Have you ever had a person say something to you jokingly, and it’s kind of mean, but funny? And you let it slide like a boss, because you know how to laugh at yourself? But years later you still think about it every once in a while?

I remember a long time ago, I was wearing a black bathing suit with a ruffled bikini bottom, thinking I looked kind of French and edgy. My friend Val said (in a British accent which always makes it more cutting), “Oh, Mazza, you look like one of the dancing hippos in Fantasia.” I think of it every time I consider wearing something with a ruff…

Yesterday, someone told me I was “touchy” and that talking to me was like navigating verbal eggshells.  It’s been quite a week for pealing the onion of my behavior… I did what I always do in response to criticism. I took it in. “This is a first. No one has ever accused me of being thin skinned before,” I said.

The exchange above is a blip on the screen, but the fact is I AM NOT TOUCHY.

Pealing the Onion…

I do not think you can be thin skinned in recovery. We all face our past, in ways those who are not addicted to Toasted Head,  never have to do. We make fearless moral inventories and atone, for God’s sake.

I have been contacted by old lovers, nannies and the mothers of my children’s friends in the process of writing this blog.. Some of these long-lost reminiscers have told me straight-up, they “hated me” in my drinking days. Reminding me of previous slights and “the time I didn’t seem sad when their cat was run over by a town car…”

I have had internet trolls call me a “stupid cunt” in reference to my yearning prose. They tell me my writing is banal and my ideas the worse kind of tripe. I have braved Reddit. I swear to you, I carry my mistakes in my pocket like a doctor’s excuse…

And most days I just get up and go about my business like a pachyderm.

But I never, ever wear anything with ruffles…

http://https://youtu.be/nEjPDS8Jp1E

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Someone asked me the other day if I was wearing hair extensions, because my hair “looked so thick”. It’s funny, because for so many years I have hated my thin hair, and recently it has become kind of amazing. I actually did wear hair extensions during The Bahamas years. I thought they looked glamorous at the time. Based on a quick perusal of old photographs, I actually looked like a drunk, with someone else’s hair hot melt glue-gunned to my scalp…

The thing about hair extensions, is that they’re great for bombshell, red-carpet entrances at gala events, but day to day they are impractical – unless you travel with your hairdresser or sit with the quiet grace of a geisha in the shade of a parasol. While I was living in The Bahamas, there was nothing about my milieu that could be described as “graceful”, and more often than not, I’d stumble into a bar bathroom to find I’d been holding court with a hank of severed hair draped across a shoulder like some enormous fuzzy-bear caterpillar…

Anyhoo, I haven’t worn extensions for a year and a half, and suddenly I have this luxurious head of hair. So of course, I wanted to know why. I am always looking for more reasons to crow about sobriety and honestly, by the end of my boozing years, beneath the Remy wefts, I was practically bald. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you.

Alcohol Wreaks Havoc on Your Hair

Here’s Why:

• Heavy drinkers rarely have a balanced diet;
• Alcohol is a diuretic, and hair is like a tissue that needs constant nourishment and hydration;
• Booze raises estrogen levels and elevated estrogen causes hair loss;
• Over-drinking lowers levels of zinc and vitamins B and C: essential elements for healthy hair growth;
• Drinking alcohol causes folic acid to drop – folic acid is vital for strong hair.

For more information about this subject you can go to The Alcoholism Guide. And there are also plenty of articles about what alcohol can do, to mess with your weight, teeth, skin, nails and all other things attractive.  Speaking of attractive:

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