Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (A Dry Spell)

I got a bad liver and a broken heart
And I've drunk me a river since you tore me apart
I don't have a drinking problem
'Cept when I can't get a drink. --Tom Waits

There's a lot of doctors that tell me
You better start slowin' it down
But there's more old drunks
Than there are old doctors
So I guess I better have another round. --Willie Nelson

However much I booze, there ain't no way out. Pete Townshend

There probably are about a zillion other songs that deal with drinking. Relationships likely top the list of song subject matter, but I bet drinking is up there. I remember a Country song, even, where the guy sings about how life isn't fun since he quit drinking. Actually, it's called "You Ain't Much Fun,'" by Toby Keith. I just looked it up.
Anyway, I think I need to take a shot at abstaining from alcohol (pun intended), at least for a while. There just have been one too many times of too much drinking. Or a hundred too many. Or a thousand. I don't know anymore.
I don't think I'm an alcoholic, but some people, using certain definitions, probably would consider me one. Frames of reference differ. While some people might consider four drinks excessive, my friends and I consider it a minimum, an appetizer of sorts. I am, however, an alcohol abuser. I have difficulty controlling the quantity I imbibe, once I get started. And I don't really see the point of having a few beers. I drink for the altered state.
The gastroenterologist tells me he can feel the edge of my liver, indicating the organ is fatty. Fatty liver can lead to hepatitis, which can progress to cirrhosis, which killed my father. My liver-function blood test came back normal about a month ago, and if the liver is indeed fatty, it will repair itself during abstinence. If you drink, days off apparently are a crucial aspect of maintaining a healthy liver. I take plenty of days off, which is one of the reasons I don't think I'm an alcoholic. The GI doctor routinely tells me to stop drinking. He says he doesn't know if I would end up as one of those people whose organs start to fail as they age, but he fears I could be setting myself up for problems in about 20 years.
There's no time like the present to, at the least, take a break. To let my fatty liver slim down. To prove that I can do it. Reasons always abound for procrastination. I'd like to see how I feel, physically and psychologically, after abstaining for a while. To see how I feel on an antidepressant without alcohol. I have to say, though, that I have felt pretty bad in the past without alcohol and antidepressants. Pete Hamill, in "A Drinking Life," said he felt better after about a month after he stopped drinking. I exercise pretty heavily, so I wonder if I'll lose weight. Probably not, because of the antidepressants. I had about five drinks the night before I ran a half-marathon last month.
Is alcoholism/alcohol abuse a disease? The doctor says it is. Give me a fucking pill, then. The ones I'm taking don't cut it. I have observed that for some people there's never enough alcohol, while others can take it or leave it. There has to be a physical component to that. I don't think it's my fault that I have difficulty stopping once I start. I don't set out to do it intentionally. Maybe my ultimate goal should be to get to the point where I can control it. First things first, though--a break is in order. Perhaps I won't want to resume after a hiatus.
So, how do I go about this? The GI guy told me all the people he knows who have quit drinking (mostly patients, I'd guess), say AA is the way. One day at a time. But I don't fancy standing up in front of a roomful of people and introducing myself as an alcoholic. Particularly because I don't think I am. So many denials must make it seem like I'm trying to talk myself out of the realization that I actually am an alcoholic. Except I'm not. Anyhow, these programs say you have to admit a problem exists. I do acknowledge the existence of a problem. But I don't see 12 steps as the route:
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.
Maybe, maybe not. I don't think so, though.
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Am I insane? I've never thought so. And who is this power greater than ourselves?
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
Here I would have a problem. Is there a difference between steps 2 and 3?
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
I do this routinely, anyway. I'd be happier if I were like my mother and avoided a moral inventory at all costs.
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
I've admitted to myself and the people who matter. Again with God.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Does anybody detect a pattern here?
Step 7: Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
Oh, for Chrissake.
Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
I'm not aware of anyone I've harmed with whom I haven't made amends.
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
This seems like a substep of step 8.
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Don't think I have a problem here. And this is like a substep of Step 4. Step 4b.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
This seems redundant.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I don't think so.

