There is this lingering fear I have of being an alcoholic like my parents…it resonates with me so intensely that I am conscious of how much I drink…as if at some critical mass a switch will be flicked and I will begin some tragic spiral into chaos and loss. I am convinced that I have the genetic predisposition to being an alcoholic and perhaps addiction too…clearly demonstrated by my love and commitment to my morning coffee…and quite honestly hard alcohol tastes good to me and I can feel it’s warmth flow through and cover me – that’s probably not very normal and freaks me out a little! My first drunk was on gin and beer…back in those days there were no twist-off caps so we tried to snap the tops off the beer bottles on the crotch rails of our bicycles…I remember the tops shattered and we chugged them funnel like as if it was some game…the gin sealed the deal. It’s funny what we take as lessons from these life events. For me the crossroads were not the ill-effects of drinking in excess or potential for loss of life and injury or even some sense of rite of passage – it was the total absence of consequence from the people who should have cared…who should have loved me better. This may be what inspires a 13 year old boy to drink and get purposefully drunk for the first time…but it’s also telling that this was time where I was increasingly self-aware but also uncomfortably numb to my state of being…out of touch and out of life…like a ghost raging a primal scream in a room full of people…unseen and unheard. My soul was battling to stay in the light…these are instances where suicide is seeded and anger allowed to take root and I would battle these demons in the coming years…the tug-of-war of my young life. Somehow though, perhaps by spiritual intervention and certainly through the intervention of a few beautiful souls who refused to stand there and just watch me scream…I emerged okay and just a little afraid of “the drink”, ha ha ha.
Photo by Lawrence Lewis (2012)
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Lawrence Lewis
“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” ~Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
About Lawrence Lewis
I do a number of things professionally...but most of all and the true purpose of what I do through "my work" is to provide for my family, be a good husband and great father, and try to make a difference as a world citizen...I guess it's not much more complicated than that 🙂