Drunk. On a train.

Nothing to do. So let’s right.*

It’s been a good night. One strained with the usual peppering of social awkwardness perpetrated by me of course. Nothing bad though. Just usual very low level angst that I’m going to run out of things to say to my work colleagues.

I only truly feel at ease with my girlfriend or my oldest friends and even then the old anxiety can creep in to freak me out when least expected.

But fuck anxiety. You pays the piper and you gets your tune. It’s always gonna be there in one way – it’s called being human – and on the other hand the more you pay attention to it, the more real this paper tiger gets. So fuck it in the ear.

So, what I’ve always found amazing about drink is how black and white it makes everything. It eradicates the grey areas. Most things become much more simple. Perhaps other drugs offer this clarity in a much more distilled fashion but nonetheless, booze is a good hammer blow to umming and ahhing. It cuts the bullshit and gives you a main line into what you want and what you should do.

Of course I learned long ago not to act on this black and white determination. All people do. I’ve been saved by divine intervention when I was drunk and thought I should start a fight on a skinhead standing at the bar when I fell over on a wet floor before I got to him; or the times I’ve withheld calling a girlfriend of Christmas past, or even stopped myself from chancing my luck on sliding down the tube escalators and injuring my back like my friend did.

This mentality is called being a good drunk. I suppose it’s about recognising what booze says to you and not letting that heady cocktail of black and white passion get in the way of interacting with a sober world. We all know the bad drunks. It’s not that they can’t drink, it’s that they can’t distinguish between what’s a good idea and what’s a fucking terrible idea in the midst of intoxication.

Still, for me, booze is always related to good times. I can’t drink when I’m depressed. In fact it stops me in my tracks. Thank fuck for that. I’ve seen sad drunks. It’s pathetic. Why drink if all that happens is anger and pain?

Anyway. Tonight. It was good. It’s a real shame I have to get up as early as I do tomorrow but it’s a blessing – yes I hate that word just like you do, but sometimes it fits – to have something to get up for.

A went through a bout of therapy a couple of years back after I felt like I was having a breakdown. I still can’t explain it exactly but it was unhappiness mixed with an OCD style referential mindset that only looked inwards, like an ever decreasing circle, until you’re going mad with one or two thoughts spinning around in your mind and the entire world is external to your anguish.

My therapist once said to me that having a job is exciting. He said having a purpose to get up is exciting. I guess that’s true. I’ve learned to see things this way. Hardship is life but most hardship represents something ace and we all need to recognise that.

Self help can be a bit tiresome, I realise, but deep within the memes and the quotes and the books and the snake oil salesmen is a truth, and I want to find it. Some higher truth about life. Drink hints at it too, perhaps it’s why we chase it. There’s a unity there, somewhere, if only someone could pin it down.

*Whilst I’ve cleared up this article I kept the ludicrously obvious grammatical error in the title because, you know. LOLE.