Self-Evident Truth #5 — Don’t Snort Maxwell House

Friday night I drank a glass of red wine and Saturday morning I woke up with the stigmata. Not full blown stations-of-the-cross stigmata, I grant you, but I had big red blisters at the base of both my palms.

For those of you not familiar with the term, stigmata is a Catholic thing where beatific vision types bleed from the spots where Christ got himself nailed. It’s considered a miracle, if you are devout, and if you pull off three miracles you qualify for sainthood. For those of us who aren’t devout, it’s a reaction to the histamines in red wine. Francis of Assissi had it. Catherine of Siena didn’t bleed any more than me. These saints with stigmata were all from France and Italy, as far as I know. They probably drank a lot more than one glass of red wine, so it’s no wonder their blisters broke.

Elmore Leonard wrote a fine book about a non-Catholic with the stigmata. His characters made a big deal out of it. The hero was so sensitive a high-quality woman fell in love with him. Nobody genuflects when I bleed. My wife feeds me an antihistamine and tells me to drink white next time.

But then my stigmata doesn’t stream down my wrists. Maybe I should drink more.

I used to drink more. From 1977 to 1987, or so, I got drunk six nights a week. The drink itself changed every few years, but it was never red wine. Like all good hippies, I made the transition from drugs to alcohol by way of tequila. Anyone who’s ever snorted a dark powder only to find out he has Maxwell House Instant crystals up his nose — another mistake I’ve made — will tell you don’t buff the stuff, so I started on straight, pure shots with a lemon chaser. Slowly, I worked my way through sunrises and bloody Marias, although I never sank so low as the yuppie margarita. From tequila, I went on to whiskey. I always figured I wasn’t a true drunk because I avoided scotch.

I did waste a year or two on Grand Marnier. I was working in a terrible Italian restaurant — “Nobody Eats Here Twice” — that closed at midnight and every night at ten I chugged a coffee cup full of Grand Marnier. If tequila is the missing link between booze and mescaline, Grand Marnier is the Quaaludes of the alcohol kingdom. Taken in large quantities, it’s a rank concoction. These days, I put a dollop in pancake batter, but that’s my limit.

I ended my run on Jim Beam with a splash. Bars in Wyoming closed at ten on Sundays, back then, and the band didn’t play that night, which means I didn’t dance, which means I didn’t drink on Sunday. I can’t remember what I did do. Movies, maybe.

I finally quit after I married an alcoholic and saw what a stupid maneuver self-destruction is. The world over people argue about which is worse: being an alcoholic or being married to an alcoholic. To me, that’s like choosing between death by cancer or emphysema. It’s more academic than practical.

Emily is dead now, which is a drag. I’m not shooting for false pity here. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in fifteen years when she died. Her niece, who didn’t know who I was when she first sent messages to my web site and only a couple years later discovered I used to be married to her aunt, told me the news. One more weird irony in the life of a writer.

My doctor told me more alcoholics die from lung problems than liver or heart disease, because most alcoholics smoke and the cigarettes kill them before the alcohol. I think that’s what happened to Emily, but I’m not sure. She got pneumonia. I’ve found cigarette and alcohol addicts often die before they have to because they’re afraid of doctors and hospitals. Being sick is bad enough without withdrawal, so they put off seeking help way later than the rest of us would.

Here’s a tip you won’t find in the standard writing manual. Recovering alcoholics should never go on a book tour. It is almost impossible to spend six or eight weeks flying around, sleeping somewhere new every night, living though hours of boredom between moments of exposing yourself to strangers, without resorting to mood enhancement. It’s the only time I drink more than one glass of wine a month. I can name more than one writer whose tour ended in rehab.

The only novelist I know personally who can pull the totally drink-free book tour off is Chris Moore. Chris has the self-discipline and willpower of a Samurai. When you’re on the road, the publisher pays for everything. An ex-professional dishwasher and spare change artist like me tends to wallow in hog heaven, to the point where I gained fifteen pounds on the Sorrow Floats tour. Chris, when faced with the endless possibilities of dinner on someone else’s tab, chooses Caesar salad.
Imagine that.