Between Elephant Traps

Drinking, or alcoholic drinking, is hard work. It takes real dedication. Carver was the first I heard say it, and it was intriguing, since, if I had thought about it all, I might have concluded that nothing was lazier than drinking, and wouldn’t have imagined anything hard in laziness.

Now, up close, I hear many people say it. Sometimes it’s about hiding bottles, lying to spouses, playing shell games with colleagues, the downstream slide home from the bar, or the upstream walk to the liquor store. Other times, it might be about responsibilities silting up while a drinker is otherwise occupied.

Either way, “Drinking is hard work” is met with subtle nods of acknowledgment. It’s like a line of poetry everyone knows. The thing is, though, so is “Nothing is easier than drinking.”

Not drinking has the same resistance to measure. I’ve never heard an alcoholic say it was actually easy. Some people do say that they are “recovered.” They are no doubt lucky to feel that way. But I have no idea what it means. Alcoholism might well be a disease, but it’s not chicken pox.

(The literature does speak of recovery, of course: even those who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, if they have the capacity to be honest, are advised that they can recover. But it’s still not chicken pox.)

I couldn’t say whether I find not drinking easy or hard. I dread the double-shift work of “not drinking,” the obsession of it, “not drinking” as a condition. That feels like an elephant trap. On the other hand, simply pouring energy into other obsessions, spending no time at all with the thought of not drinking, feels like the trap for a larger elephant.

“Be drunk,” says Baudelaire.

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Yeah. Right. And what happens when you run out of virtue and poetry?