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For all who might be bravely undertaking to ring in 2024 at a New Year’s Eve party – be it a casual gathering at the home of friends or acquaintances, or perhaps a more elegant black-tie affair at a posh hotel or other venue, please do take extra precautions to keep yourselves safe and sound in the afterglow of the evening’s revelry – especially if you will be traveling back home in the wee hours of the morning. 

Toward that end, allow me to offer my recommendation for surviving Amateur Night – otherwise known as New Year’s Eve.

First, eschew the temptation to celebrate like the beautiful people in the movies or TV shows, and opt for something more akin to how we welcome in the new year: 

Typically, by no later than the middle of the afternoon, we are home and inside for the rest of the day and evening. Frequently there is too much weirdness afoot even before daylight begins to fade, giving way to nighttime – and on Amateur Night, nothing good happens outside the home after dark. 

For this, our second New Year’s Eve together, we’ll be celebrating as we did last year – sitting on our sofa in front of the television, dining on Lou Malnati’s Chicago-style deep dish pepperoni pizza, enjoying an adult beverage (Karen likes Maker’s Mark bourbon, and I like a Shiner Bock beer), and viewing some silly, pointless but entertaining movie. Last year, it was:

We understood none of it – but then, we weren’t really trying. We didn’t care for the female-on-female story arc, but it was a fun way to spend some time while we ushered 2022 out the door.

My personal tradition is a viewing of the Laurel & Hardy short film, The Music Box. I’ll watch it early enough in the evening so that The California Kid can view it along with me – hoping he enjoys it. 

Thank you, Mr. John Gallos of WCCO-TV Channel 4, for your love of and dedication to the films of Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, and for showing this one on that New Year’s Eve more than fifty years ago. You couldn’t have known it then but you started this tradition, and I can’t help but be grateful to you, for it. The connection to a much more simple, innocent time that I miss more and more grows increasingly precious with each passing year.

Second, to paraphrase Det. Harry Callahan, know your limitations. Staying up until midnight just isn’t in the cards for us – ten o’clock is possible, but only if we’re wired. Instead, we celebrate the arrival of the new year with the good people of Nuuk (pronounced as ‘nook’), Greenland. 

We toast the new year, nurse our crystal flutes of champagne, and then retire for a nice, long slumber. On New Year’s Day, we have breakfast and mimosas. I pour what is likely the last of my Bailey’s into my coffee, and we both enjoy the last day of my vacation before returning to work.

Rethinking Addiction

Eons ago, when terrestrial radio stations took seriously the pledge in their charters from the FCC, there was an excellent public affairs program called, “Extension 720” hosted by Milt Rosenberg.

Originating from and airing exclusively on WGN-AM Radio 720 (hence its title), its host was without question an intellectual giant, and yet he was able to cover very complex topics in a manner that simplified (but not overly so) much of the nuance of any given subject.

It isn’t available in the archives, but one show prominently featured a conversation with one Dr. Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Michael Daniels, his real name), in which he made the shocking claim (to me, anyway) that addiction is a choice that people make.

Not a new revelation to many, but it is worth remembering: Your life is the result of the choices you made. My life is the result of the choices I made. Disagree, be offended, get as angry as you like, as much as you like – that fact is not going to change.

The following, while hilarious, inspirational and spot-on, is also true – please don’t let the humour detract from the seriousness of the message.

The truth of this vis-à-vis addiction is more fully detailed in Dalrymple’s book, Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy. 

The events of Christmas Day and the days that followed have prompted me to re-examine my view of addiction, and having observed the behaviour of one such addict in particular, I concur with Dalrymple’s view, one hundred percent.

People become addicted to opioids in all their formulations, but it is important to remember that addiction is not a fatality but a choice. Withdrawal from opioids is much less serious, medically, than withdrawal from alcohol or barbiturates, and even, on occasion, from benzodiazepines such as Valium.

If you think of what it takes to become an injecting heroin addict, it is obvious that it is not something that happens to you, like Parkinson’s disease; it is something that you do. You have to learn how to prepare the drug, and how to inject it – and self-injection is not something that most people would take to easily, without determination.

