Who Are You?

Waking up after drinking a bottle of whisky, memories lunged at me out of a blankness. For the first hour or so it's just funny how awful you feel, as you go numbly, automatically through the morning routine. Drink about three pints of water. Get in the shower. Brush the stale alcoholic gunge off of your teeth. Wonder to yourself at how terrible you feel, at how thick your head is, at how hard your heart is beating.

Then later when you feel more collected the regret comes, and that's the worst part. The question, often, isn't so much "what did I do?" as "what might I have done?". It's a much more open question than simply remembering a series of events; you're asking yourself what, when the shackles of inhibition have been dissolved in alcohol, you could, or would, be capable of. You're asking yourself which parts of your identity are innate, inviolable, and which parts are just ideas that you keep in check day-to-day. Patterns of repeated behaviour that you hold together as a kind of constant underlying effort: morals. Ethics. Limits.

But after a certain amount of booze you feel that internal shift, something inside gets switched off, and you wonder if it's even you anymore. Sometimes you do things you don't think you'd ever do really, things that go against what you feel, or believe; but do they? You can certainly hold two conflicting views in your head at the same time; and inside you is every possibility that ever could exist for you, in a state of balance, you just choose the one that you think is attainable, or appropriate, at the time, as life throws you into situations. So why couldn't you be two conflicting people? Just at different times?

I used to get kicked out of nightclubs; usually for chucking bottles around or fighting. I was young and angry, and I used to look forward to going out drinking at the weekend for the opportunity it would give me to realise my anger; to release it. I lived at home then, with my mum and dad, and I was polite around the house. I had a job in the supermarket which I didn't like, but which I went to without complaint and did without slacking off. Then, with the money in my pocket, I went to all the pubs in town with some friends, and drank until I felt the "switch" inside me, where I felt myself becoming uncoupled from the person I was day to day, the person who my parents or my boss expected me to be, and I felt myself become the person I knew I was inside; snarling, bitter, dripping with resentment, but charming, confident, fearless. I met so many girls, I stared into the flaring eyes of so many boys. With our white shirts, mini-dresses, leather shoes, cold pints and cigarettes, goosebumps coming up in smoking areas where patio heaters radiated uneven heat.

And I would chase after that feeling, that "switch," that would allow me to get into the trouble that I wished my life would always be made up of; that would see me in the back of the police cars that I wished I would always be thrown into, that would see me in the beds of girls I wished that I could always wake up in, that would see me take the punches to the chest and jaw that I wished all of my other problems would formulate themselves into. It seemed an honest way to live; reflecting back at life its many forms of casual violence, its many glimpses of good fortune.

And I always knew who I was; I was in touch with something deep down in me, a seam of being that I allowed myself to feel was the realest part. The part without sacrifices or compromises; the part that didn't ask for them from anybody else.

Well. It's easy to live like that for a while. Looking back there weren't many responsibilities holding me down; there wasn't a reputation to protect; there were no relationships to sustain. I was alone and I liked being alone; there was power in it. I also didn't care very much what happened to me, and where I wound up, as long as I could shrug it off and do it all again next week.

But eventually I started waking up with questions. Could I be the person I was when I was drinking all the time? Why not? Would that not be an honest way to live? So many people I knew used to use "I was drunk" as an excuse. But it wasn't really an excuse, I thought; it was still you doing it. The situations were different -- drinking in groups is a kind of collective madness -- but it was still the same bodies, the same lips and eyes and hands and knees that moved through space, that touched and tore and stared and kissed; that swam in and out of focus and memory. Whose hands were they? Whose faces? Whose words? Certainly they said and did things I would never do sober, but they did things that I wanted to do once the barriers were down; how could I deny that? How could I deny that I didn't want the trouble I got it? How could I excuse it? It seemed like it was an essential part of me; a raw part; an honest part.

But that is not how we define ourselves; often it is not what the rawest, most animal part of us wants, but how we deny it to ourselves, that makes us who we are. You can always tell somebody who is desperately in thrall to their most impulsive desires by how strictly they structure their lives; the very religious, those with airtight diets, people who are obsessed and jealous in their romantic relationships; often the people who try to exercise the most control over themselves are the ones who are worst at it. Who give in most easily to their impulses after a few glasses of wine.

What was I doing then? I was never particularly strict with myself. With the usual narcissism of the young I was happy to give in to my impulses as a kind of righteousness; I feel it therefore it must be correct. In some ways I think that never denying myself made it easier to walk away from that behaviour in the end; after a while I just got bored with it. It was just too much hassle to get in trouble all the time. It was pointless. I'd done it all. I knew how to stop it before it started; I knew all the stages; I knew how a situation could be turned towards various conclusions, all of them foregone, to me. Unpredictability is only fun whilst it is unpredictable. Sooner or later you can just recognise all the warning signs and suddenly it's boring. You know how it will end before you even start. You know how it will feel. It becomes empty. Although the drink opens you up to all the possibilities, there are still only so many you will ever be able to try. You start to find your limits. You start to know who you basically are.

So you stop doing it. You settle into a more predictable pattern. The anger seems to come off the boil a little, coming back as a kind of constant, low-level stress. An ache in the back of your head, tension in the pit of your stomach. But no longer enough to make you want to fight every weekend. No longer enough to make you think the world owes you something.

You keep your head down at work and get on with things. You go out for drinks at the weekend but it's nothing big. You meet a girl, take her out, take her home, cook her dinner, sleep with her, meet her parents. Talk about getting a flat together. They like you at work and you get ahead. You feel slightly better. You move out into a flatshare for a while. Have a few parties but it's nothing big. No trouble really. You're too good at recognising it now to let it happen. You get yourself together; your bills are paid, at work they're talking about getting you management trained. You're putting some money aside for a car. You get better clothes. You go out for a mate's birthday and have a few drinks; you get a round of shots in, stare at the bouncers you used to try and fight. But it's nothing big. You're over it. It's done.

Then you get steaming drunk one night and do something you hadn't expected. You wake up in the morning and numbly go through your routine. You brush the alcoholic gunge off of your teeth. You look into the mirror at your pale, drawn face. You can't believe you did that last night. You wonder who you are.