The Devil's Metabolism – Or How I Could, But I Won't
I'm not really the day-counting type. I don't have (or desire) any numbered chips. I won't be following 12 steps, no matter how passionately Russell Brand tells me the AA equivalent of drawing Disney princesses as serial killers (yawn) is the new hotness. If you're waiting for an apology...it's not coming.
(Genuinely, if AA works for you, more power to you. But it's not a modality of recovery that I agree with for me.)
If you'll forgive the inelegant link (all will become clear) what I am counting the days on...is my current month of Amazon Prime, before I most likely cancel it. Yep, I'm the girl with armfuls of free cake who cancels my subscription the day before the charge. Hence, I'm rinsing their exclusive shows, starting with series' 1-3 of Lucifer.
I'll be honest: it's not actually very good, but it made me think about alcohol in culture, and the lack of alcohol in me. (Gods, I really enjoy finding these world-focusing epiphanies in trash television.)
To hell with the consequences
Based on the rather good comics, Lucifer as a show is...okay. If you enjoy a white genius series to the formula of The Mentalist, House M.D., Lie to Me, or Castle, it might well be worth you checking out. It's formulaic with a capital F in parts (no bad thing) and the bits that don't work are because the show-runners sort of forget whether the characters are intelligent or not. It's fine. Like, it's watchable, and Tom Ellis is very good when he's given something to work with. But, I digress.
One of the things I noted while watching Lucifer is how glad I am that I'm not triggered (or at all bothered) by the imagery of alcohol, because dang is there a lot of booze on-screen. It's baked into the concept, courtesy of Neil “STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEES!” Gaiman: Lucifer's sacked off the whole 'Lord of Hell' gig to take a break on Earth, and runs a little nightclub. Cue drink, and girls, and general naughtiness.
In his colour-graded domain, the clientele are quite happy for the semi-clad PG13 dancers to halt bumping and grinding (to tunes about devils, being bad, etc. – the show suffers horribly from Dawson's Creek Music Syndrome) for Lucifer to play some dour show tune (inevitably about devils, being bad, etc.) on piano while necking four-finger measures of whiskey from heavy-bottomed glasses. Shocking. Unholy. Sinful. It's an alright little show for putting on in the background really, apart from the main ladycop character (as of mid-season 2, where I'm up to) badly needing some actual character.
When Lucifer himself isn't keeping the state of Tennessee in jobs, his demon bartender is shilling the amber swill. Someone's entered a room? Pour. Lucifer's managed to deliver a terrible line with aplomb? Pour. Something sort of happened in the main plot arc, such as it is? Long pour. The amount of 'whiskey' they neck in the show is...well, it's a lot.
But they have a special dispensation (read, token, throwaway single-line excuse) because they're demons, my dude. They have special metabolisms or whatever, and it's hard for them to get drunk! It's not that alcohol is shorthand for dangerous glamour. No, silly.
…Nah, it is.
It's glamorous TV alcoholism, the kind that has no negative effects for the thin/pretty/clever/aspirational protagonist. The kind where Olivia Pope regularly cries into a fishbowl-sized glass of red and never gains any weight. Or where all the characters from The Punisher could be attacked by Russian ex-paramilitary gangsters at any moment...best drown their sorrows swigging liquor from red cups. (Snaps to Le Punisher himself for actually drinking responsibly in episode one of season two, before the show gets painfully boring and meandering like all Netflix season twos do.)
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker
All that cask-aged poison on-screen though (it's a whole lot, people) did get me to thinking about alcohol and its place in my life. Kind of like how if you buy a certain type of car, you notice it everywhere, or if you can't have barley any more it's in hecking everything.
It's been nearly two years; I'm no longer under the power of somebody awful; I've stepped away from some abusive relationships with places and people that isolated me from the things I love; I'm no longer in the deepest throes of grief from the death of my father; I'm not suffering from exceptionally high levels of pain from my EDS3. And those are a mere few of the dominoes of place, time, and head-space that fell together to lead me to be a high-functioning alcoholic for a while. Some are stories I've yet to tell. Some are stories I'll never tell.
Sure, by all logic I could probably drink now if I wanted to. I don't adhere to the AA school of 'once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic'...
But I don't want to.
The ways I'm different now that I don't drink, mean that I simply don't want to drink any more.
