There’s this disconnected feeling I get at some point during a night of drinking… Sort of an autopilot sensation that my body and my conversation have gone on without my conscious oversight and that I’m playing catch up with myself.
Let’s see… Fiona came home and needed to unwind, so we went to the pub. I had a pint of stout. Tim showed up (he’s The guy on the other barstool who’s not gay but somehow seems like a threesome partner nonetheless). I had a shot of Jameson, then a glass of wine, Bushmills and Baileys (aka a “Bushwhacker”), then a shot of some whiskey I don’t know, then a glass of port… I’m not going to feel too great tomorrow.
It’s not just the cotton feeling in my head, it’s the fact that my body knows what to do and manages to get me home without too much trouble. Heck, it’s the fact I’m able to type this with a modicum of accuracy (and a lot of backspace/deletion) that adds to the surreality of my drunkenness.
Everything happens before I’m aware of it. Everything takes a moment longer to process than the time it actually occurs. I essentially become a passenger in my own body, and yet, my responses are my own, even if I have to review those responses later.
It’s not like I’ve never been here before (see I’m not that different drunk), it’s that I recognize it almost as an old acquaintance. I’m not going to say “old friend” because my drunken state is not a friend, even if it is familiar. It’s not a nemesis, either, it just is.
But I think part of the problem is that my intellect is able to fight through the haze of alcohol and sugar (I really think the sugar in these things is worse than the alcohol alone). It’s not that I find myself drunk, it’s that I’m intellectually aware of my inebriation even as I lose my ability to control myself.
Sure, the girl at the bar that showed up later was someone I’d fuck. But my intellect talked business with her (probably a good thing). And yet, I feel my tongue slur my words, even as my bran is struggling to say the complex things that need to be said in the context of conversation. I find myself apologizing for my body’s betrayal — only it’s the betrayal of my brain as it allowed these toxins in, sip by sip.
Vitamin B and lots of water… then sleep. And then… soul searching and a lot of, “Did I actually say I’d do a business presentation at 11 and say I’d do a 35 mile bike ride at 2?” It’s not only what I did in the bar in my drunken state, but what I said I’d do tomorrow that is going to hurt.
Disconnected or not, integration is going to suck. Suck hard.
