It's five-thirty and I've snuck out of bed because I can't sleep. My head is killing me...my mouth is tundra-dry. All symptoms that come with the territory of...

Well, I don't want to talk about it in too much detail. Suffice to say that if you read my posts from the first couple days of the year you will know what I mean when I tell you that the New Years resolution turned out to be something I wasn't able to pull off, despite the truth of everything I said, every reason I had to try it. I wanted to prove wrong the old saw that "New Years resolutions are only made to be broken". Alas, my determination proved fleeting. There is likely an almost universal truth to the saying, because I don't think I've ever been consistent about them and I can't say I know anyone else who has, either.

Besides, it's not as if I actually totally reneged on it. I don't think I ever out-and-out set-in-stone laid down the law about NEVER doing it again... No, I left behind some loopholes, and that will be my excuse. When I said I wanted to stop doing it, what I meant was I'm going to stop BUYING IT. I'm going to stop blazing through a whole bag until I'm numb. But I suppose it's okay to accept the generosity of good friends, even to the extent of accepting a couple of buds to take home. Keep it regulated, you know? Don't let it get out of hand. Surely that's enough to keep me from feeling like a loser when I contemplate the failure of the first resolution of a new decade.

Fuck it, eh? Just fuck it. It's kind of like that episode of "M*A*S*H" where Hawkeye bets he can go without a drink for 24 hours. By the time 23 of them had past he was driving everybody crazy. He was wrecked. Just as the time limit is almost over with he finds himself in the officer's club ordering a shot of something strong. The other guys are sitting at the bar and the responses range from "Oh, Hawkeye, you were so close", to the standard, "It's okay, son, a place like this would cause any man to need a little something to keep his head on straight". Hawkeye rationalizes and fidgets and then rationalizes some more until he eventually says, "I need this drink". This admission quietens down his friends, and he places the glass to his lips...but he doesn't drink. As he lowers the glass he says, "I'll drink this when I WANT to drink it, not because I NEED to."

Sounds like your typical Alcoholics Anonymous line, huh? Then again, come to think of it, my situation is not really like that at all...Pierce didn't take that drink. He admitted that he may have wanted it, but that he didn't need it. Yet if you dig a little deeper you might find a similarity or two with my predicament. The main one being that I don't really feel like I NEED my vice, but that I want it. In other words, I don't feel like I'm "mentally addicted"...just thought it might be fun to spend an evening looking at the pretty lights behind my closed eyes that dance to the beat of the music. Still a little freaky, I admit. But I don't think I've run out of ways to keep it in perspective.

So, for better or worse, my aching head and early morning insomnia are the direct result of my inability to "kick a habit". Of course I'm disappointed that I couldn't ride it out full steam ahead. Still...what the hell, you know? A little break from the norm is a good thing, I would think.

---