The Saviour

Noah got drunk first.

At least, that is what the Book says. It says he grew grapevine on the slopes of the Ararat Mountain, started a vineyard, made wine, he was inoffensive, just, respected. Then he got drunk, his sons saw him naked, ridiculed him. They disgraced him because he disgraced himself. He disgraced himself before God. He disgraced himself before His Law and the sons used his weakness to humiliate him. The story of Noah, that wilful drunk and inadvertent sea fearer, shows a few things. It shows drinking is against the Law; intoxication is punishable; the drinker is weak; it gives the weaker ones the right to carry out punishment and be violent; that not even the incontrovertible Father can behave anyway he wants with his family, and that freedom is not just limited, but certain behaviour is inadmissible. Finally, that one should not drink with just anyone. One should not drink publicly, at ill time, and if that does happen, one should not cross the line. All of this happened to Noah, the man who saved the world from the Flood and even took his entire family with him. If he had not drunk, maybe something like that would not have crossed his mind. Repulsive he was, that Noah.

Instead of Chronology

We owe the term to Arabic: al-kohl; a fine powder of antimony, used for dying eye-brows, therefore for titivation, beauty. In the Arab world distillation was used on all types of substances and was associated with the idea that the essence of something, its elixir, is physically present in the substance and can be separated by way of a chemical process. Therefore, al-kohl denotes any fine powder or essence. Later on, Paracelsus got involved, without whom the European alchemy would amount to nothing. Was alcohol invented by an alchemist who turned water into fire, and thus created a drink which does not quench thirst, but increases it; created a liquid which is food, drink and a drug. Legends are recalled, events are recalled, gods and kings are listed, joined by the mortals. Many things are mentioned, but the inventor is not named, there is not even an exact date. Drink was invented by nature herself. She let the fruit of the Earth ferment and become what it is, but is not. Nature gave us water and fire and “fire water”. And every each one of them as a “good servant but bad master”. I cannot help but think inebriation existed before drink.

London of my Youth

When was the first time it happened to me? A long time ago, but it seems as it is not. My mother told me it was two hundred years ago, maybe even more…Actually, that is not so. She told me about my ancestors, people from Lika, all army officers, whose escapades were subjects of many a story. My grandfather was one of them. Once, disheartened, he looked at the Lašva River: “Your gramps drank as much grappa as water had flowed through here”. He was joined by Jack London. The Jack London who was first a drunk, and then a writer, London who read Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche, London who was a socialist, a fact I discovered much later, a fact which helped me realise the origin of my convictions. And then, Ferid, who managed to procure a bottle of rum. “Absent?” – the teacher would ask. “Čolić, Finci, Marjanović” – the prefect was ready, without having to look around the class. We did not skive because of ill health, nor because we lacked knowledge. Our teachers found us intelligent, lazy and irresponsible. We did not care for many of the school subjects, for discipline even less. Bobo cared for snow, skiing and girls, Ferid and I for long discussions on authors and topics our teachers had little understanding for, and the cinema, where heroes of the “lost generation” flickered on the screen, full of romantic aspiration and unfulfilled hope. Truancy was proof of our freedom. We ambled along the city streets, discussed Lermontov and Faulkner, deliberated films we saw separately or together, admired Louis Armstrong and Glen Miller, cited Adler and Freud conceitedly, even more conceitedly refuted Marx (“The heart is more important than the stomach”), celebrated anarchism and, slightly tipsy on the cheap cooking rum and inspired by Jack London’s life odyssey, dreamed of our future voyages. Then things took their own course…

The Story

Anyone who drinks has their own, unique story about the “worst one”. Unique would, however, mean totally incomparable, which is not really the case here. It is unique in the domain of solitary experiences. All inebriations are alike insofar as they have intoxication in common. The worst inebriation would be the one not survived by the imbiber (or the best one, depending on the attitude to life). It would be the ultimate booze up – the drunk dying drinking. Many a story has been told of booze ups and the strange things that happened to the boozers. It is true, wondrous things happen. There is something unpredictable, unwelcome, impossible (and he’s still alive!) in inebriation, all sorts of things happen, but why do I have to remember it all? I could do it again tonight, if I wanted to…In any case, all drinking stories are similar. Someone started drinking, got hooked on it (the pessimistic version) or quit (the optimistic version). There is nothing merrier than stories of booze ups, nothing more terrifying than stories of alcoholism. Drink is a merry demon. And, in drinking, a string of unconnected events, play of broken mirrors, a jumble of chaotic fragments that the mind desperately wants to link up and even name. I have become acquainted with all booze ups in just one and not reached the one in all of them.

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