fast times have fled

It begins relatively slowly but one knows when its coming. I starts like a rounding imaginary tide that surrounds you. You feel its influence as it slowly snakes you in with all the thoughts that have just gotten, well, too much to bare. The one solution is obvious and usual for some people. You just grab that drink and calm down; kicking one thought after another from your tide. But the tide remains powerful and sometimes even stronger after the first day of drinking. The second day must now begin, usually at six am at the nearest grocery store with a standard 30 pack of beer. It is dark, people are just waking up, and truely nobody cares anyway. So you go back home and try and relax with that first beer foaming over your hand as it flows down the face. This begins the stinking process.
By day three you have graduated to thinking about what you will do tomorrow with your drunken ass. You can't drive or operate machinery because you now smell like sweat, dirt, and liquor. The only thing you can do is have a relatively sober friend who does not mind hanging out with your drunk ass as you beging the fifth day drive you to the store.
Remember, all this with little water and hardly any food. Oh quit- there are many young men and women who have starved themselves for months. There are many men and woman who rationalize their drinking patterns. There are just some of us that who, in the beginning storm, choose to hide away in a sea of gold and silver. The come down is the hardest you know. The come up is even harder at times.
It does begin slowly for some of us, especially when the fast times have fled and the water receeds, that one gets to explore the opposite of participation; the opposite of motivation; the opposite of fun in general, to be replaced by major movie watching, sleeping, shopping, eating, or anything that can be seen as a viable substitue for the tide pools that sucked you and all your thoughts into a world of consumption and shit. Balance, I laugh at it! LLc 98.2