Drinking and drunks
I don't like to be exposed to people when they drink. They become really strange, some even cross over the line into insanity. They become like a Mr. Hyde, some kind of creepy demon that lurks beneath their everyday façade. Even if they become "happy" when drunk, it is creepy – it is creepy to not be yourself, to not be an integrated, self-aware human, but to have crazy emotions and desires lurking beneath your surface, creepy things or truths about what's in your "heart of hearts" that you may not even be aware of, or that you only allow to surface when you can excuse yourself before society by your drunken state.
I must have been exposed to alcohol at a very young age, though I don't remember. My family members enjoyed wine, cognac and many other foul-tasting things, including pot. I didn't like any of these things. To this day I still think alcohol tastes like poison and when they smoked pot, I thought the stench was repulsive and the smoke aggravated my asthma. I seemed to be blissfully unaware of alcohol and its effects on people and somehow, my mind never assimilated the concept of "drunk" or "stoned" to such an extent that I could believe or accept that people could become unaware of themselves and unaccountable for their own speech and actions. I have very little experience with "drunk" people, even to this day, thank God.
What I DO remember, however, and what I was VERY aware of, was the effects that drunks had on me in the few encounters I had with them – which is to say, those times when I was aware or became aware after the fact, that I had been dealing with a drunk.
Perhaps my earliest recollection of drunkenness goes back to New Year's parties my mom used to have. I guess I was in my late teens or early 20's at the time. New Year's Eve was not a pleasant experience for me at my mom's and it took me a couple years to learn to stop going there for New Year's. She would have a New Year's party with all of her 55+ year old friends. I would just be there amidst the noise and boisterous chaos of many drunken "old people." They were having fun, that was clear, laughing and dancing and being…well, goofy. It didn't sit right with me, because they seemed so immature, idiotic, even though they were the parents of children even older than I was. And as for me, to them I was effectually not even present at the party. When I got sick of watching their strange behavior, I would go upstairs and do stuff alone in my room, or watch TV, with the loud booming voices, raucous laughter and pounding on the floor from downstairs in the background.
Somehow there is some kind of unspoken understanding and acceptance in society that any behavior not involving a car, and occasionally serious physical injury to another, is excusable if you are drunk. Drunkenness seems to be a way for the drunk to shuffle off any responsibility or accountability for his/her behavior and actions towards others:
1. One summer I was planning a very large event at my mother's. I had received something in the mail that was intended for the event and I knew that what had been sent was not right (and indeed it wasn't) and as I was opening it, I said "Oh, it's not going to be right…" out loud to myself in the presence of my mother's boyfriend, my brother, his wife and some guests from Germany. My words set Satan aflame in my mother's boyfriend and he burst out hurling swear words at me, because "all I ever do is f-ing bitch, bitch, bitch." I shouted back at him, but I tried to go light on the swear words in front of the guests and he shouted more at me and I had to get out of that house. His voice was booming acrimonious obscenities around me, wrapped up in his enmity, and I didn't want to continue in front of the guests. I ran to the front door and as I heard him shouting at me to not to dare slam that f-ing door, I slammed it as hard as I could and I didn't go back to that house that night. I slept at a friend's.
The next morning, a friend coaxed me to return to the house, whereupon my mother's boyfriend apologized and said "I think we both said things we didn't mean yesterday – you know, that was just my 3-martini response." I had no idea martinis had anything to do with it. Everyone else, including my brother and mother, told me I had over-reacted to the boyfriend's outburst.
2. In December of the year 2000, after having lived an extremely difficult and lonely 3 years in Finland, I remember being in a bar with a small group of acquaintances, one of them being a Finnish boy who I loved profoundly. He was talking to one of the girls there and saying how he is going to invite all of us to his house for a New Year's party that year and he was speaking about how much fun it would be. When I left the bar that night, his words stuck in my mind. I was so happy. Every year I am alone for Christmas and New Year's here and this was to be the first time I would not be alone, the first time someone invited me to celebrate with them and I would be part of something for the holidays, like a normal person. I was so happy and I began to daydream about and really look forward to that party. I told my brother that I wasn't going to be alone that year for New Year's, because I was invited to a party.
