I will drink life to the lees.
Roaming is in the genes of the human race. First emerging in Africa, Man subsequently migrated throughout the Seven Continents. Whence "Out of Africa" —the epithet for everything new, strange and curious. My own ancestors demonstrably settled in the Caucasus region of Asia, eventually finding their way to Europe, the British Isles and, finally, America. I have relocated several times in my lifetime. In a few of years I will have lived in a different city than the one in which I was born as long as the one in which I was born.
Migration runs in the blood of Homo sapiens. When I was a minor, hitchhiking by middle class youth was less a concern than a sympathy, one which was not, however with the hitchhiker, but with liberal ideals. It was seen as a form of civil disobedience, manifestation in a small way of the mass demonstrations at the time, a protest. It was a statement, a stand, amusing to Walden Pond intellectuals and Woody Guthrie folk, leaders in the fight against The Establishment. I made more than one hitchhiking trip out-of-state by myself, and with friend, as a statement of independence.
At about the same time my interest in my future turned to art, and getting the professional training needed, the tide of social permissiveness was turning. The winds of social activism turned to concern about personal responsibility. The fashionable political winds of the denim peasantry uprising changed direction for the New Black of materialism. It was the end of an era. The drugs used and abused by the new generation reflected an increased standard of living. Cocaine became the drug of choice among the smart set, replacing Marijuana, which was perceived as unrefined. Cocaine's connotations were money, connections, and a more refined taste in such things.
Throughout, Heroin remained firmly a Taboo, a sickness. It was considered somewhat less of a social stigma than alcoholism because of its illegal status. Because the penalties were too high to risk, its possession and use went beyond self-indulgence, looking for all the world like a pact with the devil. Death from drug overdose had become a celebrity drama. The list of celebrity deaths from drug overdose is long. When more than one controlled substance is found in the corpse, alcoholism, endemic to human nature, may be given by the coroner as the main contributing cause of death. It avoids the determination of suicide.
The worldly inducements were hazards of growing up, a gamut I had run, and survived. I did not enjoy drinking when young. I thought it made people (like me) stupid. Later, I "learned to drink," entertaining conceits about what was good, better, and best in a bottle. Drinking makes strangers friends. It made me feel I wasn't an outsider, a loner, a loser. I earned wages. I could handle it. It got to the point where getting drunk felt too good to be true. It was too easy. As the advertising slogan put it, "It doesn't get any better than this," so did I, contrariwise, conclude I had reached the summit beyond which nothing remained.
The banality of drinking, of getting drunk again (yawn). Any habit gets boring, including—but not limited to—alcohol. My only regret is hearing no more of the dry discussion in bars, listening to the stories of the denizens there, to their triumphs and failures in life—all to the accompaniment of a jukebox. If drinking is the common denominator of the alcoholic profile, not drinking singles-out the dissenter as an outsider. You can't go to a bar to take notes. The watering hole is a refuge. Interlopers are viewed with suspicion. It is a social remedy that should not be taken lightly. If misery loves company, sociability, as such, is ambivalent. You are the company you keep.
Walt Whitman, in his only novel Franklin Evans, dramatizes the plight of the alcoholic. The book was a pot-boiler, submitted to a ready market—the temperance movement—a supposed testament of salvation. It was pandering to social crusaders who were, perhaps, too full of self-importance for the sharp-witted Whitman to resist, a mark for a budding confidence man. Whitman was shrewd, but he regretted the experience, vowing never to write another novel. Unwilling to throw the baby out with the bath water, the main character of the novel was salvaged by Whitman, the hapless any man of his mature writing. He grasped that taking the side of those less fortunate earns a sympathetic hearing—and ran with it.
From Franklin Evans by Walt Whitman:
"From that moment, I have an indistinct recollection of going through scenes which it makes my stomach now turn, to think upon—drunkenness, and the very lowest and filthiest kind of debauchery. Probably, for I never knew for certain, I spent five days upon that spree. Not at any single time was I sober, or near sober."
The graphic art of Brian Higgins can be viewed at: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/8-brian-higgins