Out of the Drink

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By the time Ray quit drinking, he had been on that long, sad road since his teenage years. On his first date, at age 16, he got so drunk he vomited all over his date's dress. He was mortified the next day, though he didn't remember much. The young woman, whom he had thought so fine, would have nothing more to do with him.

He would say later: 'Nobody starts out to be a drunk. It's the 'creeping disease.' ' The inclination to lose oneself in drink nuzzles up, first sweetly, then glassily, and pulls the drinker down. 'Nazi whiskey!' Ray would call it. Then he'd laugh with a kind of self-abandon that belonged to that place from which he'd thankfully escaped.

Ray held out hope for all alcoholics, having come back from 'down under the floorboards' himself. I, too, feel that even seemingly hopeless drinkers have a chance. I've chosen not to look the other way when someone is over the top with his or her drinking. Once, a friend failed to see me off to my plane after he'd spent a night secretly bingeing. By postcard he pleaded 'sinus trouble.' I wrote him my own postcard: 'Try stepping back off the bourbon, and your sinus trouble will improve.' He checked himself into a treatment facility that week and began his recovery. He later said that my postcard had put him on notice that he wasn't fooling anybody.

I guess all the havoc I've seen alcohol cause has made me unwilling to play the denial game. When the spades fall, I call them what they are. It's the kindest thing to do. I recommend this kind of boldness or effrontery-whatever you want to call it-because although it won't always succeed, it might, and it is this chance that makes it worth the risk.

Ray considered himself living proof that even the worst cases could change course and reclaim their lives. 'If I could kick it, anyone can,' he said.

NyQuil

Call it iron discipline. But for months
I never took my first drink
before eleven p.m. Not so bad,
considering. This was in the beginning
phase of things. I knew a man
whose drink of choice was Listerine.
He was coming down off Scotch.
He bought Listerine by the case,
and drank it by the case. The back seat
of his car was piled high with dead soldiers.
Those empty bottles of Listerine
gleaming in his scalding back seat!
The sight of it sent me home soul-searching.
I did that once or twice. Everybody does.
Go way down inside and look around.
I spent hours there, but
didn't meet anyone, or see anything
of interest. I came back to the here and now,
and put on my slippers. Fixed
myself a nice glass of NyQuil.
Dragged a chair over to the window.
Where I watched a pale moon struggle to rise
over Cupertino, California.
I waited through hours of darkness with NyQuil.
And then, sweet Jesus! the first sliver
of light.

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