Day 130: The Clever Voice

The drinking voice in my head is very, very clever.

It has come up with hundreds of scenarios and excuses that serve to show the gullible, hesitant, sober me why it is OK, even in my best interest, actually, to drink. In the spirit of “telling on myself,” I want to relate this newest scenario the voice has come up with:

I have always played with the idea of writing a drinking memoir (leaving out the most embarrassing parts, of course), but the longer I am sober, the less I remember what it was like to be madly in love with, to be physically, mentally, and spiritually vanquished by alcohol.

Could I really write about this effectively now, at an impressive four months’ sober? In my dozens of journals, there are long loopy tirades, clearly written while drunk, with desperate pleas to be saved from drinking, but I can’t really feel it.

And I would have to feel it to describe it exactly.

And I don’t think I could do that unless … just for a short time … I went back into the trenches. Sort of like a foreign correspondent.

You all (my future readers) would watch from the sidelines as I ventured into the den of the demon itself, all for a higher cause. Fighting my unwillingness, the threat to life and limb, and the risk of getting sucked under forever, I would bravely, selflessly, go forth to my favorite drinking spot, inhale deeply, and with great trepidation, order a Cosmo.

I would be like a superhero, saving Gotham City. I would be doing it for you, for all of the future generations that will read this book, chilled to the bone as they contemplate the kind of sacrifice that I made, to once again, in the spirit of science, experience what alcohol actually does to one’s mind. I would let them hook me up with electrodes and scan my brain during what I think might come to be called Operation Going Under. (Should that be the book title? What if it’s made into a movie? Who should play my part? Someone younger than me … to appeal to a wider audience. Reese Witherspoon? Jennifer Lawrence?)

This scenario has actually worked on my simple mind in the past. Because when I listen to this voice, I become a sheep. A wooly-headed, easily-led, gullible sheep. A sheep following the wrong shepherd.

Enough of the sheep analogy.

I feel better getting this down on paper. Or in a Word document, or whatever this is out in Blogsville. Because when I tell on the voice, it loses its power.

Thanks for listening to the voice with me. It’s not so convincing anymore.