If alcoholism is, in fact, subject to genetic predisposition rather than mere choice—and I suppose it could be both—it’s fair to say my pump is well-primed for disaster. One of my great grandfathers was known to hit the bottle with vigor, vanishing into subterranean Omaha on week-long benders. One of my uncles froze to death on a highway in New Mexico after crashing his car in a blizzard, then slipping on the ice and banging his head on the asphalt. One angle on that tragedy is that he had gone into town to buy a steak, which remained on the passenger’s seat while he slipped into eternity under the falling snow. Another uncle exploded his oxygen tank while smoking in bed, which cost him a leg and a few weeks of misery in a burn unit until he finally gave up the ghost. A third uncle fell down the Jim Beam rabbit hole and now wanders the earth with gout, swamping out Kentucky Fried Chicken bathrooms, and making a series of ear-piercing victim noises to anyone who will listen. An aunt has battled lifelong substance abuse problems which ultimately landed her a prison sentence for smuggling dope into the prison where she worked. My maternal grandfather, whose horrific experiences as a Marine during World War II at least provided an understandable backdrop, began each day with vodka in his coffee before graduating to wine, tequila, and finally dollops of bottom-shelf sherry in the middle of the night.
I had my first beer when I was 9, when the Basque shepherd who helped us shear sheep snuck me a Coors during the lunch break and I snuck off behind the barn to suck that down like lemonade. I was in fifth grade the first time I got drunk. I was living in Texas at the time, and my friend’s mother bought us a pitcher of beer which upset the church ladies in the restaurant all around us, but seems somehow natural and proper in retrospect. To this day I enjoy nothing more than upsetting the world’s numerous church ladies.
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