On Drinking Alone

What do you make of drinking alone? I picture myself in a black and white classic film, face half shaded, wearing a fedora cocked to the side, part Bacall part Bogart part Le Samourai, smoke bellowing out, eyes glossy, asking the question. But in this scene the question would be better, like:
What is wrong with drinking alone?

I tell you what is: nothing. Nothing at all is wrong with drinking alone. Except if you are me—a person discinclined for solitary contemplation. It has taken me 31 years and all the instances of the Bad Drunk—some accounted for on this very blog—to finally figure it out. I figured it out this morning when I, waking up from an outing of drinking alone, had to do the following:
--attempt to “Unsend” a drunk e-mail to no avail because it had been read already.
--check, with baited breath, the financial damage my lonely drunkeness had caused my ridiculousky tight monthly budget (I am someone’s mother; I can’t actually run out of funds on booze…)
--ask myself the question: why on Earth did you do that on a Monday night?

All things considered, it wasn’t such a bad aftermath, when damage was assessed: the money damage wasn’t so bad all things considered (I paid no rounds, I did not have 5 drinks, I did not order myself an expensive meal, I only was there 3 hours) and the drunk e-mail, for one, was an e-mail and not a drunk dial and content-wise, though it wasn’t my best moment, it wasn’t something that will prevent me from looking the person in the eye today. That said, I’m pretty sure I won’t have to look the person in the eye today… Which is good. So again, damage is sort of minimal. But to the substantive question: Why on Earth did you do that on a Monday night?

Oh, wow, I don’t know… Which is why I’m going to therapy. I’m all over the place, very restless, very persistently counterproductive: the scales steady and I feel balanced, and then I don’t. I resume going to the gym and feel wonderful for that, then I’m out drinking by myself. I find the loneliness peaceful, profoundly so, then I’m lonely in very profound way. Lonely even in a pathetic way, as in you know, the drinking alone way. This is not news but there’s a way that a swinging mood is more exhausting than a steadily gloomy one. Very much so. I seem to have developed a real swinging mood quality about myself of late. I know some obvious part of that is my impatience with the process of feeling something. I don’t quite know what that means and how one lets go and does that. I just know how to write everything and say everything and tell myself that having felt everything and thought everything through I am now done with everything and on to another thing. See, it’s tiring just saying it, but this I think, is how I know to live. And that requires a captive audience, no? That includes myself, a most discriminating, critical, audience member.

I think that’s to the point of why we’re social beings and without our linkages we don’t do well—well in certain specific cultural contexts, I mean, like ours. I think this is to the point of why solitary life is for monks and buddhists and people who really cultivate their inner knowledge and really dig in there and get to know themselves. The rest of us—well let me stop pontificating and just speak of myself. Myself I think I don’t do very welll left to my own devices to deal with a process of feeling something of magnitude. For all my talking, there’s a whole lot that’s just talking myself out of the ability to do the emotional equivalent of *not* going drinking alone. Which today all sounds very creepy to me, like maybe I am needy; I don’t think I am, I never thought I was, I would hate to find that I am. But maybe I am, even if momentarily, needy. And that would be bad timing on my part because I have needs that are on a long term suspended schedule. I will spare myself the listing of all the things I need and have needed and am not getting anytime soon… Point may be though, that maybe needy people should never drink alone. It’s a false pretense.