Transcript
Father (0:00)
Foreign.
Jonathan Goldstein (0:09)
This is an I Heart podcast. About a year ago, Heavyweight was canceled, and for the first time in my adult life, I was without a job. Luckily, I had a Plan B. Jo Drinking Drinking has always been my safety net. It makes me feel bulletproof, in a state of grace. Who needs a job when you're in a state of grace? So job or no job, health insurance or no, at the end of the day, there was still booze, just like there had always been. Which is to say that every night for 25 years, I have drank. But after getting laid off, something shifted. Along with losing my job, I lost my sense of identity, and booze only amplified the feeling. After a night of drinking, I'd wake up at 3am in a panic, not knowing who or what or why I was. I'd always turned to alcohol for solace, but now I found myself too scared to drink. Over the course of Heavyweight's eight seasons, I've acted as an interlocutor between friends, family and strangers. Now I needed to interlocute between me and me, the me that wanted to keep drinking and the me that didn't. So I started a journal to reflect on my relationship to drinking, how it all began, how much I have loved it, and whether it was time to stop. These are excerpts. Day 6 Without a drink New Year's Eve, Our new neighbors stop by. The wife sells pet supplies and the husband does something with money. Even though I interview people for a living, after 10 minutes I run out of new things to ask. Since I'm not drinking, I don't know what to do. Emily has put out frozen pepperoni pizza, so I eat slice after slice. Ram Dass says that at a certain point he cared less about getting high and more about getting free. The pepperoni pizza gets me neither high nor free. Week 3 Without a drink I remember when my friend Paul quit drinking. It was because he found himself thinking about drinking all day and looking forward to it too much. That's called being an adult, I had said dismissively. Children have their sense of wonder. Adults have booze. Week 5 I don't think I drink the way other people do. I prefer to drink in the spaces in between, on subway rides, while taking long walks in darkened movie theaters. And although I'll drink with others, my preference is to drink alone. I'm not sure what constitutes alcoholism, so I've lately been googling Is drinking alone alcoholism, or does drinking every night make you an alcoholic? Even using the word alcoholic makes me feel disloyal, like I'm badmouthing A friend behind their back. Maybe if you think of alcohol as a friend, you've got a problem. Maybe if you're asking Google if you've got a problem, you've got a problem. Week eight. It might have all begun at the age of four, with the joy of spinning around and around until the living room ceiling became the floor, the chandelier a stalagmite. Life felt easier upside down. Or maybe it began at 5, breathing in and out as fast as I could to make myself lightheaded. Before there was beer and whiskey, there were quick, intoxicating breaths. My drinking began in earnest during my teen years. I drank to be less shy, to make myself more comfortable. And as I grew older, I drank because it was what I did. My identity became so fused to whiskey that at my 40th birthday party, every one of my friends and family gifted me with a bottle of bourbon or scotch. At the end of the night, I counted 14 bottles. My friend Steve says that plain and simple, human beings need to get fucked up. Week 11. I'm on a flight to New York, and for the first time in 25 years, I haven't packed small bottles of whiskey for each of my front pockets. I'm not a good flyer, and I keep the bottles with me in case the flight gets rough and I can't get booze from the flight attendant quick enough. But in all honesty, sometimes turbulence was a relief, because it was permission to crack open a pocket whiskey before noon.