Experience of Alcohol.

 Such and such know how to live! by which I mean die. 

WHEN I was between the ages of about ten and six and one and twenty a pint of Guinness was excellently persuasive, like a good merchant selling me his defective goods, dilating ever on possibility and never on limitation. A pint of Guinness would say, ‘this wooden chair is a velvet cushion’, ‘this line of conversation is as amusing and enjoyable as a firework display’, ‘this stale bread and this faded cheese is a king’s banquet’, ‘that pun I never heard before’. I found the reality of the situation would only intrude into the dazzling magic show on two frequent occasions, namely when I attempted to read a book or when I was obliged to make for the lavatory. Perhaps I have strayed beyond the just description of one pint; this may be the region of four or eight pints depending on tolerance. Yet I remember at sixteen reeling from three small bottles of Beck’s beer, equiponderant to a pint and a half or perhaps two pints of true English beer. To this day, though I hold lager beer to be an odium in other respects, the smell of a newly opened bottle of Beck’s conjures a world to me of the Strand Palace Hotel; its purpled and underground aesthetic around a strange reception area; its odd carpets. I fancy I recall a fish tank, but that may be embellishing the memory in aid of the image. Howbeit, attempting to read a book after only a single pint’s worth of Beck’s even, whose smell is greater than its substance, or indeed of London Pride, whose taste is like an intermixture of currants and the haloes of shooting stars (or at least how they ought to taste) is a hopeless task. One cannot read inebriated. Indeed, one cannot do anyhing really useful inebriated at all, at least I cannot, aside from looking like a cat in catnip, or imagining everyone thinks me charming when I am only sweating. This is known too in the lavatory. Suddenly all noise of the interior hubbub is hushed into a distant murmur, the light glares starkly, the drops of the taps fall noisomely as though to say ‘we are sober enough, visitor’. Worst of all there is often a mirror, and it is seldom kind to the face it reflects. The truth that had been before but a dim line of questioning dawns grimly in the lavatory: intoxicated, one is comparable to a tranquilised beast of the field, red-faced and breathing like bellows, staggering to find a corner to urinate and possibly sleep in. An inebriated man is a drugged animal. If instead of drinking a seemly-seeming cup most socially one instead, over a meeting of friends, reached into a pocket for a pillbox, and then proceeded to throw back a few large capsules to the wonderment of the company gathered, and so showed, before the elapse of many minutes, all the symptoms of alcohol consumption, it would be a very shocking thing indeed.

   Nevertheless, others may do very well with claret, perhaps I am something allergic to it. Lately at least, I find that alcohol provides nothing of that spark which it did at other times. Perhaps this would suggest that the joy of alcohol is not alcohol’s itself, but that alcohol functions somewhat as a key to releasing one’s latent stores of joy, that had aforetime been carefully measured and contained for their due season, as trees withdraw their leaves’ nutrients in the autumn in wait for another spring. Alcohol unlocks these stores all at once, and perhaps that is a bad thing if they run away and come not back. Certainly, a hangover is like having to live in a house whose lightbulbs have all blown. Yet this very action of alcohol may be a great blessing in reality if these joys never are prompted to come out at all otherwise. However, as I have already observed, it seems there are no such vibrant joys left in me either to release or let shrivel. All that I achieved most recently was a feeling of influenza. This may be compared to a dish well made that is rendered exquisite by salt or saffron. To the contented man alcohol may be a tremendous good, but to the melancholy man alcohol will only worsen the flavour of an already unpromising broth.