To attribute normal human agency to addicts is not to withdraw sympathy from them, as is commonly supposed: many or most have indeed had prolonged unhappy experiences. [But] that is no reason to lie to them about the nature of their addiction: to imply that they are the helpless victim thereof is to give them an excuse to continue as if they were.

Over the years, tens of millions of people worldwide have overcome their addiction to nicotine and few people become addicted to opioids without having made a choice to do so.

I can speak to this from first-hand experience in regard to nicotine, the chemical compound present in tobacco.

Circumstances were such that I was temporarily moving back home to live with my folks. Being reasonably certain that my mom was unaware that I was now smoking, the prospect of breaking her heart in this way was not even worth considering. So in a split-second, I decided to quit – cold-turkey.

Whatever had been my rationale to pick up the nasty habit was no longer valid, and it needed to be replaced with a different one that would break the grasp I believed my addiction to nicotine had on me. 

Some time around the 100-day mark, I was no longer shaking or perspiring profusely, my fingertips were of a color consistent with that of the rest of my hands, and the senses of smell and taste had returned. Honestly, it is surprising no one died at my hands over those ninety-plus days.

Now, my single anecdote should not be considered as typical of the experience of all who quit smoking, or who overcome any other addiction be it alcohol, crystal meth, cocaine, heroin, narcotics, and/or other controlled substances (by prescription or otherwise).

Truth be told, someone who is abusing any of these is likely doing so to dull the pain of prolonged unhappy or perhaps even horrific experiences like physical or sexual abuse, rape, or other violence that was visited on them repeatedly, as well as the pain of loss – loss of a loved one, loss of a marriage, loss of a job or maybe even a career. That person is simply seeking to feel better, even if only momentarily.

Consider now the condition of one who knows that in his line there is a propensity for addiction, and because of that awareness he avoids drugs and alcohol completely. He is resolved to not even be around them, let alone ingest either one or both.

In each of the two scenarios, it is a conscious choice – one to stop using, and one to completely prevent addiction being made manifest – that is the common thread. In both instances, it is the individual exercising basic human agency (as Dalrymple put it) to one’s own benefit – as is choosing a life of addiction in the first place.

As a friend who possesses exceedingly shrewd judgement observes, “...dismantling what is at the root of that decision is key”. If one seeks to do just that, one is going to be confronted with a most unpleasant fact – that for whatever reason, one has forfeited the right of self-determination.

Choosing a life of addiction does provide a paradigm of sorts in which one can attribute any failure of character and any number of self-destructive behaviours to one’s addiction, and blaming that very addiction for one’s own inability to manage it (to varying degrees) at its very essence, is self-delusion. 

Allowing addiction to be considered a “sickness” is wrong because that implies it can be treated with medication, and that is not true – it can only be managed – perhaps through behaviour modification such as attending meetings of any one of the <insert substance here> Anonymous chapters where one is surrounded by others with the same addiction. In fact, that has been standard operating procedure for Alcoholics Anonymous for all of its more than eighty-five years.

Per A.A.’s own website:

A.A.'s program of recovery is built on the simple foundation of one alcoholic sharing with another.

Sharing what, exactly? What is someone who is struggling with the same addiction as another going to share with that individual? Does that make sense?

To my way of thinking, the implication is that each helps the others both individually and collectively, but unless one has overcome his addiction, the only “help” being offered is that in which both continue in their respective self-delusions, and are allowed to feel good about it.

Whatever comfort and encouragement may derived from attendance at such meetings, until the addict resolves to overcome his addiction, everything else is just enabling. 

For one under the control of addiction, it is widely accepted that the first step in recovery is admitting that one has a problem – this is in fact, true, but if recovery does not include overcoming with no risk of a relapse, it is incomplete and it too, is no less a self-delusion. It is merely allowing one to take responsibility for the current condition, but not for the decision that enabled the addiction to take hold, in the first place.

The second step in recovery (so-called), is progress through a 12-step program which reinforces and encourages the addict to continue to take responsibility for his condition and its impact on others. While admirable on its face, it is further condition management, not overcoming the addiction.

Nonetheless, the most well-known (and for some reason, regarded to be the most successful,) is A.A.’s:

It is my contention that A.A.’s mission is assisting alcoholics with managing the self-delusion of recovery. If its mission were to help those so suffering to overcome, recovery would not be open-ended.

Instead, what is it we are we told? “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” and that recovery is now a life-long condition, requiring constant vigilance. A relapse is not a matter of if, but of when.

As Craig Ferguson points out, his is not a drinking problem – rather, it’s a thinking problem. He is one who cannot drink – if he thinks he can, then he’s in trouble (the 00:10:10 mark). The same can be applied to everyone else – man or woman – who is in the same boat.

This is not to say that what A.A. offers is not beneficial, nor without value, it is, albeit negligible – but because it is merely a method of managing one’s own self-delusion, it is no different than methadone for heroin abusers.

If one truly desires to overcome one’s addiction, and can face the fact that it was a conscious choice, there is hope. It is almost impossible to do that alone, though – but this is where a former addict can help another.

Even though an addict is not suffering from a disease like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, that person is suffering and as Dalrymple mentioned, should not be denied empathy and compassion. Since anyone any of us may know of who is suffering an addiction is likely to be a loved one, that individual is also in need of encouragement, support, and as much understanding with no strings attached as can be found.

While there is a time and a place for tough love, it ought to be the very last resort. Until then, exhaust every possible alternative and be ready to extend that helping hand so that when they realize they are capable of overcoming their addiction, you are there to help, or engage those who can.

There is an argument to be made that the same applies to those who are constantly seeking the adrenaline rush from participation in activities such as extreme skydiving, or the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain,  

are every bit as much addicted to the adrenaline as is one who cannot start the day without the caffeine buzz from coffee. This is a false equivalency, and speaking only for myself, I do not have a coffee problem – I can quit any time I want.

The same is no less true for those who “suffer” from non-substance “addictions” like gambling, sex, pornography, video games, virtual role-playing games, et al.

In regard to gambling, the character portrayed by Al Pacino nails it when he points out that what is needed by these folks at the Gamblers Anonymous meeting is a better way to feel alive. Despite the fact that it’s a movie, the self-sabotage he describes is all too real.

Addictions to either sex and/or pornography are not addictions at all but rather lust unchecked, and if either or both are occurring outside the bonds of marriage, then there is a host of other problems to be addressed in addition to the refusal to exercise self-control – the one characteristic that sets us apart from the animals.

As for addiction to digital entertainment such as video games, and virtual role-playing games, it is simply a failure to employ sufficient self-discipline.

I thought it seemed appropriate. 

We are gradually weaning The Kid off his laptop and video games – thus far it seems to be working – no temper tantrums, no defiance, no rebellion. In place of that time, we provide some other activities that are equally engaging but that require mutual interaction.

We also do a little bit of home-grown instruction to supplement that which he’s being taught at school. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he attends karate class at a local dojo – early next year, he’ll be testing for his next belt.

To be clear, we are not forbidding him playing his Roblox games on his laptop (sometimes his cousin plays against him, online), or any of the games in his library for the Nintendo Switch (a Christmas gift), we are just reducing the amount of time he spends in these activities by engaging him in other ways.

Whether the addiction is legitimate (substance-based) and the addict is in recovery and on the road to overcoming; the physical, psychological, professional, and personal complications as a result of addiction are the same, albeit to varying degrees even if effected differently. 

In my next essay, I’ll cover the business of addiction and “recovery”.

The Great Eggnog Supply Crisis of 2023

Well, they did it.

Mission: Accomplished.

No, not this:

They – you know – THEY – BigBeverage.

They succeeded in creating so much demand for eggnog that by the time Christmas Eve came, there was none to be found. Kroger, Market Street, H▪E▪B, Central Market, Walmart, and even Target were completely sold out.

It was my intention to pick up a quart so that I could try one of those 500+ eggnog cocktail recipes that damn near took over one of my “news” feeds. I was anticipating enjoying it while listening to Carols From King’s College on the BBC on Christmas Eve.

It wasn’t until the day after Christmas that it occurred to me to check with Total Wine, Goody Goody, or Spec’s. Ah, well…live and learn.

Thank you, dear reader, for your time and your indulgence!

Happy New Year!

Until next time…

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