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Saturday, September 29, 2018

John Barleycorn

John Barleycorn's inhibition rises like a wall between one's immediate desires and long-learned morality.
--Jack London, John Barleycorn

There are things about which one develops an intuitive sense through an intimate acquaintance with experience he would rather not have had. Having been there recognizes itself in others who have also been there--and in some sense, those of us who have been there remain always there

Specifically, I'm talking about alcohol abuse. I was (am) an alcohol abuser. And although I have not abused alcohol in some fifteen years, I am left with the various ruin that it, through me, inspired in my life, the pain that it, through me, inflicted on others.

I do not say that alcohol abducted my soul, that alcohol alone is guilty. I do not say that the devil made me do it. No, nothing that was done was done without my consent. But alcohol, for the abuser, exerts its own philosophy, saying that none of what happens really matters--all this is just between you and me., it says. We are free, we are at liberty, we are unconstrained by stodgy conventions, and in any case, we will control ourselves after just one more drink. In fact we can control ourselves any time we want. No harm will be done. 

The alcohol abuser frees  himself for a time, casts the monotony of inhibition to the wind--just for a moment--and has the unassailable faith that the isolated moment cannot possibly color the balance of time he spends in sobriety and functionality. This is not really me, after all. This is just me this moment, and I will return to the real me forthwith. 

This does work for a time. Nothing happens. Everything in the world you had left momentarily is still in place. No harm was done. It was crazy, and maybe it makes you cringe. But you forget easily, because it is really not pertinent to your everyday life. 

Right up until it is. 

Now, this is a really long way of saying that I, as an alcohol abuser, recognize the characteristics in others like me. We recognize a comradery of symptoms--denial, excuses, exaggerated anger, outrage at accusation (because the accusation is on target). We have at hand a mental resume that proves we are good and responsible people. Certain parts have merely been redacted. They are inconvenient. 

In Brett Kavanaugh's responses to the questions about alcohol abuse that came up in the Kavanaugh/Ford hearing, I saw the familiar machinations of an alcohol abuser. Intuitively, I understood that Brett Kavanaugh had a drinking problem. And like all drinkers, he still has a drinking problem, even if he no longer drinks. He does not want to suffer now from things that happened at the hand of alcohol (with which, as I have said, one's own hand was joined). Of course he doesn't. Because in a sense he didn't really do them. That wasn't really him--not the 90 percent of him, at any rate. The things I did were not me, either. 

Except, of course, that they were. 

Denial is easy. It is the natural avenue of escape. One hates the aberration which has come to be his judge. It doesn't seem fair. The small weight is tipping the entire world.  But there it is. Moments do matter, after all. I do think that in one of these moments the young Kavanaugh and his companion, alcohol, were just being free, just having fun, just casting away the nuisance of moral restrictions, and together molested a young woman of no particular account--for with alcohol, only two things really exist in the world: you and the open, unfettered moment. It was a long time ago, it didn't matter, it wasn't him, and so he responds with anger, indignation, self-righteous denial, outraged at the private realization that he has been the author of his own ruin. 

I look back upon the terrain of my own life and see that many of the most sorely scorched patches were lit by the match in my own hand. I regret them, I mourn them, I cringe inwardly and wince with pain at my own stupidity, but I do not deny them. I would take them back were this, in some magical world, an option. I would have them be undone. I would be fully the person my own purest heart meant for me to be. There was a time, I suppose, when I believed that one could just deny and 'sin no more', regret and move on. But we find that those things we have actuated, the product of each individual moment, live and endure, exert themselves on both the inward man and the man in the world. 

He who denies, who kicks and screams, who seeks to displace blame and accusation, and will not judge himself, can hardly be a fit candidate for the office of a Supreme Judge.  

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