Much like how I also don't want to take cocaine. Or heroin. Or any other drug I've never taken and don't fancy trying. Much like I don't fancy walking a high wire between two skyscrapers. Or jumping out of a plane. It's not my thing.
In the past I've been in situations where I've (repeatedly) had to refuse ecstasy and cocaine. I took a pass on the offer of opioids from my doctor, who suggested them for pain management for my condition. I've more recently been to places where you can legally buy all kinds of marijuana, and I was like, OH THAT IS A THING I COULD DO I GUESS BUT NAH. In a similar vein, I get offered drinks all the time and...shrug.
All the ways that my world has changed, all the ways that I have changed, are ways that I like. It's not that putting alcohol in my system would put my status as 'not an alcoholic' in jeopardy, it's that I don't want to not be sober. The shades of how I’ve changed, and grown, and started creating, they don't include wasting time getting wasted.
Even if I had the devil's metabolism. I wouldn't want to drink.
How could I possibly know?
Oh, but I do.
Just desserts
A little while ago I was ON LIKE A FUCKING TRUCK, the coping strategy for which involved eating my calories for a year over 24 hours – including an entire tray of tiramisu (more or less) to myself. It was good tiramisu. But, good tiramisu involves sweet marsala wine.
The (essentially negligible amounts of) wine in the dessert gave me the mildest baby buzz of all time. Perhaps it was only conspicuous to me because I'm squeaky clean these days, but I felt that familiar feeling, and I noticed my noticing. I didn't feel nostalgic, or want more. While I'd enjoyed the tiramisu, and wouldn't have wanted it to taste differently, I really didn't care for the effect of the chemical in it. It was unpleasant. I downed some water and politely waited for it to go away, like a gross Uncle you see seldom.
Because... it's not my drink any more. (You do you, darling. It can be your drink if you want.)
I'll enjoy the alien feeling from my tiramisu, or trifle, every now and then. And I'll notice how I no longer enjoy that weird perfumey feeling in my blood.
Is this why people stalk their exes? I get it now.
Rolling the devil's dice
Let's flex to other drugs.
In the current day and age, smoking is (rightly) demonised. People even write in to Netflix to complain about characters smoking on-screen, like they're aware of their powerlessness against the aspirational marketing of television's show 'n' tell. In comics, if a character smokes it's Making An Important Point about immortality, or powers of regeneration, or perhaps glamorous nihilism. (All of which apply to Lucifer.)
But it wasn't always that way. Not so long ago, smoking was the norm, in life and on television. It was absolutely EVERYWHERE.
Watch any old movies and you'll likely see smoking everywhere. (Try Ghostbusters. You'll see what I mean in only a few minutes.)
It's weird to today's sensibilities.
So Big Tobacco is (sort of) falling, and now vaping is taking its place. Just like with tobacco, people (myself included, for a time) will take the drug, and slowly the hidden consequences of that new poison will start to show its face. It's awful. It's genuinely tragic. I wonder what the future holds for it?
I also wonder what the future would be like, if Big Alcohol were ever to fall? Is there a someday where the glamorous, consequence-free alcoholism of aspirational characters is something that righteous types will write to Netflix about? Or will alcohol forever be Evan Hansen, a horrendous character that I get angry about because of the bait and switch: if we refuse to present this thing to the audience as evil, if we gloss over their terrible acts, the audience won't realise they're not a good guy. I'm not going to get all high-horse about it (because you do you, pumpkin) but I could totally see a world where drinking is treated with the same disgust as smoking is; a future where Daily Mail readers accept alcohol use as a necessary evil, but only if it's used on stage in the name of art.
As for me, while I may be my own work of art (tosses hair, winks at camera like JVN) I'll abstain from alcohol – but in the same way as I abstain from smoking, or taking cocaine, or heroin, or Krokodil, or other drugs I've never taken but shudder to think of in my system. They're not my bag, baby. I'm straight edge these days.
I just don't want to.
I won't skirt around some imaginary hole left behind by the drug everyone else is still taking. I won't see my tether to sobriety as a length of thread that could be abbreviated with abhorred shears at any moment. And I won't base my strength on the number of days I've collected.
As a wise woman once wrote, the length of my sobriety doesn't matter, but the breadth of my sobriety does: all the myriad ways that my world is wider, greater, finer and richer without alcohol...will simply have to be enough.
Love always,
Fay
xXx