Clarity is King!

You know, there is that whole "stupid drunk culture." It usually involves lots of alcohol, and watching sporting events. Go to any college town. Go to any big or small city. There are the endless meccas to excess drinking. Go to any neighborhood bar, or favorite upscale watering hole, or to any VFW or American Legion post in Anywhere Town USA. Oh yeah, go to Las Vegas. Drinking to excess there is a goddamned religion.

Blackouts. Vomiting. Acting aggressively. Doing stupid shit. That is all part of the alcohol culture. It is everywhere. It is in the air we breathe. Remember all those stupid comedies about drinking, and drunk people? Remember how we laughed when John Belushi crushed beer cans on his forehead? Remember when we were in awe and amazement when famous and not so famous people overindulged in public? Not drinking to excess is going against the stream of the culture. Not drinking at all, being a tea-totaler, being totally sober? That is a major radical divergence from the broader culture.

Drinking alcohol has been sold to us as a "social thing." How one relaxes, how one unwinds, how one "gets to know someone better." Hey Buddy, have another drink, loosen your collar, right? That message is everywhere, comes from every direction.

I have been on both sides of this cultural divide. As a young lad, I was deeply influenced by those two-fisted, hard-drinking writers, think heavyweights like Faulkner & Hemingway, but also, and, especially, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski. I kind of fell for the "romance" of the hard-drinking, balls to wall, over the top, gonzo writer. Of course, it was total b.s. Not romantic at all. Bad for your liver, bad for your head, bad for your soul. Not an aid in writing in the least. A certain bleary-eyed, dead-end. Serious hang-overs, broken relationships, nervous breakdowns. An endless stream of broken things and bad news.

Demon Alcohol, the great destroyer.

It's all so much clearer on the sober side of the divide, and once you are on that side, Clarity is King. Drinking to excess just seems like the most pointless, destructive, corrosive and addictive activity imaginable. A soul-killer. The deadliest of poisons. And it is insidious, because it is so accepted and acceptable in our broader culture. To choose not to drink marks you as someone outside the herd. How many lives have been ruined by Demon Alcohol? How many broken men and women? Generations. Uncountable generations.