With two steps containing substeps, it's like only 10 steps really exist. And if you combine all the God steps, that would make one out of six. When you combine the substeps with their paternal steps, and you've combined the God steps, you're left with five steps.
I didn't have the greatest experience when I went to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings when I was in college. Those people were serious. I mean, I didn't feel great, but some of those folks seemed like their heads were going to explode. One night, a gentleman who must have been about 25 years my senior, struck up a conversation with me. I shudder to think of this now, but he invites me back to his condo, and we're going to meet his younger friend there. So we're there, and this guy has a piano, and he's playing French love songs....I know, I know. But I really didn't get it until my friends laughed so hard that they nearly pissed themselves. I did manage to get out of there physically, if not psychologically, unscathed. There was another time when a gay guy expressed interest in me, but even I couldn't miss that signal: He said I didn't have be gay to let someone suck my cock.

So I figure I'll just take this break on my own. For how long, I don't know, but I'm looking at maybe a month. Maybe less. I'll see how I feel. A month seems to be the experts' consensus--if you can abstain for that long, you don't have a problem. I don't want to entertain the prospect of not being able to drink under certain circumstances.
I quit tobacco on my own more than three years ago, so I can abstain from drink, I suspect. My habit involved primarily smokeless tobacco. Copenhagen. For the longest time, I chewed my thumbnails and rendered them useless. Now I have thumbnails, perfect for opening cans of tobacco, and no tobacco on which to use them. The effects of tobacco withdrawal immediately descended upon me and convinced me that I had made a grave mistake by having used tobacco in the first place and that forgoing it somehow precipitated my peril. I became lost in the throes of depression, which provided an impetus for me to resume medication. I remember the distinct moment when the withdrawal peaked, forcing perspiration out of my body in a shudder, as if in a final purge. My jaw stopped hurting, and the lesions inside my mouth that appeared after I desisted, the ones I swore were malignant, began to heal. The tingling in my back and neck subsided. According to what I've read, that tingling resulted from the increased oxygen flow, in the absence of nicotine. Who knows? Maybe it's all bullshit. But there are documented similar experiences. And I know what I felt. Some people, on the Internet, of course, say withdrawal from smokeless tobacco affected them more negatively than quitting smoking. I think another person said it was harder than heroin. Or crack or something. I can't relate to that. It did suck. So far, nothing even remotely similar with respect to alcohol. See, I told you all I'm not an alcoholic. Withdrawal from tobacco demonstrated, to my surprise, that I had a physical dependency. Not so with the sauce. That's good, though I'm not trying to justify the sometime abuse of alcohol.
A big part of the difficulty in relinquishing tobacco involved psychology. I had grown so accustomed to chewing tobacco when I...did virtually anything. Walking the dog. Washing the car. Fishing. Working out. Reading a book. And on and on. Alcohol hasn't achieved the same prominence. It couldn't; I'd be dead. I do, however, have some questions. During the times in which I would normally drink, what am I going to do now? Caroline Knapp, in her memoir, "Drinking: A Love Story," wrote about watching the movie "Clean and Sober," with Michael Keaton. Apparently he comes home after rehab and is sitting in his apartment wondering what the fuck to do. She said she felt just like that. I don't feel so much like that. The kids alone can keep one pretty busy. I suppose I can try to be constructive in the time during which I normally would drink. But I've also wondered what I'm going to do with no vice. I can't remember living without a vice. I need an addiction, goddamnit. I'm addicted to addiction. Negligible caffeine, no tobacco and no alcohol for a spell. I risk becoming an ascetic.
