A History of Addictions

I’m sitting on my porch, smoking a Cuban cigar, (courtesy of my wonderful friend who funds my habit) drinking coffee, wishing like hell, like crazy, wild hell, it was a rum and coke.
Rum and coke of the early eighties, variety.
Rum and coke of the dads after work, wearing mustaches and skinny ties, variety.

New Year’s Eve, 1993, I had just turned seventeen, was drunk for the first time and kissed for the first time. We drank rum and coke. Rum and cokes of the - parents are sleeping, we’re almost naked but not because we’re Christian kids, variety. I married the rum and coke kid four years later. We drank the white wine that we made ourselves in his, still sleeping parents', basement.

Seventeen was a big year. Seventeen was the year my dad, my rum and coke dad, left us for nine months, to dry out from his numerous addictions. One of them, a rum and coke addiction. I guess it didn’t quite take because now-a-days, his rum and coke comes in small plastic bags that look like white powder. Rum and coke, minus the rum, variety, I guess.

In time, my rum and coke kid, my beautiful, beloved, white wine drinking husband, switched to the red wine that I drink now, and I cannot forget the port sweet skin involved the night I conceived my daughter. But then, well, that crazy ol’ kid, he kept right on switching, leaving me sipping red, while he guzzled through beer, then whiskey and then, in the end, hidden bottles of vodka in the house, while I and the baby, and not the parents, slept in the basement. It is a lie, in case you are ever wondering, in case you are ever contemplating alcoholism as a lifestyle, that you can not smell vodka. He might as well have had something he enjoyed, so that when he wept when I found him, when I washed his urine soaked feet in a bucket at night, when I kissed his drunken lips and told him that it would be alright, when I promised him that I would see him through, that at least he would taste sweet and familiar.

It’s hard to see a rum and coke kid through though, when he’s switched to secretly swigging vodka. When he’s developed a taste for other, more painful, addictions. The vodka man is now drinking what suits him best, not alone, but in another woman’s basement.

After I had my daughter, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The medication I am on is of the same stuff used to fight cancer and it’s damn hard on a liver. Red wine has been relegated to special events only. I told a friend today, as I cried on the phone over a different sort of lost friendship, that it is a good thing I’m not allowed to drink, because I would probably be an alcoholic. We laughed. I cried some more.

There are some days when I’m certain that the addiction gene that is swimming around in me somewhere, is doing its best to convince the other genes that it’s just a harmless little fella. On those days I swear off of blogging, I swear off of drinking altogether, I swear off of smoking. I have become addicted to control.

So tonight, it’s coffee and cigars, instead of rum and coke, instead of red wine, instead of coke.

Good lord, good grace, my daughter is sleeping in the basement. I will choose my addictions carefully.