Yesterday

[smokingboot]

I don't mind drunks. I don't even mind alcoholics; given my father's love of the hard stuff, I had to learn a sort of tolerance, made a fool of myself often in earlier years, and I'm absolutely up for getting blootered on occasion even now. No judgement here. However, due to inadvertently growing up, I enjoy myself but keep an eye on my intake, again, thinking of Dad.

Having said that, if there's a more toothgrinding exercise than talking to drunk people when sober oneself, it's hard to imagine. I found myself stuck on the phone with someone convinced that his neighbours had been arguing but it might have been a dream. He has terrible nightmares that blend into reality so easily he can't tell which is which. Said conversationalist had been on a combo of sleeping pills and booze, because, he says, the pills don't work without a kicker. He's convinced he hasn't been given 'good' pills by his doctor but he won't change doctors because he describes himself as 'an obstreperous old bastard.' Then he told me that he thought he was actually 'busy dying.' This stuff, as well as alarming me, makes me click my teeth. Truth is, he needs rehab desperately. I don't think he's had a booze-free day in years, won't go to AA because he thinks it's a Christian cult, won't go to counselling because he's cleverer than everybody else, won't change, uses every excuse for not changing except the real one. Behind the alcohol there's a world of pain he hides from. He just will not deal with things, with life. Fight, we fight to live don't we? Because life is horribly tough but grand and lovely too.

This is not the worst conversation I've had with a drunk. It's not even the worst conversation I had with a drunk yesterday.

Jeez, I'd better get the coffee on.