Do you drink?  I don't.  If you do, I think that's fantastic.  I'm perfectly serious about that.  I think everyone should drink.  Or, I think everyone should drink who can handle their liquor.  In fact, as far as I'm concerned, "mishandling" your liquor on occasion is fine too: in high school, they told us that if drinking had ever adversely affected our lives, we were alcoholics, which didn't make much sense to me then, nor does it now.

I couldn't do it, though.  Drink like a normal person, I mean.

I tried.  For about the last year of my career as an abuser of alcohol, I stuck mostly to beer.  I did this not because I thought that beer was less addictive than liquor, but because doing so allowed me to keep track of how much I drank -- much easier to do if you're drinking beer than if you're drinking, say, vodka-and-tonics: every bartender makes them differently (and if you're making them at home or at a party, God knows how much vodka is going into them).  And I made rules for myself: No More Than Four Beers Per Night, for example.  Because nobody (or, no 6'1" man with a high tolerance for alcohol) ever got into much trouble drinking four beers.

What my mind managed to do with the More Than Four Beers Per Night rule was really sort of brilliant.  When I concocted this rule, I was thinking about twelve-ounce bottles of beer: you have four of them, and then you're done for the night.  But: look at the rule: there's nothing about serving size in there, is there?  No, there isn't.  The first night my new rule and I hit a bar, I decided -- "realized," even -- that "a beer" meant "a pint": a pint of draught beer, not a bottle of bottled beer.  That is, sixteen ounces, not twelve.

Armed with this new knowledge that no more than four pints of beer per night are allowed, what would your mind do?  What my mind did was the math: four pints of beer equals roughly five bottles of beer.  So the rule sort of magically became No More Than Five Beers Per Night.  Clever, right?  And after a few weeks, my mind had embraced this weird form of "logic" and had run the rule up to a seven-pint limit; after that, I think we (my mind and I) sort of gave up and realized that rules were silly and I/we returned to my/our normal levels of beer consumption.

My life sucked.  I stayed in bed all day at least twice a month, sometimes more often.  I felt like shit often.  I blacked out often when I drank, so I spent a good deal of my time wondering what stupid or embarrassing or incriminating thing I'd said or done the night before.  My hangovers were crippling: a day (or more) of depression and panic and feeling utterly out of touch with the world.

Some people say that you have to "hit bottom" before you kick an addiction.  I didn't "hit bottom."  I didn't lose friends on account of my drinking.  I thrived in my job.  I never killed anyone with my car while drinking; I never drove drunk, in fact.  (Not true: I drove drunk once, on back roads in Maine, when I was 19.)  I never tangled with the law while drunk.  I wasn't an angry drunk: I never beat anyone up while drunk, nor did anyone beat me up.  I wasn't a depressive drunk, either, nor was I much of a burden to anyone while drunk.  I always made it home to my bed (as opposed to, say, passed out in some bushes somewhere, or draped over the toilet in someone's bathroom, or in jail, or wherever).  I drank at night, almost exclusively: not before work; not during work; not at lunch, even on weekends.  Had I continued drinking, with some moderation, I think I could have gone the rest of my life without hitting bottom.

Which is a scary thought: just because I wasn't hitting bottom didn't mean that I wasn't slowly ruining my life.  Slowly using up my life.

What I needed was a straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back type of event, and a ten years ago, I got it.

December 31st, 1998: not just New Year's Eve, but also my friend CM's birthday.  CM had a big birthday thing that night in a loft in TriBeCa.  I showed up around 9:00 (after, I'm sure, some "pre-drinking," the drinking you do before you go to a party so you won't be sober when you arrive, which would be bad).  I stayed for a while; I knew CM both from a previous job and from the one I'd just started, so there were several people there whom I knew, and several whom I hadn't seen in a while.  But I wasn't particularly enjoying the party, possibly because I'd gotten too drunk too soon (pre-drinking is tricky and can lead to this condition), and eventually ventured out and called my friend PC, whom I knew was in town.

I reached him, and invited him to another party uptown.  PC and I showed up at this party, which was in full swing and where there were several people whom neither of us had seen for some time.  I had seen one of the people recently, the hostess, whom I'd slept with a few weeks prior, which may have added some sort of tension/intrigue to things, but tension/intrigue which I wasn't aware of because by that time, I wasn't drunk; I was very drunk.  I remember only snippets.  I remember attempting to sing the Patsy Cline favorite "Crazy" with an old friend, SV; I wonder how that bit of harmonizing sounded (I remember thinking that it sounded fucking brilliant).  I remember talking to another old friend, SH, about how he'd just sold his IT-recruiting firm to some larger IT-recruiting firm, which was good news for him.

