24

Rae resolved to quit drinking. It wasn’t until he made this resolution that he discovered that he had nothing else to do. When he wasn’t drinking, he was passed out or trying to get more alcohol. The whole point of drinking was that it formed a habit.¹ And so when he stopped drinking, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

After Sara left, he did not immediately go back to Dave’s Hole. Instead he started walking. He walked down one street and up another, too fast to do anything but walk—as if he could run away from drinking. He walked through half of the night, until he was exhausted and weary and only then did he return to Dave’s Hole.

Corker was asleep, but Albert One-Eye was propped up against his backpack, sipping beer out of a can. He nodded at Rae. Rae climbed into his blankets and turned away. But, perversely, the action of getting into his bedding only served to stir him into greater wakefulness. He listened to Albert One-Eye drinking. He thought about the rest of the beer Albert One-Eye undoubtedly had. Beer always made him drowsy.

Rae resolved to try to fall asleep. When he heard Albert One-Eye open another beer, he decided that he was doing much more harm to himself lying awake all night, and asked for a beer. After he finished that beer, he had another because the first had made him feel nice and warm, but not quite ready for sleep. He didn’t sleep until somewhere in the middle of the third beer.

If he could have made one single decision, there is no doubt that he never would have touched alcohol again. But when it came to the long process of quitting, he did not have the stamina.² Perhaps Rae felt a little sheepish when he woke up and recollected his resolution. But he was a hopeful person and decided that a little beer to help him sleep wasn’t total failure.

He had half a bottle of rum before midday. He regretted this as a mistake, and, in fact, it startled him so greatly that he decided to give up quitting for the rest of the day and start fresh in the morning. In the morning, he had such a horrible hangover that he ended up drinking just to try to feel better. As you no doubt have guessed, Rae did not quit drinking. He didn’t even succeed to in refraining from alcohol for one day.

Now, you might say that Rae obviously did not love Sara very much at all, since he couldn’t even bring himself to abandon fermented vegetable matter for her sake. But I tell you that it is not true, that his love for her was very great—as great a love as any Martian was capable—yet alcohol was worth more than this love. We are thus introduced to the main principle of addiction, which is that all addicts are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the world they inhabit.³ The idea that his relationship with Sara required him to quit drinking seemed as absurd as the idea that it required him to hold his breath or to stop eating. He could not perceive a logical connection. An addict lives in the world principally, indeed, exclusively, as their addiction presents it to them.⁴

It has often been asked—how it was, and through what series of steps, that Rae became an alcoholic. Was it gradually, tentatively, mistrustingly, as one walking a path in the dark, and with a knowledge from the first of the dangers lying ahead? Or was it in pure ignorance of such dangers, under the misleadings of the foolhardy Martian culture which so often promoted the use of this deadly toxin? Or was it (Yes! I must answer even before the question is finished) because of emotional anguish? I repeat, Yes!⁵ I have said that Rae came to alcohol by default. The truth is that he was lonely. Simply as a solution to his loneliness did Rae resort to alcohol. And precisely that same torment it is, or some variety of that torment which drove most Martians to such an insidious remedy.⁶

Of course, he could not have said himself why he started drinking.⁷ It tasted good, and he liked the effect produced by the alcohol.⁸ The initial euphoria was the best. Everything after that was a greedy, doomed chase to catch that feeling again. Actually, Rae detested the chemical havoc that drinking to excess wrought on his body. Once the euphoria left him, he was nauseated and dizzy; usually he got diarrhea—his stomach was cramped and painful. His head hurt. Sometimes he remained this way for a whole day. Unless he drank more.

Happiness, for Rae, was knowing he had something to drink.⁹ It was a way of life,¹⁰ and he settled back into it. Perhaps Rae felt some sense of guilt that he wasn’t with Sara, but he always managed to put his hopes for that on tomorrow. Tomorrow perhaps, he would rise from the dead and begin to live again. There were still the makings of a man in him.¹¹