(thesunmagazine.org)
I'd already sold my car a year or two before the episode I'm about to describe occurred. Moving from Pennsylvania and away from a failed relationship brought me to the Jersey Shore in my mid-twenties. I could remember the anxiety I used to feel at last call when the bars closed at 2 in the morning back home, so bars open 24 hours at the Shore was my definition of heaven at that period of my life. I experienced no "last call anxiety" because there was no last call with my new, free lifestyle. And no car meant that I could pursue my drinking career any time, day or night, without worrying about killing myself or someone else in a drunk driving accident.
A little drunker than I was at that time, some guy from Philadelphia asked me one night if he could crash at my place, knowing he was too drunk to drive an hour and a half back to Philly in the middle of the night. No big deal. No problem. Sure.
Surprised to find him already gone from my third-floor apartment when I woke up the next morning, I kind of shrugged my shoulders and went about my business.
When I went out again that very next night to the very same bar, after a bit, I noticed that the guy who'd stayed at my place the night before was already there across the bar from me. After a few minutes, I figured he hadn't yet noticed me, but would surely come over momentarily to thank me for the hospitality I'd shown him the night before.
Eventually a conversation struck up and as we talked, I began to realize that he didn't remember that he'd met me the night before and in fact had spent the previous night at my apartment about as drunk as he seemed to be at that very moment.
I didn't attempt to refresh his memory.
Obviously, you already know "He Couldn't REMEMBER that He'd Spent the PREVIOUS NIGHT with Me!"
Long story short:
We ended up climbing the steps to the third floor of my apartment building again, for the second night in a row. As I put the key into my door to let us in, I remarked, looking back at him and grinning sheepishly, "You were here last night, too, remember?"
"You're kidding?"
"I'm serious." The conversation went something like that. Never saw him again.
Decades later, other details of the story are unimportant.
But if you drank like I did, perhaps you have blackout stories of your own.
It wasn't until I finally got sober that I learned what blackout drinking truly is. You are so ossified that although you are nearly fully conscious, your brain has become incapable of storing some or all of what is going on around you. No memories formed. Nothing to remember, no matter how conscious you may appear to have been at the time to yourself and to others.
By now, I don't have to tell you that I'm not trying to show you what a fool that guy was. I'm describing the kind of guy I became.
My life eventually progressed into a kind of Blackout Drinker's "Groundhog's Day." I would wake up the day after the night before and could never fully answer for myself or others, the who, what, when, where or why of the last dozen drinks.
I did not blackout today. So I guess you know I also did not drink today. I can think today, focus today, remember today.
Now, finally, I know that "Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
That concludes this episode of "A Day in the Life of a Blackout Drunk."
lol :-)
Sober as Hell!
Have a Happy & Clean & Sober Day!
*****
Enjoy ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal
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