One moment I was sitting on the floor guzzling, the next I had somehow ended up flat on my back, knocking over a set of chess pieces, laughing like a hyena. I traced that familiar curve from party animal admired for his tremendous capacity, to party animal inspiring a growing level of concern among friends, to guy drinking himself out of a job or two, to guy living alone in a strange city and hauling home 42 beers in a backpack, enough for two solitary trips to Blottotown. That lonely drinking phase is not what you could call fun, but it is oddly comforting, in a way that probably only a lush can recognize. Other people may be confused about their lives and their goals, but not you. You, the addict, have a clear plan, and the very straightforward means to put it into action.
Every drunk has stories.
Actor John Larroquette tells of emerging from a blackout to find he was on an airplane, and trying to figure out through casual small talk just where it was he was going. It involved a bicycle ride home from an all-night party. I remember only little snapshots from it, but they are enough to confirm that I made the entire cross-town trip while looking straight down at the ground. Stop signs ambled by the corner of my eye as I trundled on blindly, spared from death or injury by dumb luck and the fact that I lived in a city small enough for the streets to be deserted very early on a Sunday morning. The sun was already up and kids were playing on the street when my mother saw me pedal into the driveway and stop.