The Bar Scene:

Why it’s just as easy to get addicted to the atmosphere surrounding the alcohol, and some of the people that inhabit it.

I am in love with bar atmospheres. They grant me a solace that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. I often feel like a gunslinger in the old west whenever I enter one. A man with an oversized hat just looking for some relief from the hardships of the world around him.

I know, these are a touch less dangerous times than those were. Nobody gets shot these days for looking at someone funny. Now people just get shot for having different beliefs in love and faith. What a world. At least back then people shot each other in debatably admirable ways, gunfights were like a sport. A skill set. A hobby. Shooters now are cowards, but I’ve gotten off track as usual.

The bar scene is intoxicating. Pun strongly intended. To be a regular at a bar is an interesting concept. There’s always at least one moment in the evening when I make eye contact with another regular. Drunk or not we’re both thinking the same thing: “I’m not alone.” Then there’s the look that the bar tenders give you when they see you for the first time in the night: “Oh, you again.” They might not be thinking that, but goddamn it always feels that way.

You absorb your surroundings as fast as your liver absorbs the alcohol. You become one with the bar. One with the force young Padawan. Don’t be afraid, you want to become a Jedi Knight don’t you?

It was a couple nights ago when I had the rare experience of hanging out with a couple other regulars. Only because they sat directly next to me at the bar and were in a drunk enough mood to chat it up with a rando. One of them bought us all a shot of Fireball. Which along with the four beers I had already consumed sent me into quite the melancholy of inebriation. The two regulars beside me had spent most of the evening playing a little something I like to call: The Drunk Shouting Game. It’s where in the middle of a conversation one party gets so emotionally passionate about the topic that the raise their tone to higher than the other party. Both players continue this cycle back and forth basically shoving the other person over with their opinion that isn’t even that important in the first place. So at one point I decided to join in and actually throw in a topic that truly mattered. I asked both of them if they were alcoholics. The first gentleman sitting closest to me answered immediately:

“Hell yeah bro!”, and we all raised our glasses and drank. The second after taking a gulp of his Fireball he hadn’t yet finished stared at me and said:

“Why would you ask me that? Like what do you mean?” I told him I didn’t mean anything by it. I have been drunk enough, and spoken to drunks enough to know that they can be very sensitive individuals. I rephrased the question and asked him if he needed alcohol in order to feel good about life. He said no. Despite the fact that I had seen him there almost every night that week and he was always at least four drinks ahead of me, and like me always by himself, but to each his own.

He then went on a small rant that I can’t remember verbatim, but the general concept was that these days anybody can be labeled an alcoholic. The way he put it it almost felt like he didn’t even believe alcoholism existed. One thing I do remember him saying was this:

“These days if you have two beers back to back you might be an alcoholic.” He said it with a mocking tone. I also remember hearing him say to the other guy that he either had a DUI or had gotten one in the past. Once again to each his own. It was an interesting social experiment that I had been thinking about for a while and am glad that I can remember most of it. I concluded my experiment with one more regular directly outside the bar. I always bum him cigarettes and buy him drinks. He must be at least 40 years older than me. We were standing outside the bar right before it was about to close and I asked him if he was an alcoholic. He waited around two seconds to answer:

“Oh yeah man.” The way he said it to me sounded like he felt as though it was a part of him for life. That that’s just the way it was.

I’m not saying these three “test subjects” that I “interviewed” are bad guys. I don’t know any of them well enough to have the right to that opinion. What I did learn though is that each of them had their reasons for drinking, just as I have mine, and that was comforting in its own sense. Some might feel that it’s a way to enable myself. To think “Oh well other people do it so why can’t I?” However the same concept applies to people who have cut down or quit drinking all together. “Other people have gotten a grip on it so why can’t I?”