Some weeks later, I was talking to the boy I loved on the phone who had been talking about his New Year's party. I asked him about that party and he told me he had been drunk when he was saying all of that stuff and he didn't intend to invite me or anyone else who was there that night to a party.
3. I have another Finnish acquaintance, named Jari. He was the first Finn I ever knew. When I was still living in Canada, in 1996, I was planning to go to Finland for the summer and I wanted to see Jari. We had met for the first time in 1988, so we were well acquainted. I had been in love with him for 9 years, beginning in 1987 when we were writing letters. In the spring of 1996 I called Jari on the phone from Canada to ask him if I could visit him. We talked for half an hour. Jari and I made arrangements and we agreed that I would send him a letter with my flight number and arrival time once I had my ticket.
Some weeks or a month later, after I had bought the ticket, I did just as we had agreed on the phone – I sent him a letter telling him when I would arrive in Helsinki and on what flight. Well…some time later I received a vulgar and nasty letter back from him in response. He wrote things, like he has a girlfriend now and I was some kind of arrogant bitch just inviting myself there without even asking him. He acted as if I had never called him and we had never made arrangements on the phone. I was angry at his letter and I wrote a nasty letter back and that was the end of that for some years.
It turns out he was drunk when I had called him on the phone, so it was "ok" that he treated me like that. I think I knew he was somewhat drunk when we were on the phone, but it just doesn't register or occur to me in my mind that he cannot be aware of what he is saying. I just don't believe it.
Another thing I understood about drinking is that it is a brotherhood. During my first half year at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, I stayed in campus housing with other students. There were both girls and guys on the same floor, with the girls being in one wing and the guys in the other. I came to understand that they all drank a lot. I remember one weekend night, there was a guy who was very, very drunk. He had fallen and banged his mouth on the toilet bowl in the bathroom. His body was limp on the floor and he leaned with the upper part of his body and his arms hanging over the toilet bowl with blood dripping down his mouth onto the floor. I remember being there in the bathroom and looking at him. I thought many things as I looked at him and confusion and questions filled my mind. I looked at him in his pathetic state, the indignity, the foolishness and then, with some sad feeling in my heart, wondering why has he done this…another guy was there and he was so understanding and kind with the one who was bleeding and I couldn't understand the phenomenon of his kindness and caring, a kind of caring which I myself had craved for years. I asked him why he had this attitude towards the bleeding one and he told me "Because maybe next week I will be the one with my head in the toilet."
At that moment, I saw the brotherhood of the drunks and I found myself on the wrong side of a line which would include me in a group where people would care about me. I felt sad and lonely, but more confused, and somehow…well, put-off by what seemed like some kind of illogical, sick behavior that I could never engage in.
Another more passive experience I had with drunks happened in Finland that same summer I was supposed to visit Jari. I was alone visiting Finland and I had made a friend at the hostel where I was staying. I went out with her and her boyfriend to a bar one night. I remember being out on the sidewalk at around 4 a.m. after the bar had closed in the summertime when it is very light here. I remember my friend and her boyfriend were waiting in a long line to buy some food at a kiosk along the sidewalk and I was surrounded by drunk young Finns. One of them was very, very drunk and he was ranting with fury and rage, flailing himself around with no control of his body and I remember that I was so scared of him, he was crazy. When I looked at him, it looked like he was in a diabolical rage with fire in his eyes. However, while I was afraid of him and a touch sad about him, all the others around me were laughing at him and taunting him, which enraged him even more. I've never seen anyone so angry and out of control and he looked a mess. I was hiding a bit behind a pole and hoping he wouldn't come near me in his random staggering. My friend was taunting him. Then he lay down flat right in the middle of the road and I watched him while thinking and feeling so many things…isn't someone going to run over him? In fact, no. A car came and the driver saw him there and stopped, beeped the horn and he staggered and stumbled to the curb.
Having said all of that, this week in the news, I read that the year 2004 has seen a record number of deaths from alcohol misuse in Finland. One third of these deaths is caused by alcohol poisoning and the remaining deaths result from sickness from over-use of alcohol. Deaths from over-use of alcohol have been steadily increasing among people of working age in Finland over the last 20 years. Finland's national statistics center reports that 1,560 people died as a result of alcohol consumption in 2003, while in 2004, the number increased by 300, to 1,860 (summarized in English from the website of Turun Sanomat).
