Fifteen years of age is a most difficult, if not impossible time in the life of a schoolboy. It is a time when the word "fool" enters his life most forcefully then exhausts all the available superlatives as it proudly moves to supplant "stupid" for top draw.

Mark Wingall

At 15 I fared well in the "fool and stupid" leagues. I stopped going to Sunday school, lost my virginity for the second time, simply because the first was based on what I had previously said to a gathering of my friends, which were always lies as long as the subject was sex.

Then I discovered alcohol and liked it, ganja and left it alone until much later, cigarettes and loved them, parties, hanging out with the boys, girls and conquests.

Alcohol gave the parties that animated energy and filled me with courage. As I arrived at a party, if no liquor was immediately available I would go and chat up an ugly girl.

That was always easy. A pretty girl presented challenges and, as usual, alcohol rescued me. As soon as I had two or three beers inside me, I divested myself of the girl short on looks and made a straight line for the prettiest girl in the house.

In between "fool and stupid" I fell in love with mathematics, physics, painting and poetry while a few of my teachers were embarrassing me by reading my essays aloud in class.

At age 22, at the pathology department of the UWI, I saw a cancerous lung in a jar of formalin. At 24 I decided that I needed to move from smoking 40 unfiltered Camel cigarettes per day to zero. At age 26 when my second boy was born I had my last cigarette, 29 years ago.

At age 26 I was making a lot of money because I was the best at what I did, but I was spending it very fast as I partied, drank whisky, moved with shady characters and spent many one-nighters in many hotels.

During those times when sobriety was more desired than in former years, the only days when I failed to have a drink was when a hangover was on in earnest.

A hangover can best be described as a cross between the pain felt paying for one's alcoholic pleasure and resting up for the next big binge. Even atheists pray. "God, if you really exist, just let me, hic, live through, hic. this. If you do this for me this time I will never drink again." A day later you are beating the liquor again.

All of my friends drank and none of us saw anything wrong with drinking to excess. Indeed, it was typical of us to ridicule any friend who could not measure up. To all of us, it was a sign of manhood for a man to take an excess of liquor and hold it well and bounce back again to imbibe even more the next day.

Where did we learn this from? For me, my father's strongest drink was ice cream laced with Pepsi, and today it's one of my favourites. Where my father worked hard to provide money to keep body and soul together, my mother's main role in life was her eight children, getting us off to school, ensuring homework was done and preparing endless meals, day in, day out.

If I was looking for a reason to drink, I wasn't going to find it there. In time I accepted that I drank simply because it was something I enjoyed, period. I must say, however, that the undue influence of older men at the workplace had to have been a factor as it was almost seen as a rite of passage to "get the trainee drunk".

After being diagnosed with acute pancreatitis in 2000, I gave up on Wray and Nephew white rum. Then I fooled myself into believing that Appleton and Pepsi were less damaging to me. Then I fooled myself again by convincing myself that brews in bottles were even milder than Appleton.

After fooling myself for long enough I became scared enough, not just of the excruciating pain of pancreatitis but of the realisation that I have lived long enough on borrowed time.
For those who drink daily, here is a list of my own tips to stop drinking, not cutting down.

1. Read all the material you can find on alcoholism. Most of my friends are alcoholics but they are highly successful, happily married and not interested in reading or giving up on liquor.

2. If you do not want to stop, continue drinking. It is your life, not mine.

3. Recognise that the only person who can assist you is you. Analysts, psychiatrists and the like have their own problems. Deal with you, not them.

4. Do not draft any plans to stop drinking. Do it today, then deal with it one day at a time.

5. Ensure that you have a partner so attractive that you will hurt unbearably if they should ever leave you.

6. Respect the wishes of loved ones, especially children.

Recently Chupski said to me, "Honey, you have been drinking for about 40 years. Your pancreas has said to you that it does not want even one more beer in the body.

You are lucky getting a warning."
I know it is almost impossible to convince people who drink not to do so. In fact if you are happy doing so, go ahead. Don't let me spoil your fun. If, however, you really want to put drinking behind you, make today your last effort at poisoning your body.

Maybe if drinking had affected my sex life, I would have given it up years ago. There was a time when I was in my 20s when I woke up one morning and found a strange, ugly, naked woman beside me, her arms wrapped around me and her snores rivalling those of a drunken stevedore.

I slowly eased off her arms, sat up in the hard bed and stared at the stranger and the loose rope-like appendages she had for breasts, trying hard to recall what I had done to end up in Salem's lot with one of its residents. I knew I had been drinking heavily the night before but after that I drew blank.

Silently I left the bed, checked to ensure that my money was safe, slipped on my clothes then crept out while clutching my shoes. That is a dangerous, dirty life to live, but it is what too much alcohol underwrites.

observemark@yahoo.com

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