A drink, sure. Why not?

It's hard to fathom what I've drunk and pissed away, but without alcohol - and beer, specifically - I'd never have gotten out of my head.

Acid helped, too, as did weed and mushrooms, coffee and tea, books, music, long walks and sex.

I was a broken a child stuck in a cage, and instead of going outward I went inward, and everything was cool except it wasn’t, because I kept making the same mistakes and was dirty, mean and angry at the world, the kind of kid and young man you don't want around. A disappointment and a mystery, a life seemingly aborted just after it began. Another sad statistic.

I escaped, to the extent I ever did, more by luck and privilege than effort. The old gods smiled on me, and so on, and I was able to build a small, independent life that grew like a fungus as a challenge to death.

In nearly all of this I was accompanied by alcohol, the key that unlocked that cage and unleashed the beast, but also beauty. That made me all the friends I ever had, and lost a lot of them, too.

I’m free now, more or less, of anything but shame and sloth and alcohol itself, stuck between moments of joy.

My life begins again, on this cool and sunny morning, when I resolve, once more, to drink less and be a better person.