn't mention is that I have friends who would smuggle a "mickey" into the library anyway, so I figure we may as well shoot some pool.
And while it may not be advisable to do so in the company of alcoholics, I do so with great vigililence and no small amount of gratitude.
Grateful, because the Good Lord has rewarded my resolve with the strength to walk fearlessly with whomever and wherever my journey takes me.
Because you're only in danger in the lion's den if you're feeding the lions.
love tImMy:/
Laugh as much as you breathe...
Love as long as you live ( under advisement)
