DEPRESSING THOUGHTS WHILE
CONTEMPLATING THE END OF
“BLOOD ORCHID”
Blood Orchid by Charles Bowden
I finished reading Blood Orchid this morning. One passage caught my eye. This point I bring up is minor but it triggers others that aren’t. A smart title to his last chapter, “Exit Interview”, there is a sentence, “Last night everyone got drunk, it was the end of the five-and-a-half-day workweek, and no man will be sober until Monday morning.” I know a thing or two about being drunk. I was no expert by any stretch of the imagination but I certainly could qualify for the triple A league. You see, if one drinks alcohol for any period of time the brain damage remains after the drinking stops. The damage to the brain begins immediately with the ingestion of alcohol. Brain cells die when blood loaded with ETOH arrives. The alcohol burns the cells. Of course the brain cells and tissue have no nerve endings like we have in our skin and flesh but just as alcohol will cause pain in these areas when they meet it does the same thing. Brain cells burn and suffer and die when alcohol shows up.
Each time we take one down the hatch, as they say, the ETOH travels via the blood stream as well as via the digestive track. The alcohol gets ingested and some of it passes through the walls of our guts and the lining of our mouth and throat into the blood stream directly. It doesn’t pass through the liver directly. That load of alcohol that passes through the liver gets converted to carbon and water by enzymes. It’s a good system. However if we drink lots of alcohol the liver is overloaded and much of the alcohol doesn’t get converted. That amount that passes through unprocessed is what gets us tipsy. The faster we drink the more gets to our blood stream and brain in raw form. I’m sure many of you can identify with this phenomenon. The liver can process about one ounce in twenty minutes. That is if your liver is healthy. People who have been chronically heavy drinkers and who have damaged their livers get drunk faster because of this condition. Broken livers can’t process very much if at all. It’s called Cirrhosis.
My point about the ‘sober’ part of Bowden’s statement above is this. If one drinks heavily enough to get drunk, and you all know what drunk means so don’t pick an argument with me, then the brain is damaged and remains damaged until it can regenerate new brain cells, which is what it does. So the damage is done and brain function suffers in heavy drinkers and the behaviour of heavy drinkers is similar to drunken behaviour. Similar means ‘same’ and same is drunk without the fun. So while I was working as a drug and alcohol counselor and during the time I was a chronic drunk I was convinced that I never drew a sober breath for twenty years. Never mind Monday mornings. End of subject.
Further along I began to ponder the population change since I was born and just how much is left on this earth for the population today as compared to 1939. It is depressing to think about, for me anyway. I find the earth is crowded. When I was much younger I could go out and walk and not see other people or not as many. I used to love to visit state parks and go camping and go driving. No longer. The crowds are intimidating. State parks are overcrowded and long lines greet me at almost every venue. I’ve learned to stay home and isolate. Hermitage is where it’s at for me.
I recall an event during the seventies while I was in the Navy. It was my turn to pilot the deep submersible Sea Cliff. The dive was deep, to many thousands of feet. We were to do a bottom dive because the mission was related to geology. On the bottom I saw, in the pitch black compressed sea, a soda can. It looked shiny as the day it was pitched overboard. It will remain there until the earth meets the sun. Nothing will degrade it. I also saw a baker’s rack one day somewhere else. Out near Hawaii I think. I’ve seen crewmen dump material/trash overboard just to get it out of sight. I was disturbed to see it happen and knew it wasn’t a satisfactory solution to disposal problems. Still it happened and it continues I imagine. We all must have seen videos of the military dumping damaged aircraft off of ships while transiting back to the U.S.
The world is getting tinier and there is very little room left to live in. As disturbing are the shortages of food worldwide. Oddly, there are solutions but chaos in general keeps people from thinking about them. Less important issues are on the front burners. I find my thoughts running along these depressing paths more and more.
I have done this for a few years. My defense against such mindless activities and grim outlooks has been to throw myself into helping others. My years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous certainly were fruitful. I learned a few tricks about survival during down and depressing times. The one I am employing presently is when I am feeling bad about my own situation I must seek out someone with less comfort and help them. Get involved in their betterment. So I do volunteer work in Maine State Prison. It works for me.
O.K. I’ve probably succeeded in ruining your day with this post. Not my goal but I certainly feel better for venting. Have a great day. Get out and feel the winter sun on your mittens and gloves. Turn up that collar and keep moving along.
Peace out.
G. M. Goodwin
29 January 2018
Here is a poem from a while ago. Soon it will be time to search the Royal Grounds for signs of Spring. I hope you enjoy this one.
With Feeling!
Some rowdy gang of senses delivers a rush I’ve missed lo
These many weeks,
Sound of wind,
Sight of gulls flung across the salty chop,
Inhaling the living earth I bow to a Snowdrop.
Hoarsely…my heart whispers,
“Spring!”
George Goodwin
Spring 2012
Playing Fair and Being Kind 