A Cautionary Tale

One night about a week ago as Tidy, Lefty and myself celebrated Monday like a Roman emperor, and as we discussed me and Lefty getting our new (and first) tattoos a realization hit me. However, it took a week or so for it to set it. This realization came from a response from Tidy to my question of "why the hell are we out at 1:30 a.m. on a Monday?" His response was pretty simple "Because we are alcoholics." That simple statement set me to thinking, once I became sober enough to think, my paterfamilias is an alcoholic and I made a promise a long time ago to not turn into my father. Now, that is a tall task for any of us, the apple does not fall too far from the tree as they say but, my father and I parted ways in a philosophical sense many years ago. I certainly do not want to wake up one day with a raging hang over, and come to the horrid conclusion that I have morphed into my old man. Luckily I have come to another conclusion (rationalization?) I am not an alcoholic, I am a drunk. There is, in my opinion a difference, to me an alcoholic NEEDS to drink if he does not things start to fall apart. A drunk, on the other hand, drinks to satisfy a WANT (at least that is what I am telling myself) as Baudelaire says get drunk be it on wine, woman or virtue, but get drunk. I drink as a social experience with my pals, I wonder sometimes if we could have a conversation without some drinks being involved. That is not a bad thing it is just a simple fact. It helps the flow of conversation, and provides us an easy forum in which to communicate. Surprisingly enough, a few ideas even manage to come from these conversations (before they collapse into some drunken foolishness) such as the idea that I am a drunk not an alcoholic.
Or, as Homer Simpson put it "to alcohol the cause of and solution to all of life's problem's."