And then -- probably after several hours (time flies when you drink as I was that evening) -- I remember, very vaguely, the hostess asking PC and me to leave the party.  I had no idea why, and still have no idea why; I don't know if it was something PC did, or something I did -- no idea.  Maybe it had to do with the hostess-related tension/intrigue.  I don't recall what PC's and my reaction was, either, but I'm pretty sure we thought (or at least that I thought) that the whole getting-thrown-out thing was funny and that people were being wayyyyy too uptiiiiight.

It was getting late: 3:00 in the morning or so.  PC and I went back to his brother's apartment, where PC was staying for a few days.  His brother and his brother's wife were there.  I barely remember what we did at PC's brother's house: hung out with his brother and his wife, I guess.  Maybe it was early enough that we were thinking about going out again (if last call is at 4:00, as it is in New York, and if it's earlier than 3:40, and if you're good and fucked up, heading out to the bars again seems like an excellent idea); I just don't remember.

Anyway, at some point, I decided to put the moves PC's brother's wife.  These types of ideas make sense -- really, they do -- when you've moved beyond being either very drunk or very, very drunk to being truly fucked up.  I don't remember what form the moves-putting took; I'd forgotten about it already ten seconds later when PC's brother threatened to beat the shit out of me before PC intervened and firmly escorted me out of his brother's place.  (I still don't know what form the moves-putting took; I do know, from PC, that it was pretty tame stuff.  But hitting on someone's wife, tamely or otherwise, is the type of thing that tends to piss people off pretty quickly.)

I left PC's brother's place utterly confused about what the problem had been, convinced that there'd been some sort of huge misunderstanding.  I grabbed a cab (I know this not because I remember grabbing the cab or because I remember the ride home, but because I do remember, ever so vaguely, being dropped off at my apartment by a pissed-off cab driver who didn't like that I'd thrown up all over the inside of his Crown Vic) and went home.

And woke up the next morning and took a shower and decided never to drink again, and it's been ten years, and I haven't.

I quit drinking despite knowing (not thinking, but knowing) that the fun part of my life was over.  The only reason I chose to begin the non-fun part of my life was that non-fun was better than fun-sometimes-but-generally-miserable.  (And do I need to mention that I was wrong?  That my thirties -- I was 30 when I quit -- were better than my twenties in just about every way possible?)

Wrong or not, there were benefits.  Waking up and not being hungover was heavenly.  There didn't seem to be any real downsides to not drinking (I didn't have the D.T.'s or other physical withdrawal symptoms; as much as I drank, I didn't drink that much).  It took some getting used to, to be sure.  I got my first sober view of the inside of a bar in London a few weeks after I'd quit; I was convinced that everyone was wondering why I was drinking Coke (it didn't occur to me that Coke looks a lot like rum-and-Coke, nor did it occur to me that nobody cared what I was drinking anyway).  I'd walk past sidewalk cafes and see a martini on someone's table and think to myself, "mmm, martini!" before realizing that I wasn't allowed to have those anymore (martinis were never my drink of choice; it's just that they looked so festive and alcoholly sitting there in their special glasses).  But that type of thing stopped happening after a few months, and at any rate, I was never tempted to act on these fleeting martini affinities, never tempted to jump off of the wagon.  Being in places like bars and parties took some getting used to, but I got used to it.  (Partly, I got used to it because I came to understand that at least half of the fun of being in a bar comes from the fact that if everyone around you has loosened themselves up with a few drinks, you'll pick up some osmotic loosened-upped-ness yourself.)

I didn't go to Alcoholics Anonymous.  My take on AA was that if I ever felt the need to go, then I'd go.  And I have to say that while I understand that AA is an organization which has saved many, many people's lives, I don't like some of the AA/twelve-step stuff.  At least, as I've experienced it; at least as it's been explained to me (perhaps it's been explained to me in a way which misrepresents it).  For example, on a date a few years ago (maybe six years into not drinking), in a bar, I was told by my date that I was "playing with fire" by going to bars as a non-drinker.  (Her father was an alcoholic, and she seemed to feel that this made her an expert on alcoholism -- which, I suppose, it did, in a way, but not in a way that applied to me.)

She also felt (she, who'd known me for approximately fifteen minutes) that it was unwise for me not to be attending AA.  She knew this because her father had quit drinking once for five years, but didn't attend AA meetings and fell off the wagon.  I wanted to ask her so many questions (such as, "aren't there people who fall off the wagon after five years even if they've been attending meetings consistently?" and "isn't it possible that AA is great for some people but not for other people?" and "is it possible that you're seeing a cause-and-effect relationship here when there isn't one?" and "is it possible that the people in your life are not a representative sample of everyone everywhere?"), but I didn't.  I wanted to tell this woman that it seemed to me that what she was saying was akin to saying, "if you don't take communion, you're not a Christian," or "there's only one way to worship God, and that's to attend a Christian church, so you're wasting your time with that Muslim 'god' of yours," or "it's impossible to lead a moral and fulfilling life if you're an atheist."

