Like that ‘friend’ you had at Uni, who you never really liked but the one you always ended up with at parties, united in the spirit of misadventure, like two satellites orbiting around each other, spinning out of control into the abyss of dark space, bound together in a desperate embrace borne out of dependency and fear.
The ‘buddy’ you fooled yourself into thinking you liked as your memories sifted through the debris of your escapades with a cavalier glass half-full attitude, blithely forgetting to mention the simmering tension, the syphoning off of your psychic energy and subtle toxic barbs that seeped into your soul during those halcyon days when your self-esteem took a battering on a daily basis.
Alcohol was my special ‘friend’.
Until at some point, around a year after my last drink, my attitude towards alcohol changed.
For a long time after I quit I had an ambivalence towards alcohol, in that I could be exposed to it and feel nothing, a kind of transcendental elevation in which I held no judgement like a Buddha of suburbia, my feelings remained completely neutral.
But one year in, something changed.
I brought my old drinking partner, and dear friend, a floral pint of craft beer, which had a fragrant scent that reminded me of bubble bath. He said it was wonderful… I asked him if it…