Jenny and I discovered Absenthe at the Kroger liquor store (one with an actual liquor store not one that tops out at 40 proof Colonial Club Vodka) while we were out on Valentine’s night getting the lady some gin for martinis.

I wasn’t going to drink and we’re pretty broke so we were just going to lay around and do nothing.

But we got bored. And we decided to get her some boos and hang around the house.

But when we were going to the cash register to check out we saw the absenthe and remembered that Ohio had legalized it recently and so we bought some.

It was good. We had it in Paris (totally place dropping) and it was really good. We looked up how exactly to prepare on Wikipedia (good for everything) and went to town. It was good. Black liquorice tasting, like Jager but not like that at all. Much smoother, more crisp and lighter.

Tasty. Green and tasty. Happy VD lady love!

policy – I hate hearing the word “policy”. Like, “sorry, sir, it’s just our policy”. Now, I realize this could just be a case of a bum wrap. Sometimes policies are actually put in place to keep people from hurting themselves. Like if a Grand Canyon tour guide was like, “sorry, company policy says I can’t let you ride our donkey on the outside of the guard rail” – with it.

But when it’s just a vale for either laziness or just ‘the fucking you are now experiencing at the hands of our company’ then it is one of the worst words in the English language.

Second, guru – Sucks. Says nothing about credentials or bias but ESPN uses it all the time to describe any old asshole they’re inviting on the show. Eric Kasilias (spelling?) said it today on the radio – this is our guru on something or other – and a) I am not Eric’s biggest fan anyway and b) you could polish a guru and put it in a box and slap a guarantee on the box and all you’d get is a guaranteed piece of shit … yeah?

So no guru no policy only zen and love and the distant ring of a wind chime on a summer’s breeze.

I have also had the distinct displeasure; however, of actually recognizing two of the faces that showed up in the obits this last week or so. One was a kid I grew up with, not a good friend or anything but he participated in much of the back yard football and pick up basketball that was to be had. Apparently he killed himself.

The other was one of my best friend’s mothers. She died of a disease she fought for a long time. Jenny and I went to her funeral and it is a rare thing to feel as bad as you do when you watch a good friend truly put his heads in his hands and cry. I don’t want to write anymore about that.

I’ve been to too many funerals the last few years. I’ve been thinking maybe a change of tradition would work for me. I hate to carbon copy someone else’s idea but Hunter Thompson had an interesting one when he demanded that he be shot out of a cannon over his property in Colorado.

I think maybe I could go for that. Burn me, poor me in a powder keg with a plastic funnel and and explode me all over Morgan County or something. I don’t I’d mind inciting silent curses from some housewife somewhere as she swept my dust off her front porch.

But enough of that. Can you tell I’ve been reading Sullinger?

My cat uses Wikipedia.

That’s Huckleberry doing some ‘search on Wikipedia. This is not a “cat blog”.

Realness.

Concerns about alcohol abuse have been making headlines this week.

By: By Elizabeth Landau
CNN

First, the Indian state of Rajasthan reportedly announced it would shut down 800 alcohol shops. Then, in Britain, chief medical officer Liam Donaldson recommended Thursday that anyone 15 years old and younger avoid alcohol completely.

It’s no wonder people are worried.

A recent survey of alcoholism studies in the Lancet suggests that men have more than a 20 percent lifetime risk of developing alcohol-use disorders, while women’s risk is 8 to 10 percent.

Much of that risk is inherited (so why try?). Studies show that as much as 60 percent of the risk of alcohol-use disorders is genetic, said Dr. Marc Schuckit, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the alcohol and drug treatment program at the Veterans Affairs-San Diego Healthcare System, who wrote the Lancet article. (My numbers show that 90 percent of the time statistics can be made to show that anything you want is anything you 50 percent of those times. Or something.)

The risk for alcoholism is four times greater for children of alcoholics, even those who are adopted by non-alcoholic families, Schuckit said.

But people who have a genetically influenced disorder can control it by behaving responsibly. Just as someone at risk for diabetes shouldn’t exacerbate the problem by becoming overweight, someone with a family history of alcoholism must avoid drinking too much. (Now that’s a fact.)

“If you know you’re at risk, it’s your responsibility to avoid the problems,” Schuckit said. (sure thing)

Why is the risk so much greater in men than women? Psychiatrists point out that young women also have twice the rate of depression and anxiety that men do, and daughters of alcoholic fathers tend more toward depression than alcoholism, said Dr. Charles Raison, psychiatrist and director of the Mind/Body Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. (What the fuck was that whole paragraph about and who the hell is this guy talking to me?)

“There may be a similar underlying neurobiology to a lot of psychiatric conditions, and how they manifest in particular has something to do with circumstances, has something to do with gender, and has something to do with age,” Raison said.

There are also cultural factors in this gender pattern, but less is known about them, he said. He said women tend toward alcoholism in their 40s and 50s — which may be their way of counteracting anxiety — around the time that men tend to develop depression. (That just makes me laugh because it is so sad.)

Another genetic trait is involved in sensitivity to alcohol. Japanese, Chinese, and Korean people tend to have a mutation in their alcohol-metabolizing genes that makes them more sensitive — meaning they tend to drink less than people from other backgrounds, he said.

Data show that the earlier you start drinking away from your family, the greater the risk of alcohol problems later in life, he said. On average, people begin drinking apart from the family at 15, a number that hasn’t changed much in decades, Schuckit said.

How much is too much?

Male livers can metabolize about twice as much alcohol as females’, meaning men can drink about twice as much as women before it becomes dangerous, Raison said. (Thank you so much for breaking that down for me – this guuuuyyy.)

“A woman who drinks two glasses of wine every day of her life is actually at risk for developing liver trouble,” Raison said.

Recommended drinking habits vary from person to person. To reap the health benefits from wine, a glass to a glass-and-a-half a day is recommended for women, and twice that amount for men, he said.

Getting help

Treating alcoholism is similar to helping people with other chronic conditions — for example, getting a diabetic person to be compliant with medications, Schuckit said. With both alcoholism and diabetes, therapy involves working with a person to alter behavior and help watch for signs of relapse.

“The core of treatment for any long term chronic disorder that requires changes in how you do things in life is to help people to recognize that they have a problem, and they can do something about it,” Schuckit said.

A combination of medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy is usually the best treatment option for alcoholism, Schuckit said. Cognitive-behavioral therapy involves changing a person’s mindset — recognizing the problem — and improving behavior.

Health Library

(And the sales pitch.)

Three medications are available in the U.S. to treat alcoholism, Schuckit said. A drug called acamprosate targets the nervous system and helps people decrease their craving by allowing them to sleep better and feel less anxious.

Naltrexone, on the other hand, blocks opioid receptors and dampens the good feelings that would normally come along with drinking. These two in combination work slightly better than either alone, he said.

A third option is disulfiram, which actually paralyzes the ability of one of the alcohol metabolizing enzymes to work, he said. That makes it especially nauseating and, in rare cases, deadly, for a person taking the drug to drink alcohol.

Support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous that offer 12-step programs are great resources, and they’re free, Schuckit said.

So….drink or be depressed, right? Great.

Here is a link to the whole story in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28updike.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

He wasn’t my favorite but he was quite possibly the biggest literary figure alive. It is sad that he is gone. R.I.P.