The weight of something colorless

2022-12-15

Dear reader,

Do you remember when you first learned to tie your sneakers? My son does. He was unpacking some memories from his earliest years last week in the car ride home from school.

“We were in the mudroom,” he told me. “I was wearing a navy blue sock on my left foot and a red sock on my right foot,” he said.

Cool memory, I thought. But he wasn’t done. “You were also teaching me that day what’s ‘left’ and ‘right.’ Now those are the colors I see in those directions,” he said.

He corrected himself. “Actually, left has become more reddish-pinkish over time.”

His mind’s eye gives color to things that are colorless to me. Wow! Sometimes I wish I had this ability.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of cultivating it. As Norton Juster wrote in The Phantom Tollbooth, “So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.” And come to think of it, I may not see things that are otherwise colorless, but I can often feel their weight.

Multi-generational alcoholism is just about the worst thing that’s happened to my bloodline. I became aware of this when I was about 10, due to events around my grandfather’s death. No sooner did I gain this awareness than I became afraid of alcohol and what it could do to me.

For good reason. As I was taught in various ways, I was vulnerable. Alcoholism can skip generations. Whether through DNA, epigenetics, or through all the ways that trauma is passed down the line, I was born prone to it. I was taught that I was powerless, and that the question for many of us is not if we will become addicted, but when, and to what? I saw it start to grab people close to me.

Putting aside the toxicity of the substance, I found it came with secrecy, shame, and defensiveness that harmed relationships and reinforced the harmful behavior. People close to me who developed addictions also tended to be fatalistic about their own flaws. Behavior beccomes destiny and destiny becomes identity.

I have a friend who believes that if he smokes cannabis, even just once, he’ll turn into the devil. He was taught this in childhood as a part of his religious faith. “I know it’s not rational,” he said, “but I just have no interest in smoking the stuff.”

Rational or not, having a hard-and-fast rule is working for him so far. I had a rule like that about alcohol that worked for a while. I got it from my sixth-grade teacher.

“Alcohol is poison,” Mr. Havens told us one day. “Even a little bit. There’s no safe dose.”

The message reached me at a good time. As I started to become exposed to alcohol and marijuana in high school, I kept his words in mind. “No thanks,” I said.

I was taught that this would be hard because of a concerning phenomenon we children of the eighties were drilled for called “peer pressure.” It didn’t turn out to be much of a thing. No one seemed to mind, or even to notice. They were getting drunk and stoned, after all. They adopted me as their straight-edge mascot.

Abstinence and “just saying no” can work for a while, or maybe for a lifetime in the case of my friend. But in my experience, it’s fragile. It leaves a person vulnerable to their own curiosity.

The first drink I remember having was from a “bomber” 22-ounce bottle of McNeill’s Firehouse Amber Ale, at a party at Marlboro College. What I wouldn’t give now to have Ray McNeill and his warm, welcoming, and music-filled firehouse back among the living. What I wouldn’t give to bring Marlboro College back to life! But at the time, I was disgusted. The taste and sensations overwhelmed me. I left the bottle behind with just a couple of sips pulled off.

Over time, I grew to like beer. I became a regular IPA-with-dinner drinker. Sure, it was poison. But life is full of little poisons. We all come closer to dying every day. Perhaps finding joy in the process was a blessing. I left behind Mr. Havens in favor of a quote attributed to Ben Franklin: “Beer is proof that God loves us.” (The quote is false—Franklin said something like it, but about wine.)

One day in 1949, physicist Richard Feynman felt like having a drink. Instead of obeying the urge, he asked himself where it was coming from. He felt it came from outside him, that alcohol was steering his behavior. He decided then and there that he didn’t want anything to do with such a substance. He never had a drink after that.

I first heard this story about five years ago. It didn’t change my behavior at first, but it planted a question in my mind. Every time I enjoyed the pop of opening a can, I felt the question in my body. Was it me who was choosing the alcohol, or was it the alcohol that chose me? I felt I couldn’t be sure of the true answer, especially if I didn’t say “No” to a drink on a reliable basis. I didn’t like this.

Seven weeks ago, maybe longer now, I said “No.” I felt the pull, but said “No” anyway. I don’t know if it took willpower or just defiance, wanting to be my own person. I’ve been saying “No” ever since.

I didn’t decide not to drink. I didn’t mark the day on the calendar. I told my family I was giving it a try. I stocked up on other kinds of cans to pop open at dinner—kombucha and coconut water.

I noticed right away the pull this colorless substance exerted on my neurons. To resist it would have been impossible. I asked myself instead to become aware of it. And what had been invisible to me started to take on a shape and weight.

I looked at the delicious IPA in the fridge and wanted it. But the want was not a want of a simple thirst from within my body. The want felt like tentacles overlayed on my brain by a force outside of myself. And as strong as that pull felt, it felt unimportant.

I started to become aware of how alcohol made my regular experience feel insufficient. Having dinner with my family and friends wasn’t enough. The alcohol wanted in on the experience. And I thought, “Why not see what it’s like without that?”

What it’s like is that I’m sleeping better. I’m dreaming more in color. If I feel bored, or uncomfortable, or stressed, I’m asking myself why and trying to deal with that instead of adding something to my system.

Do I or don’t I? I’m weighing my choices less often, and feeling lighter. I’m finding a curiosity about experience large enough to hold more experiences inside of it. For me, that’s a resilient belief system.

Cheers!

Tristan
Quill Nook Farm, Halifax