Monsters of Us All

So, it's been a slow news week. Well, it probably hasn't, but I'm too lazy to check on it, really, so we'll have to assume nothing particularly interesting has happened in the world lately.

Except for alcohol. Now, I've wanted to write a post about alcohol for quite some time. It is wondrous stuff. It's the kind of beverage that makes everything better. Maybe it makes everything worse. It depends on how much you drink, and what you're going for. At times, it's great to kick back with a pint and watch the birds soar through blue skies. Another evening might be spent in the foetal position, hugging a bottle of whisky and crying while Johnny Cash's 'Hurt' loops endlessly on repeat. A kind of emotional masochism, I suppose. Especially if it isn't on repeat, but you keep refreshing youtube so you can mourn for longer.

Anyway, booze. Wondrous booze, or the daemon drink? Well, personally, it's a matter of perspective. I was waiting at a bus stop on Thursday night, watching revellers fall over, vomit, fight, or canter down the road clip-clopping in heels like the charge of a heavily inebriated Light Brigade. Drunks to the left of them, drunks to the right, vomited and thundered. And so forth.

It was enough to put you off drinking, or at least, put you off watching other people drinking, because they turn into animals. It's like a weird form of lycanthropy. A few drinks under a full moon and you too can start a fight with your best friend, abuse a bus driver, fall over, or cry for no reason.

But drink has it's plus sides, too. Without becoming horrendously inebriated, I would have never learned some valuable lessons. I was going to list them, but after I'd typed '1) Kebabs are tasty, I decided that everything I've learned while drinking alcohol is better not shared with the general public, as it's either too embarrassing or concerns things that, without proper context, are trite and meaningless. You'll have your own lessons, no doubt, revelations like 'I simply cannot take Vladimir Putin', and 'How to successfully tell a bouncer that you are not trying to drown someone in a sink', would be two that spring to mind.

However, generally I've learned that, at the bottom of every bottle of Tequila, there is something that isn't a worm. It can be much worse than that. My point about alcohol lycanthropy stands. After too many drinks, we all do things we'd wish we hadn't, and we can all turn a little bit Cray-zee. So it's a cautionary tale from a Clockwork Lemon this week. I'd never be so hypocritical to suggest anyone does anything less than drink themselves into a stupor, but remember.

It makes monsters of us all.