Kind of like Leaving Las Vegas

I remember when I first started watching movies seriously, one of the dark, beautiful films that came out that year was Leaving Las Vegas. I'm still trying to find a copy of it for my personal collection. Well, I get to thinking about it because the premise has a guy who gives up on his life, fills up his suitcases with liquor, and decides to drink himself to death.

I think of this because, as I was embroiled in that thing with my job in the balance, I was planning to go on a massive bender. I decided that I would see the whole thing through sober, and once I had resigned I would spend at least one week waking up at 10am, pulling a bottle out of my closet, then drinking until I passed out and it was the next day. There was a time when I hit a much lower point than this, a few years ago, but all of the stress that came with this recent thing, along with all the personal issues I'd been facing made me just want to lie down and attach an IV drip full of whiskey to my arm.

I weathered the thing sober, following a friend's advice. She said that I had to be all there to be able to get through it. And after I still have yet to recover from all these things that have happened. I haven't made the conscious effort to go on a bender, although it turns out I have been on one.

When things are happening normally, you don't really notice them. For example, I used to weigh about 120 pounds. I did not notice that I was gaining weight. I mean I saw the same face in the mirror every day. It wasn't until someone I hadn't seen in a long time saw me and said, "Tangina, ang taba mo na!" I weighed in and saw that I had increased by a good number of weight divisions. Similarly, you don't feel old, until let's say, your favorite bands from high school start getting played on MTV classic. Man, how did I feel when I was listening to the classic rock station and they played Pearl Jam's "Even Flow"?

So this morning my mom saw me out of it. I passed out last night and woke up without a hangover but disoriented, trying to piece things together. My mom accepts a lot of the things I do. When I failed math she said, "Anak, ok lang yan. Sa UP ka naman e." She's nice to my girlfriends. When I bring friends over to hang out or drink she always does something nice for them. She's just that kind of person, terribly nice. And when I start to get weird, she will dismiss the behavior as something I have to do to write. But I think she has seen something I hadn't.

Not in an angry tone, but in a disappointed one, she asked, "Uminom ka nanaman?" And I said yes, and was embarrassed to say so. Like I said, she accepts the drinking, but there was genuine concern there. You don't have to say much to express certain important things. Her bringing it up meant that she had noticed something.

So I sat back and started thinking. What have I been doing this week? and here's what came out: Monday- Happy Mondays, downed most of a 350ml bottle of gin (with Marge, Kael, and some of the TWG boys taking a few swigs) and somewhere around six beers; Tuesday-movie premier, no drinking; Wednesday, was supposed to just stay home but wound up heading to Blu Fin and having somewhere around 8 beers; Thursday-dinner out no drinking; Friday-went to a birthday party, drank maybe a quarter of a bottle of tequila straight from the bottle and had more than ten cups of beer (there was a keg! and i lost count somewhere after the eighth beer); Saturday- one-on-one drinking session with Anna, we downed a pitcher of margarita and a beer tower. that beer tower was massive. so i passed out. today I'll be in the recording studio laying down tracks for the last song on our album/EP, and most likely after that we'll be downing a few beers.

See the thing to be noticed here is the frequency and intensity. Out of six days, I was drinking four nights, and this wasn't like having a beer or two. This was real, hardcore, hit the bottle like there's no tomorrow drinking. I've told people, as long as I don't drink, I'm fine. But once I get a taste, well, it's a downward tumble. The thing about it is that I haven't noticed. I mean, someone asks me out, and normally the people who know me know that when they need someone who'll have a drink with them I'm their man. I just go. But not until my mom expressed concern did I realize, whoa I have been drinking way too much. It's time to turn this around.

As I write this I'm feeling something in my back, this twitching inside and it frightens me that it could be my liver or kidneys making complaints. These could just be ghost pains that I am imagining because I am thinking of this. But a good number of friends are getting sick with all kinds of things. Our pasts are catching up with us.

Easy and I get to talking sometimes about how we used to feel immortal. In your early twenties you feel like you can take anything on. Nights of mad drinking, going home as the sun comes up and getting up for class or work, shrugging it all off as if the body were adamantium. No more these days. I make a wrong step and my knee pops, I'm afraid it will get dislocated again at the slightest movement. All these things I've done to my body; I feel that my body betrays me when I get hurt, but I can't help it, perhaps it is the body's revenge for all the abuses I have subjected it to.

Without being conscious of it, I've already gone on my post-crisis bender. It's early morning now, the sun has come up while I wrote this entry, and now maybe I should try and turn things around.