the other day i contacted the necessary authorities at the vatican and told them to make sure john paul II dials onto prettypersuasion.blogspot.com when he gets the chance. i thought with his recent health struggles and all, maybe a few of my words would do some good. i do not know if it accomplished any good but certainly the photos affirms the pontiff has been getting onto the intranets. though hopefully his lap top isn't laced with horrible adware and firing out pop ups about horny eastern european teens desperate for cock. shit like that would make the pope claim national governments should ban the intranets based on "moral duties". this would go along with the vatican's already tough stance on condoms, abortion, gay marriage, surrogate mothers, ordaining women, planned parenthood, divorce, inter-faith marriage, sexual hedonism, cloning, stem-cell research, intimate touching (and i quote: Of course, married couples may touch one another in this way if it is an expression of true love), masturbation.... and the list drags forth. all these things i support, have nothing against and in some cases whole heartedly enjoy the church isn't entirely cool about. you let the pope onto the intranets and easy availability of porn, in no time would we hear about the "moral duty" of elected politicans to clamp down on what is available via our computers. of course, we'd go on ignoring it because well, all these things the vaticans has spoken out against are becoming accepted.

i have, however, taken one of vatican's "sins" and no longer commit it. although, to be honest, i'm not even sure whether the pope has beef against alcohol, but i don't do it anymore.

my drinking days began early on in high school and persisted up until recently. i started hanging out with a buncha of fellas who become the core of my high school friends and are so to this day, but i no longer share their passion for the battle. i guess i just grew out of it. this weekend is going to confirm that when many of us get together to mark the anniversary of the day i came into the world and have already volunteered to be the night's chafeur. maybe it is "pathetic" but drinking just doesn't do what it once did. i guess i am just getting old. typically birthdays a top notch excuse (among the billions) to get plastered beyond competency but i am going to restrain myself. i feel like i travelled the circle seeing its good, its bad to know that drinking ain't the same anymore.

drinking in high school was a lot of fun though. sometimes even literarily in high school. we'd cross the street to buy coffee, pour it out, fill it with booze and sit in the cafe looking like those cool kids that by 10th grade drank coffee. or that's what others thought. we also invented the "carry the water-bottle every where you go" technique. although, our bottles very rarely contained actual water. even today, when i see just about every person on my campus with their trusty bottle, i wonder how many of them have something stronger "to calm their nerves" due to the stress that accompanies our quest for a piece of paper.

sometime around late 10th grade i got my first part-time job. the amazing thing about having a job then was that such shitty jobs led to absolute selfish comsumption. no tuition fees, no bills, nothing but every dollar going towards you. majority of my dollars siphoned towards getting liquor.

by 11th grade, we had the distinct advantage that one of the fellas in our group had an older brother of legal age and provided the booze. he would hang out with us as well as he was a bit of loser. but as long as he delivered the goods, i would've called him my best friend for all i care.

and this drinking continued for the next few years: weekends became a blur, i can't remember much of our march breaks, christmas break is all foggy cept christmas day dinners with the family. then we all of us start getting licenses and cars, it got more messy. laws--of all sorts--were broken every time we got together. i witnessed everything: people sleeping in their puke, people sleeping in others' puke, people waking up besides peope they immediately regretted, people not knowing where they woke up and why they are there.

by oac year, i developed a hard-core tolerance. at parties, i'd drink the same amount as some and then i had to drive their passed out asses home. i was made of steel when it came to booze. seriously, large looking football jock types looked like children compared to what i was able to do. i know, it's due to being partly polish but i credit myself where credit was due.

then came university, where high school drinking is put to shame. unlike high school were selective parts of it are sketchy in memory, in university the first month became a blur. frosh week killed my belief university is a place of intelligent minds where ideas are debated, values rejected and all that fascinating stuff tv teen movies mentioned about university. let's face it, it's about drinking and whether you're just naturally bright off to pull a decent 10 page essay the night before it's due. it's about sitting completely hungover (or possibly still drunk) during a lecture and retaining enough knowledge to spew it out on an exam in 4 or 8 months. because, if you are, you must be fucking smart and the school needs you for it. i am not one of these bright individuals that can pull this off with a stroke of brillance. so i thought to myself i should make better use of this university and actually learn a thing or two instead of taking my booze tolerance to greater heights.

somehow, the innocence and carelessness of high school drinking had lost its charm. high school drinking had more of a rebellious, risky, novel, and empowering character to it. by university, drinking was looking too much as being just part of it. simply, it just got boring no matter how you looked it. i learned that within the first weeks and marvel that people till this find getting all excited about a keg and how more mere words of drinking are accompanied with pathetic enthusiasm.

this was met with something else and a bit more personal. by the time, first semester was coming to a close and the lure of drinking fading, my mother's own struggles with alcoholism became known. my mother had always been easily swayed by the temptation of alcohol and no one made much of it, but by this period, this "minor hitch" exploded in our faces. i came home on a particular evening to find my father yelling, my brother and sister crying and my mother sitting completely emotionless staring ahead into dead space. it was the most surreal image of my family i have. i don't remember any family picture, vacation photo, anything as vividly as i remember what i saw that evening.

apparently earlier that evening, my sister found mother hiding in the closet with a bottle of whiskey. in that closet were 3 other empty bottles from previous periods. this knowledge was overwhelming and almost impossible to wrap my head around it. but somehow i suspected there was more and a massive scavenger hunt went in the house over the next few days. in the end we uncovered more bottles cleverly hidden around the home. some already opened others hidden for future date. all of them from the liquor cabinet that was rapidly thinning. my father suspected it was me, but they didn't say anything as he too knows what university is about and wouldn't dare get in my way of a higher education. the truth is, i didn't even look at that cabinet anymore.

i'll gloss over the details of this all because it is getting late and i wish to sleep soon, but the discovery of my mom's struggles killed my once passionate love for alcohol. typically, these kinds of problems happen to the "brother of a guy you know from work" but this time it hit home and really shook up the foundations of the family. our previous hush-hush, sweep problems under the rug and smile of family relations could no longer sustain.

in some ways, this brought some good to the family as it changed the way we interact and behave towards each other. we started acting more like a family and that bottling everything inside or ignoring problems isn't wise for even your own mental health. eventually, i came about and started having a somewhat better relationship with my father. here was an opportunity to bury old hatchets. some deep thinking made me realize i do not hate my father after all but respect the shit out of him because of his strengths and fortitude. he may not exactly be the kinda of person i aspire to be, but his determination of his viewpoint is something that can't be messed with.

and most important of all, my mother has since then beaten the demons. now, she much better of a person and not as closed of. at the end of it all, she told me that i remind her too much of herself at her age: closed off, keeping everything buried and feeling dejected about one self. she told me to change my ways while i still can, before it is too late and have to fight the same battles as her. i took this to heart thinking if i am setting myself on the same path as her. except unlike her at my age, i was already drinking myself stupid. now, it was just a matter of the alcohol depency taking over my mind. so slowly and gradually, i have stopped drinking before potential problems could even arise. i also took into consideration what mother said about us being alike at this age. i am currently working on that and hope to change it as well.

so, that's basically the jist of my non-alcohol activities. granted, i occassionally let this slip and maybe this "moral duty" to not drink means nothing at all. however, comparing myself to those around me, i am a prune when it comes to the swanger of the bottle. and my ability to sacrifice drinking over driving on my birthday speaks volumes. beside, i am going to get a kick of my friends drinking uncomfortably when i'm sober.

this post was brought to you by the letter: b, g, and x.