It only takes one...

This one isn't specifically relevant, but is really important to me so I thought I'd put it out there/here.

I have a serious drinking problem. Since coming back to school I hadn't touched a beer. Last night was forty days sober, so I ended up celebrating it in true alcoholic style - getting blind.

Now that said, this wasn't my usual bender. Firstly, I was drinking only beer and I didn't have a cigarette (so now I'm forty-one days smoke free). I watched the football with the boys, went out for a little and sank a few nightcaps at home. Nothing drastic, but considering my body hasn't had a drop in a while and I was floating in the double-drinking-digits, I got a little loose.

I slept longer than I have in ages, but I woke up feeling lethargic. I drank my first coffee in forty days to get out of the brain cloud but that didn't help either. I checked my phone and realised I may have sent (read: most certainly sent) a few choice messages to a lovely lady that might (read:did) land me in the $#!+.

While it was all happening I was having a great time. For the 6/10/12 hours I was drinking I was having a blast. It's the aftermath that isn't worth it.

I worked with, not a hangover, but whatever happens after a hangover before you feel normal again. I was responsible for other people and I was giving everyone lip, customers cheek and just being unpleasant. When I act that way it comes off funny, but it's actually quite disrespectful.

What is worse is that I end up disrespecting myself, losing touch with what I should be doing. Like taking care of my studies, honouring the commitment I made to not just increasing my own personal knowledge, but giving back, giving to the world that has given me so much.

I don't have that moderation button that so many people take for granted. I'm not asking for pity, or even understanding. I'm just admitting it 'aloud', placing it permanently in the magical interweb for [probably] no-one to see. I'm really just making it concrete to myself, cementing my particular brand of inadequacy so that I can look it in the eye, grab it by the balls and turn it to real advantage.

This level of addiction, of commitment, can be put to real use. Instead of placing my focus into the thick glass at the base of a bottle, I can direct it toward the thin shell that separates games from theatre, play from plays, life from falsehood, truth from escape.

It sounds easy, but it isn't. What it is is worthwhile. What it is is beautiful, powerful and it is so because, in my case, it is so tenuous, so precious. One drink is all it takes to take it away. One drink is all it takes to destroy everything.

But I won't let it, and you who might be reading this, you who sit next to me in class, you who have the same issue, you will be there to hold my hand, read my work, argue with me.

Because it only takes one...