I never had an epiphany regarding tobacco. I didn't awaken one morning and think, 'I've had it.' I did have a lump inside my mouth, though, that may have started me down that course. The dentist said it was nothing, but when it didn't go down after about six months, I visited the oral surgeon. He said it was a fibroma, from biting my cheek. He removed it with some radio-loop technology that enabled him to scoop it out, the smell of burning flesh left in its wake. He sent it for a biopsy, anyway, just in case his certainty about its benign nature proved incorrect. I remember how I felt when I detected that lump and it wouldn't go away, and perhaps that provided the catalyst for me to stop. With drinking, I've similarly not had an epiphany, exactly. I have recently felt as if I haven't been setting the best example for my children, so that weighs on my psyche. As a youth, I thought that an approximation of me to my father fell outside the realm of possibility. As someone with a few more years under his belt, the notion that fewer dissimilarities exist than I thought has proved disconcerting. But, alas, he left his family and drank himself to death. He left me.
I have felt more that the manner in which I've been drinking has run its course, just as I felt with the tobacco. If I resume drinking, the pattern has to change. The manner in which I've approached drinking over the past few years doesn't lend itself to long-term sustainability. Maybe 20 years. Maybe 30. I don't know. Perhaps fewer. I'm reminded of a woman I read about in a Wall Street Journal science column concerning longevity and genetics. A researcher on aging is quoted as saying: "I have a woman who recently celebrated 91 years of cigarette smoking," says Dr. Barzilai. "She is 106 now."
Nevertheless, the medication I take taxes the liver a bit already, and even though my liver function remains sterling, it could use a rest and I could refrain from piling on. And that smoking 106-year-old is probably the exception. More than once I've put not just myself, but my family, in a precarious position. I might have a disease, or at least the seeds of one, but that doesn't mean I should spread it. People with AIDS shouldn't have unprotected sex.
Abstinence, even if temporary, does carry some benefits. I'll have more money. When I quit tobacco, I started putting away $40 every two weeks, roughly the amount I spent on Copenhagen. Over three years, I saved more than $3,000. But what is money when compared with overall well-being? In fact, money is part of well-being. I'm not yet convinced that abstinence enhances well-being. I won't wake up in the morning with a headache, though they usually go away within a few hours. But I won't wake up not recollecting what transpired the night before...at least not because of drinking. I guess my health will benefit, though the doctor has said that my cholesterol numbers, which are off the charts in a good way, likely have benefited from drinking. Maybe I'll lose weight. I think I've exhausted my list. Perhaps I've fried too many brain cells drinking, rendering me unable to compile a more comprehensive list.
The negative aspect of teetotalling I suspect is hard to convey to people who aren't as inclined to seek respite through the bottle. The absence of a lubricant makes me an even more antisocial miscreant. With alcohol, confidence increases, apprehensions fall by the wayside. The troubles with which I'm so preoccupied go on hiatus. Beer is one thing. It can taste good, but I wouldn't drink it if it didn't have alcohol. It can make you feel bloated sometimes, also. Whiskey is quite another matter. I'm not into the aesthetics of drinking like the aforementioned Caroline Knapp. She described the shape of the bottle, the beads of sweat on the outside, the sounds of the pour. Her writing on the subject contains some eroticism. While I do admire the color of a fine bourbon, the therapeutic effects don't begin until it hits the tongue. A few passes under the tongue, a few brushes with the upper palate, the burning sensation, followed by the swallow, the whiskey's coursing. Then the aftereffect, what the pretentious connoisseurs call the "finish." How long the burn and the taste linger. These aficionados say you taste with your nose; I can smell some vanilla sometimes in bourbon, but I guess my nose and palate are unsophisticated. I don't get the grass and citrus and oak. Orange peel and lemon rind. Peppery, buttery. Toffee. Pair it with this food. Beer people do the same thing. Give me a fucking break. It all brings to mind a "Rescue Me" episode in which Maura Tierney says it all tastes like alcohol to her. Touche. Of course, my use of French words, especially in a confessional of this nature, might seem pretentious, also. Right on.
What I'm doing involves breaking a pattern, not completely abandoning a life of sin. That's what I'm telling myself. I could have used a beer while writing this, also.