Whiskey In The Morning

What shows greater character than doing what needs to be done.

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Damn! Well, why not? Tastes good. Sweet amber spirits with a note of caramel lingering on the tongue. Morning light dancing through the glass. How pleasant. And, if you don’t get drunk, where’s the harm? I imagine most drunks start their day with similar thoughts and get drunk anyway. It needn’t be so. Moderation is possible, even if not much practiced.

People who drink lightly on appropriate social occasions make-up the majority of all drinkers. They don’t interest me. Their moderate drinking is reflexive. They don’t have to think about it. Some rare others are completely conscious of what they drink, and how often - which is all day, every day.

These drinkers are maintenance drinkers.

I’ve known a few of them.

The first was the truck driver that brought the newspapers for my childhood paper route. I never saw him drunk, and I never saw him sober. Despite that, he always delivered on time, every day. Responsibility is characteristic of maintenance drinkers. They are not alcoholics. They rarely get drunk, and they always take care of business. Three more were fathers of friends from high school. All were WWII veterans, reliable bread-winners, respectable family men, and good workers. They never missed a day of work. They started each morning with a shot of whiskey and a flask in their pocket to mediate their dreary workday. They had learned how to manage the monotony of a life that was not as they wished it to be.

It’s almost an artform.

It represents a skill not possible for most of us. It requires the right sort of metabolism, will power, and a steely commitment to functionality. I don’t know how many such people manage this. Probably more than we know. Still, not many. It may seem wrong, but I have a certain esteem for the integrity and imagination of these maintenance drinkers.

What do they gain from this state of moderate but consistent intoxication?

The Tennessee William’s play/movie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, offers a clue. Two main characters, Brick and Big Daddy, have a confrontation over Brick’s drinking. Big Daddy angrily questions Brick about his constant drinking; “Why”? Brick answers, “It’s the click in my head that makes me feel peaceful. It’s like a switch in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and all of a sudden, there’s peace”.

I was intrigued by this “click in the head”. In my youth, I pursued the “click”, several times over. I got hangover headaches, but the “click” never showed up. Maybe I have the wrong metabolism. Nevertheless, something like the ”click” probably explains maintenance drinking.

Life is hard.

Maintenance drinkers have found their own way to cope and still be productive.

How can I not respect that.

By K. L. Shipley

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