David McElroy

I dreamed that I was stumbling through thick fog. It was mostly dark and I couldn’t see where I was. There were shapes around me that seemed vaguely sinister. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I needed to put this oppressive fog behind me.

That dream a couple of nights ago seems to have been my mind’s way of giving me a metaphor for the last nine days. I know I need to talk about what I’m feeling and experiencing, but I don’t quite know what to say — and there’s no one to say it to.

When I thought my father was dying nine days ago, it brought up all sorts of painful feelings. The feelings are always just underneath the surface for me, but they’ve been front and center for the last nine days. And what I thought would be a crisis of a few days that would resolve itself one way or the other has dragged on — and I feel as though I’m stumbling through old feelings and fears and nightmares.

It makes me feel desperately alone.

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If I handed you a box of rat poison and urged you to take a bite or two, you would shove it back and angrily ask, “Why in the world would I consume poison on purpose?!”

Every time I see people drinking alcohol, I ask myself that question. I can’t figure out why anyone intentionally consumes something which is known to cause cancer and which can cause a host of other health problems. The biggest puzzle to me, though, is why people consume alcohol when they can look around them and see the social costs — deaths, injuries, addictions, destruction of families, and a host of other issues.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last few days because of a Canadian radio documentary I heard last week. CBC’s “Ideas” program has an episode called “Alcohol: Tonic or Toxin” and I strongly recommend you listen to it. (It’s 54 minutes long, but it’s worth the time.)

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