Benjamin Learner wrote this, and I share it with his graciously expressed permission, and I share it memory of good friends lost along the way —

Someone asked me, “You can’t even have 1 beer for the rest of your life?!”

I can. I’m not the type of addict where it will completely destroy my life after having that 1.

Lucky me right? Wrong !!! I’ll get away with it. That’s the problem.

The next weekend it’s 2 or 3.

A month later I’m at 6. Further down the line I’m ordering shots. Still working still okay. Maybe I get a skinny margarita with an umbrella in it but only in the summer cause then it’s tasteful right?

Then I’ll realize I’m spending too much at the bar and just grab a bottle of jack on the way home from work cause I’m not using drugs or anything it’s cool I got this under control.

That tides me over till I get bored alone drinking. So I call some old friends I use to hit the ski slopes with so I overdraft my account get a bag of powder and I’m up all night into the morning. Trying to find a late night spot to chill with girls I wake up with no money and a blood crusted nose and a life falling apart.

Then I think ya know what would go great with being broke and my life spiraling hitting up my old dope plug and really getting back into it. Because now I have a reason too.

So now I’m really destroying my life never sleeping robbing stores ignoring family slowly killing myself with fet laced god knows what cause it’s the only thing I know at this point that numbs the pain inside.

And bam!!! It’s 4 am and I’m hot railing shards off broken glass window panes in a bando in east Nashville with a dope whore whose name I learned 20 minutes ago so yeah.

That’s why I don’t have a beer.

It’s not cause the first night my life crumbles because of some chemical demon inside me. No; my addiction.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself here. The fact that everything is okay after the 1st time I put a chemical that’s a problem into my body it gives me permission to go to the next place then the next place then the next. Until I wake up in the county with 4 new felonies and a flattened 12 year bid staring at me.

So no. I’ll pass on that 1 beer thanks. God bless and keep on keeping on.