The best drunks I ever knew

I’m a strange creature.  The people who impress me most are those who appear least impressive, but have been touched by the dust of eternity, people who most would assume as not worth listening to, but whom possibly God MOST esteems.

Those who have most impressed me in this life—those who’ve had some kind of ‘x’ factor—are those who quietly contain a wisdom that’s hidden until, like dainty flakes of gold, they’re seen shimmering as the flickering of light into a deep shaft reveals them.

These people can be summed up as drunks, or former drunks, but drunks all the same, because, while they transcended where they’d come from, they never forgot where they’d come from.

There’s something glorious about a person who’s been to the depths but has then emerged, able somehow to grasp a life beyond it.

It’s like Mick.  He was a big lad, with a big voice, but only when he used it.  He preferred to listen, having coached men in the ‘steps’ for a decade and more.  We sat at a park bench one chilly June night in 2004 and he was a life saver—a drunk and a life saver.

Or, like Charlie.  This man singlehandedly showed me how to deal with my anxious mind.  “How important is it, Steve?” he was frequently heard to say.  I’d come to an AA meeting all strung up with my upsetting concerns and he would sort me out in minutes.  A drunk without drink for seven years I think at that time—a man who had taken the AA program seriously.

Mark was different to Mick and Charlie.  He was abrasive, but not for selfish reasons.  You had to earn your way in.  Tall and angular, once I invested time with Mark, I found him to be one of the best drunks you could find—sober for 15 years.

Many of the best drunks I’ve known have dealt with trauma and grief that many ‘normal’ people cannot imagine, unless those ‘normal’ people are counted among the number of drunks who are still finding life impossible to manage.

Drinking problems, like drug problems, and every other problem that’s a problem, are genuinely problematic when life’s become unmanageable.

Thankfully, the best drunks I’ve known came to a place where they had to put down the drink and admit their lives had become unmanageable, and that they needed a ‘higher power’ to recover.

There’s nothing wrong with the drink if you don’t have a problem.  But as soon as a problem develops, watch out for that time when life begins to become unmanageable.  Then you might qualify to become of the best drunks ever—one who overcomes.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash