Sam Disdale was a writer who knew damn well he was an alcoholic. Nobody needed to tell him. It was him who was telling everybody else. All the stories he had recently published—some of them to great critical acclaim—were written according to a particular formula. In every one the protagonist was an alcoholic writer who used his writing as a thinly veiled cry for help.
     All the main characters in Sam's latest stories feel their alcohol abuse spinning out of control, and so desperately seek a helping hand to dry themselves out. To this end, they begin writing stories in the third person about a fictional writer who publishes stories about how alcohol is taking control of their life. The writer writes these stories in the hopes that some astute reader will recognize the writer himself as the model for his main character, and thereby come to his aid.
     In summary, Sam was a writer who wrote stories about writers who created fictional altar-egos, also writers, who wrote stories about their alcoholism in the hopes that some kind-hearted friend, family, or stranger would give them the tools to overcome their addiction. The irony being, of course, that in a sort of infinite regress, Sam himself was a writer using the same device his characters did. Sam loved the postmodern overtones of the entire project, and fancied himself a liquor-soaked Jorge Borges, a builder of narrative labyrinths. The liver, heart, and intestinal damage that would eventually result from his vice sometimes seemed inconsequential compared to the possibility that he might produce a wonder-work of literary greatness.
     What Sam considered the most brilliant postmodern stroke in his latest work was the way his characters anticipated and neutralized the concerns of anybody who actually did try to help. So when a protagonist's friend, let's say, called after reading a story, the protagonist would adamantly deny the story was a cry for help. He'd insist he wasn't drinking at all these days, save for an occasional glass of wine. He'd claim his piece was nothing more than a meta-fictional story, which he wrote only because he thought it was an interesting literary gimmick. How clever it was to imagine a writer loosely based on himself, who writes stories about a writer loosely based on himself.
     Of course, in Sam's stories, as in the stories written by his protagonists, the alcoholic writer sinks into spiritual, emotional, and economic depravity. His cries become louder, his prose nearly hysterical. Within the limits of the third person perspective, he all but screams into a literary bullhorn that he is in fact the writer struggling with alcohol addiction, and asks how everybody can be so blind as to not see it. He's sinking, drowning, withering away. He's spiraling downward into morbid self-destruction and is unable to regain his footing. He admits, in a roundabout way, to lying when he told his friends and family he wasn't drinking. Alcoholics deceive, obviously. They're ashamed. How could anybody believe the testimony of an alcoholic? They're as transparent as cellophane! But if his loved ones take the bait, and are now completely convinced his stories are cries for help, the writer becomes enraged, shouting that it's both absurd and patronizing to think his work is anything more than a gimmicky experiment.
     Sam's old college friend James read one of his recent stories, "The Writer Who Abused Alcohol." He'd immediately recognized the writer in the story as a thinly disguised Sam, whom he knew had formerly been a heavy drinker and was prone to serious relapses. James himself had recently quit drinking after a blood test revealed a high liver enzyme count. James was also a writer, albeit an amateur whose career was as a philosophy professor. James was always thinking. He said he used alcohol as a way to shut down his mind and take a break from the profound, often troubling, philosophical ideas he was constantly wrestling with.
     Sam picked up the phone. "James, how's it going my man?"
     "Not bad. Just read your story in Maggleson's Monthly."
     "Oh nice. You like it? I thought it had a few technical problems, but they went ahead and published before I was able to make any revisions."
     "I thought it was good. Definitely more complex than it seemed from the first paragraph. But Sam, you know why I'm calling right? It's not the quality of the story I want to discuss."
     "No? What's on your mind?"
     "Well, the protagonist. The writer using his work as a cry for help. He's you, isn't he? His name is Stan, after all."
     "Oh, God no! Is that what you were thinking? Were you worried about that?"
     "Actually yeah, I kinda was."
     "You needn't be. It was just a literary experiment. You know, meta-fiction."
     "Well meta-fiction or not, it sounded like you. Are you drinking again?"
     "Not at all. I'm not a teetotaler. I have the occasional glass of wine. But nothing that could be considered a problem."
     "Yeah, but in the story your main character has a friend named Jack, a philosophy professor who has recently quit drinking."
     "So?"
     "Well, obviously Jack is me, don't you think?"
     "I suppose there are certain things based on you. You're a writer, you know how it is. We sometimes use the people in our lives as models for characters, but these characters are not really explicit or accurate representations."
     "Okay, but this is pretty much the same exact conversation your characters had in the story. Jack calls Stan and asks him whether the story is really about him. It's like you anticipated I'd call you after reading your story, asking you if you had started drinking again."
     "Well yeah, that's the meta-fictional part, the thing that makes it interesting."
     "Sure, I get it. But it could also be meta-fictional if you were really the writer struggling with alcoholism, writing stories about a writer who writes stories about his alcoholism so one of his friends will read it and try to help. Wouldn't that kind of add another level of meta-ness, or whatever?"
     "Seriously Jack, you don't have to worry."
     "James."
     "Excuse me?"
     "You just called me Jack. The character in your story."
     "Oh did I? Sorry, James. Ha! It's just that we're talking about the story, you know, so the characters are sort of on my mind."
     "This happened in your story too, Sam. The writer, Stan, writes a story in which the main character has a friend named John who is a philosophy professor, who is obviously based on Stan's real friend Jack. When Jack calls Stan after reading his story, Stan accidentally calls Jack the fictional John, demonstrating that the story is based entirely on reality."
     "Well, yeah. I did that so Professor Jack would have further reason to suspect Stan of really writing about himself."
     "Yeah, I got that. And you just called me the fictional Jack, in mimicry of the story. Seriously, you can tell me if you're drinking. You know I'll understand."
     "Hardly a drop. An irregular glass of wine."
     "If you need help, just say it outright. Don't put it in a story."
     "Yeah but I don't need help." Sam was becoming defensive and slightly aggressive. "Look, if I've anticipated this entire conversation, if I was writing stories about my own alcoholism, then I would have to be fully aware of my problem, and alcoholics are always in denial. So that must mean I'm not an alcoholic."
     "No, that just means you're an alcoholic aware of his problem. Sam, I'm here for you. Do I need to call your folks, your brother or your sister?"
     "Jesus James, I'm not a kid. Look, I can see why you're worried. I anticipated this would happen. That was part of the fun. That I'd write a story and my friends and family would see me in it, then they'd get all worried thinking I was really struggling with a drinking problem."
     "You do have a drinking problem."
     "Had a drinking problem," Sam corrected. "Past tense."
     "Okay, past tense."
     "Look bro, it's important to me that you believe me. It was just a story."
     "Okay, I believe you."
     Sam became irrationally upset at James' professed, but certainly false, belief in him. "Look James, do you want me to buy you a plane ticket? You can come out here and keep me under observation. You'll have a free pass. Look in the trash cans for vodka bottles, underneath my mattress for pints of whiskey. You're not going to find anything because I'm not drinking and that's that."
     "That's exactly what your main character said in your story."
     "Look Jack, I'm not fucking drinking and if you want me to write a blood oath then that works for me too."
     "James."
     "What?"
     "You called me Jack again. My name is James."
     "I know your name is James. Look man, just give me a break for Christ's sake," Sam hung up the phone. It rang again but Sam ignored it. He sat in the dark thinking. He was bored. He needed to write but he couldn't. It was like this. To write at what he considered his maximum capability, he needed to smoke pot. But pot made him anxiety-ridden, physically uncomfortable, and paranoid delusional. So in order to secure the peace of mind and calm which would allow him to smoke pot, he needed to have a couple beers. One wasn't quite enough, but two was getting there. Better yet, three or four. He often drank hard liquor though, because he felt beer made him mentally sluggish, while harder spirits gave him mental acuity, at least for a brief window of time.
     The problem with hard liquor was that it was far more difficult to control the level of drunkenness. One passed from a state of productive mental clarity to a that of a useless blithering moron after one or two drinks in excess. So Sam shot for that window of time, about half an hour to an hour, when he was high enough to write well, just before he would get double-vision, finding it difficult to concentrate and recall certain more obscure vocabulary words. At this point he would have to give up for the night, and because he was already a little buzzed, he would usually decide to keep drinking.
     Though Sam rarely smoked, at some point in the night he would experience the irresistible craving for a cigarette. He always craved cigarettes when he was drinking. But when he had drank too much, cigarettes made his head spin. He knew this full well, but he still always reached for that cigarette pack he always had on hand for such occasions. He'd smoke one and without fail become nauseated, his head would spin and he'd have to lay down. The only thing to cure the vertigo was a quick nap, and Sam would lay on his bed and close his eyes, eventually falling asleep. Sam couldn't take just a fifteen minute power-nap. When he napped it was for several hours. By the time he woke up it was usually after midnight, and he debated whether he should try to get some work done or continue sleeping. He was too awake to sleep, and too sleepy to work. But having just wasted several productive hours with a half-drunk, nauseated sleep he usually decided to stay up a while and try to compose at least a page or two. But because his sleep had been so irritated, the nap hadn't usually done much to clear his mind. He'd still feel mentally foggy and slow, in addition to retaining a slight nausea.
     So he'd sit and stare into his computer screen for awhile, desperately trying to force an inspirational zest to overcome him. Now awake, still a little buzzed, he figured he would just drink one beer to put him ever so slightly into la-la land and kill his nausea. After a beer he was typically ready for bed, but he also desired another cigarette. Knowing it was a terrible idea he grabbed one and smoked it while chastising himself. He'd berate himself for repeating the same exact cycle almost every night when he knew without a doubt beforehand that it wouldn't lead to more than a half hour to hour of good creative work. Why was he doing this to himself? This cycle wasn't helping him write, so he began to think about the enablers people saddled with drinking problems use to excuse their behavior.
     Sometimes an enabler is a person who encourages your drinking problem, such as a drinking buddy at a bar. But an enabler can be anything which helps the alcoholic rationalize his habit. For instance, a nihilist might say that nothing matters and life has no meaning, so what does it matter in the grand scheme of things if one drinks themselves into a stupor? Sam sometimes wondered whether he really wrote in order to justify his drinking. It seemed plausible, as drinking had lately taken priority over his writing. Knowing many writers were alcoholics, he could tell himself that excessive drinking was just one of the career risks a writer had to deal with, or one of the career perks if one were inclined to see it that way. Funny. Could he, Sam Disdale, have only wanted to become a writer because it would excuse his heavy drinking? It certainly deflected criticism. "Sam, you drink too much." Yes, but I'm a writer. "Touché. My apologies for pointing it out. I didn't mean to be a philistine."
     Sleep therapists say the three things that most disturb sleep are alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. In the morning when Sam awoke, he was usually drowsy, as if he hadn't gotten any rest at all. He'd put a pot of coffee on, hoping the caffeine would jumpstart his brain into alertness. This worked for a couple hours, but by late afternoon Sam felt he required further stimulation. It would be too late in the day to drink more coffee, but three o'clock was a decent hour to have the first beer of the day. At least he wasn't drinking in the morning the way he figured most alcoholics did.
     Besides, an artist has different license than the average person. They keep different hours. Nobody knows when an artist will require inspiration, so if he wants to drink in the morning that's his prerogative. Nobody should question it. But Sam began to wonder if this too wasn't just a rationalization. He had been feeling a bit guilty about his drinking lately, and had even taken an online questionnaire to determine whether he was an alcoholic. The results indicated he was not a full-blown alcoholic, but that he had a serious drinking problem and might require professional help.
     However, Sam figured a survey like this probably erred on the side of caution, and if the results indicated he had a serious drinking problem, it probably meant he realistically had only a moderate to minor one. And a minor or moderate drinking problem could be excused by his line of work. If he were a 9-to-5 office drone drinking heavily at lunch or in the office, hiding a bottles in his desk and briefcase, Sam could more easily accept the implications of the questionnaire. But Sam worked in the privacy of his own home in a creative field. The rules were different, simple as that. If Jackson Pollock hadn't produced any great paintings, his alcoholism would have been a serious problem. As it was, the work justified the vice.
     In high school, there'd been a section in health class during which they discussed alcohol abuse. Alcoholics were very liberally defined. Anybody who drank to get drunk was considered an alcoholic, as was anybody who'd ever had a hangover. This pretty much applied to everybody who drank more than a single beer every now and again while watching a football game.
     Still, Sam was worried. And this worry caused him, in his productive hours, to write stories almost exclusively about writers concerned about their alcohol consumption, and so used their work as a desperate cry for help, a cry they hoped somebody would hear.



About the author:
Michael Ray Laemmle was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico; home of the atomic bomb. He feels this must have some spiritual implication, though he's not entirely sure what it would be. After a decade-long sojourn in Seattle, New York, and other unsavory corners of the globe, he will now spend the larger part of the year in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he works as a multimedia artist. His work can currently be seen in Konundrum Engine Literary Review.

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