The Beer Experiment

    My mind was so alcohol addled by the end of my one year tenure at Resorts, that I don’t clearly remember the controlled crisis that the Human Resources Department was apparently trying to create by getting me to speak to a psychiatrist in Brigantine about my drinking. In retrospect, I suppose they were trying to save me from my disease by forcing me to confront it.

    They probably imagined that I would fall on my knees in gratitude as they whisked me off to a Rehab somewhere.

    The best I could do was promise her, the dear Psychiatrist, that I would try to control my drinking by limiting myself to six drinks a day, that being only beer.

    The “Beer Experiment” did not last even one day. Beer was far too weak for me. I couldn’t drink it fast enough. So, after the sixth beer, I decided that that was like nothing, but certainly I could limit myself to six scotch on the rocks. The beer simply wouldn’t count. And, as the story goes, after the sixth scotch, I said “To hell with this beer experiment....”

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 24)