For a great many years, my preferred method for coping with stress was to binge with considerable panache on food and drink. If I could toss sex into the equation I would, but it wouldn’t fool anyone, would it? At one time, travel fit this pattern of excess.
December of 2013 was as stressful a month professionally as I can recall, and to be sure, there was feasting and guzzling amid the holidays. They occurred with a degree of unease; a few times previously in my life, I’ve voluntarily “rehabbed” myself because of physical discomfort, and yet this time, it was more of a psychological matter.
I called a halt to the revelry on January 1, and am down 17 pounds since then. As noted oft times before, there is no secret to losing weight, at least for me. Enhanced exercise, smaller portions of the same food, and a reduction in beer intake. It’s simple, and dreadfully difficult.
The hardest part about reduced alcohol intake is a double-edged sword effect. After a couple of days, I find that all aspects of mental acuity surge upward. There is vastly enhanced clarity … but who really wants to see this miserable, pain-filled, stupid world so clearly?
I’m fortunate to be in a committed and loving relationship, and so the home front has been good. She keeps me rooted. However, just about everything outside the boundaries of my house is more crazily unsettled. My mom needs more help than she used to. The city of New Albany is an infuriating, dull laggard of an entity, resistant to change.
At work, we’re trying to reinvent BSB in mid-air entering into a second five-year plan, and of course, figure out some way to sell more of our beer in a “craft beer” market that makes very little sense, and which seems determined to lapse into intellectually sclerotic self-parody.
Coping with the demands has been draining. Take it from a guy with an SAT score of 680 verbal, 320 mathematics: Being expected to endlessly crunch numbers is agony, and since last fall, I’ve done more of it than ever before. Numbers look like an impressionistic painting to me, and always have. Bankers hover, leering. Capitalism oppresses. I’m ready to scream, stuck in a horror movie of math.
Rather than scream, I’m ready for a good, long, intense binge, filled with pints of beer, bottles of Scrumpy, fried chicken, clam sauce, ribs … and curiously, I haven’t taken it -- at least yet.
Maybe at the age of 53, it’s a sign of maturity. I’m reminded of my first trip to Europe at the age of 24, shy and inhibited and completely overwhelmed. I drank a bit here and there; a few beers, a glass of wine and some ouzo. It was a whole month into a three-month stay before I felt secure enough to get plastered, and when I did, I was in the company of my cousin, in a small town, away from the city lights.
The past six months have been tantamount to some sort of ancient video game. Issues keep popping up, and being shot down or disabled, and then more of them pop up in place of the first wave. The trigger finger is bent backward, and the barrel is white hot. I’m not sure when I’ll feel secure enough again to relax my guard, and to escape from this perpetual cycle of emergencies.
This is my theory for why I’m largely refraining from drink. Responsibility and adulthood. But I’m not sure I like it much. At the same time, I don’t dislike it. The few beers I’ve had since December were great. I’ve greatly enjoyed recent tastings, when small nips suffice just fine.
Someday, things will be back to normal, won’t they?
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