A Six Dollar Bottle of Wine

When do you start to worry? When you buy a bottle and feel bad about it? When everything in your brain says "wait, just, don't," and you do anyway? Or maybe it's when you realize that the only time you're worth a shit is when you're half cocked? When you're truly productive, fun, funny, alive, or happy? What then? Do you sit down and say, "I think I should kill all of that and see if I could be that way by myself?" Have I spent rent money? No. Have I cheated on my wife? No. Have I driven a car into anything? No. Then I'm still okay, right? I'm still functioning and I still have perspective, right? Right?

I don't know. I worry.

Im not sure if this sort of thing runs in my family or not, though it would be nice to know. What does run in my family, on both sides, is a sort of silent depression. A very British sense of defeat. Even if this was a trait, I doubt I could ever know about it. "Hanging on in quiet desperation..." as Roger Waters said.

I've been an asshole. I've said irretrievable things. I've made myself someone else. Repeatedly. In some eyes, I will never be seen as who I am, but who I was in a moment. So, what then? Would I stop? Would I make some fucking pledge to change? To toss aside this opiate? Would I say...

"I don't need this."

I worry. I worry that I do. Here I sit, drinking another bottle of cab, after swearing no more today. After swearing no more this week. No more at least until I get paid again.

So, where do I stand in all of this?

Face it or don't, right? Is it a problem? No, perhaps not. Is it an addiction, well, I don't know. I won't die without it, but I certainly wish I had it regularly. Its very much like sex I suppose. In college, I took psych 101, learned about "drives". The things that keep us motivated on primal level. The sleep drive. The hunger drive. My professor was wary to add the sex drive. We won't die without it, but we do a lot for it. I would in fact argue, that at the core, we do everything for it. Maybe that's the same level. Hunger, sleep, they are level 1 drives. Without them, I die. This and sex, that's a level two drive, I do everything I can for them, but I would go on without them, I suppose.

When do I worry?

When do I take a stand either way and either say "this needs to stop" or "I am functioning, happy and fine"?

Goddamn this all.