Boardwalk Empire

My husband and I are huge fans of Boardwalk Empire, an HBO series that centers around Prohibition and all of the criminal activity that era in our nation's history produced. I always feel like I was born in the wrong time period because I am completely - and  unapologetically -  in love with the 1920s. The fashions, the industrial developments, the music. All this despite the fact that I am also a heavy metal and hardcore punk addict. Anyway, apart from the impeccable performances, costume design and writing, this show deals with the very thing I love. Booze. In the opening scene, Nucky Thomson, the main character of the series (played by Steve Buschemi) looks out into the ocean from the Atlantic City boardwalk as hundreds and hundreds of bottles bob around on the waves. Every stinking time I watch this, I wonder, is that how much I've had to drink in my life? And then an equally frightening thought enters my mind. I've probably consumed a lot more.

The body is an amazing thing, isn't it? It allows you to consume whatever the hell and then filters out the toxins and you go about your business. It does catch up with you eventually, but I am in awe of how long it can chug along, purifying you, given you chance after chance to straighten the fuck out.

I guess I don't want to do the math to figure out how many bottles of (insert alcoholic beverage here) I've had. I might get too depressed. As I've said, I exercise. So for years, I always justified the drinking, kidding myself that I am balancing that out with a healthy diet and three miles a day in the park. Kidding is right. Because anyone who consumes large quantities of wine every night knows that after 2, 2 1/2 glasses, you go tip-toeing into the kitchen to see what junk food might be there. You don't care because the hunger is insatiable and your inhibitions are in the toilet.  And you'll wake up the next day feeling like a failure. Again. It's fun! Really! I highly recommend it!

I once heard Joe Perry of Aerosmith say, about his sobriety, that he had all the drinks he was ever to drink in a short period of his life. Like all sandwiched into a couple of decades. No enjoying a cocktail on the back porch after retirement. Not in the cards.

But let's think about that for a second. Has it ever lived up the hype? Drinking, I mean. Have you ever had a bottle of wine and said, "Ah, that really hit the spot!"? No. Instead, you hope that when your friend called you earlier, you acted straight enough to fool her into thinking that you were sober. You stare at the empty bottle on the shelf and realize that just a few hours before, it was full. In the morning, you wake up, red wine ring around your lips, cotton ball mouth, bladder full. I wouldn't call that hitting the spot.

I thought that I had learned to manage the pace of my drinking. That I had established a set of rules I could live by. All those rules will do is keep me in a constant state of withdrawal. One of Nucky Thompson's famous lines in Boardwalk Empire is, "You can't be half a gangster." Well, Nucky, you can't be half an alcoholic, either.