And then there's the AA jargon, particularly the "recovery" stuff.  I don't, for example, think of myself as a "recovering alcoholic"; to identify myself as such would be to claim that I was a victim of a past addiction.  I don't feel like a victim.  I feel lucky that I kicked a dangerous addiction; victimized is the last thing I feel.  (As to whether or not I consider myself to be an alcoholic, the short answer is "yes"; the medium-length answer is "well, define 'alcoholic'"; the long answer is, "I'm not sure what your definition of alcoholism is, but what I can tell you is that I had enough of a problem with drinking that I made a conscious decision never to drink again, which makes me an alcoholic by most definitions" -- another AA no-no, btw, as I understand it: I shouldn't be telling myself that I'll never drink again; I should be telling myself that I won't drink today: "one day at a time."  But I feel very confident in saying that I'll never drink again.  Just as when I get married, I'll feel confident saying "til death do us part," not "til tomorrow do us part."  Apples and oranges?  Maybe.  Perhaps I'm taking things too literally.  But I've been told not to "make grand pronouncements" about how long I've committed to abstain from drinking.  Why not say something, though, if you can say it with confidence?)

For some non-drinkers, bars, I'm sure, are to be avoided, forever.  For some non-drinkers, a daily AA meeting is essential.  For some non-drinkers, "one day at a time" has to be the approach.  For some non-drinkers, it's accurate to say, "I'm still recovering from the damage I did to my life while I was addicted to alcohol."  For some non-drinkers, the large amount of liquor which I've kept in my house for years so that people can come over and drink it would spell doom.  What I'm saying is that I could be wrong, but I don't believe that any of this applies to me, and I can't prove that it doesn't, but I can point out that I haven't had a drink in ten years -- ten years during which I've had some really great times but also some really bad times, as one tends to do over the course of a decade -- nor have I been tempted.  I'm not proud of this, by the way; it just so happens that the nature of my alcoholism was such that while drinking in moderation was impossible, quitting completely was, by comparison, easy.  I'm just lucky.  (Very lucky, I think.)

A week or two into my new career as an abuser of seltzer and coffee, I had a dream which has become a recurring staple.  The setting varies, but the deal is always the same.  The dream starts in medias res.  I'm sort of drunk.  Not wasted, but beyond what you might call "buzzed."  In this dream, as in real life, I am a non-drinker.  But in this dream, my mind (capable, see above, of concocting "logic" which holds no little or no water) has set things up so that being a non-drinker means being a non-drinker except for sometimes.  And in moderation.  Except that by the time the dream begins, I've already passed "moderation."  Not to the point of being falling-down, 12/31/1998-style drunk, but drunk nonetheless -- aware enough, though, to realize that I've had too much to drink, and to realize that having had too much to drink isn't something that someone who is a non-drinker should have done.  What non-drinkers do is not drink, after all.  That's the extent of the dream, really; I wake up soon thereafter, very relieved to find that I've been dreaming.

I think I have these dreams to remind myself that drinking isn't something that I should be doing.  I don't think that I need to be reminded of that, but perhaps I do.

A few years ago, a friend of mine quit drinking.  A few months into his newfound sobriety, we walked past a bar/restaurant-on-a-barge thing which was anchored in a little harbor near Brickell Key in Miami.  The sun was setting, bathing everything in warm orangeness.  We could hear the tinkling of ice in glasses, the laughter of people who were working on their second or third drinks of the evening, the happy sounds of the anything-is-possible mood to which drinking can be a shortcut.  My friend told me that this made him want to have a drink, badly.  The tinkly amber booziness of this floating scene reminded me, too, of everything that was great about drinking.  I thought about what he'd said, and reminded him (and myself, if I needed reminding) that, for people like us, such scenes represented the first forty-five minutes or so of what were, inevitably, hours-long descents into life-wasting semi-consciousness.  I think I also noted that while I'd never shot heroin, I was pretty sure that doing so would be really, really, really, really great, but that that wasn't a reason to shoot up.  And that likewise, having a few drinks probably wouldn't, in any but the shortest of terms, be much fun at all.

Anyway.  It's been ten years.  They've been the best ten of my life.  The "fun part" of my life wasn't over after all.  Definitely not.

Definitely not: the "fun part," you see, is over as of tomorrow, because tomorrow is when I quit smoking.  (If you see me smoking after tonight, btw, that's because I'm quitting gradually, over a period of two months.)  (Do I really believe that the fun part is about to be over?  No.  But -- so they say, and in my own personal experience -- quitting smoking is much more difficult than quitting drinking, unless drinking has become an all-consuming habit, which is what smoking is for anyone who's more than a "social smoker.")

And now I'm going to a party where alcohol will flow abundantly, and I'm looking forward to this party, and I'm lucky that that's the case.  So...  Happy New Year!