They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream.
Ernest Dowson
One day you're a highly functioning alcoholic, and then the next day you're not. It's as simple and as complicated as that. Many people think alcoholism is a progression of behavior. A gradual slip and slide into oblivion when actually it is more like a switch. Kind of like blowing a circuit breaker. Suddenly, everything goes dark.
Joe Clay had the gift of gab. Oh boy, he was a pretty boy with a great line of bull. As a PR man that worked in his favor until he started to believe his own bull shit. That's when everything went sideways. He lost his career. He lost his beautiful wife Kirsten who as it turned out was also a raging alcoholic. Sadly, as a result he also lost his own mind.
Joe Clay sought redemption, but it's not really clear that he found it. I've received a call from an alcoholic who was trying to make amends. I wondered to myself if I was just another step in his ladder as I had always been.
Today we call it alcohol abuse in order to relieve some of the stigma of the word alcoholism. This is so that all the bro's can feel better about binge drinking a six pack after work, and the house wives can feel a little bit better about finishing that bottle of wine.
It is what it is.
