Saying Farewell to My Binge Drinking Days
Another curse of aging revealed
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man
A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad: LXII
With age comes loss. I walk a little slower. Words get stuck on my tongue a little longer. My lustrous chestnut locks are growing grey and frizzed. These things are tolerable.
But I can’t drink like I used to, and I miss that.
The nights of six pints and a couple of shots of Jameson’s at the bar are over. Nowadays I plateau at two or three glasses of wine, after which I’m flushed, foggy-headed, and wondering who would notice if I left.
To be clear, I haven’t quit drinking. I’ve not here on Medium whoring out my redemption story for a few pennies and pats on the back. I’m no recovering alcoholic with a rock-bottom anecdote that finds me pantsless and bobbing for Timbits in a bus station toilet.
But if I’ve never trodden that hellish path, it’s less from iron self-discipline or moral rectitude than a simple lack of stamina.
Where I grew up, binge drinking was a way of life from the age of seventeen, and I boarded the booze bandwagon with my hands in the air like I just didn’t care. But even during my most dissolute years, a single blacked-out night — and there were many —…
