i've been sober long enough to know...

that hangovers are not what makes life suck. Actually, life is better when you're hung over. At least then you have something to blame (other than your own lack of drive and intelligence) for your life sucking so hard.
This morning I woke up, and in an attempt to be productive in my new found sobriety, left early to sell old clothes to a local consignment shop. While I was in route to my car, foolishly smoking a cigarette, I was accosted by a hobo who frequents my stoop. Normally, I can be fake nice long enough to excuse myself from the impending nonsensical conversation, but today...with the fog of my consistent booze fest finally lifted, I couldn't even muster up the will to hide my complete disgust for these people.
"I'm late for work!" I shouted, not because he was too far away to hear my normal tone of voice, but because I wanted (with no real reason) to punch this guy directly in the head. When his hobo hag side kicks started mocking me I proceeded to yell at my closed car window, "Stop hanging around my fucking house! Yeah, I have to get to work! Someones got to buy the fucking cigarettes you assholes keep bumming!"
Where the hell did that come from? I normally lie and sweetly say "oh, sorry, it's my last one." Regardless of whether or not I have a full open pack in my other hand, waving around in their face, I still try to act as sincere as possible when I'm rejecting their hope for a nic fix...probably driving them deeper into their mental-illness driven depression and consequently their addiction to crack. I used to try to be nice. Why? I'm not sure. Possibly because I saw a lot of myself in them, those loud, drunk, annoying hobos picking through my garbage and napping in my dogs shit in the tiny patch of land to the left of my stoop. But the glimpse of me in them is gone now, the mirror shattered by a full bottle of mikes hard lemonade. If that bottle were empty, it's contents happily sloshing around in my bloated belly, the mirror would still be intact. But I am denying myself the right of comfortably numbing myself into submission, societal acceptance, whatever it is that's keeping me up at night.
For hobos everywhere, I should probably remain the raging alcoholic I have always been. Hell, for the average human being, I should probably run like the wind to my local watering hole. But I can't be thinking about you assholes all the time. I have to find what's making me so unhappy that only chemicals make me feel safe, calm, agreeable.
But what if I stay sober long enough to finally have to face that it is you, humanity, that drives me to drink, and not me? What if my complete lack of respect for your rules and norms does not come from some dopamine imbalance caused by years of substance abuse, but from that tiny part of functional brain I have left? What then? Is this sobriety the worst idea my retarded head has ever housed? Is this the beginning of my path towards a tiny hut in the middle of the woods?

If I start growing facial hair, and develop a deep appreciation for large hoodies and aviator sunglasses I am getting fucking hammered, and I think we can all agree on that.