It’s the first drink that got me drunk, not the second 12 pack or the 10th shot.
It sounds so obvious, but that bit of wisdom alluded me for a long time.

I thought that if I ate a meal first things would go better. I thought that if I only drank beer that all those bad things that kept happening to me would stop. I thought that if I only drank at home, avoided the bar scene, how could I get in trouble? Some guy even told me that eating a stick of butter before drinking would grease my stomach and I could consume all I wanted without getting sloppy drunk. I never tried that one, but I did try everything I could think of to drink safely. Sometimes something would work for a little while, but eventfully those bad things would start all over again.

Bad things didn’t happen to me every time I got drunk, but every time bad things happened to me I was drunk.
I racked my brain to come up with a system that would let me drink without all the associated problems.
The only system that I never considered was not drinking. That just seemed to be too drastic a solution.

The idea that the first drink got me drunk never occurred to me. OK, maybe it did occur to me once or twice, but I didn’t entertain that notion long. There had to be a way to make this thing work. I saw other guys that could drink and bad things didn’t happen to them like they happened to me. What were they doing? They would have a couple of drinks and then go home to their family. But for me, after a couple of drinks, I really had a taste for a couple more, and then a couple more, etc, etc. Going home right away wasn’t in the game plan.

Pain for me was the great motivator, then I heard that the first drink is the one that gets me drunk. I can’t get drunk if I don’t drink the first one. What a stunning revelation.

Your friend on this long strange trip,
Shadowalker