I have never liked April Fool’s Day. I guess I am gullible (or a fool), because I am always the one who says, “Oh my GOD, your cat was run over? There’s a funeral at noon? Of course I’ll be there,” only to have the room bust a gut over how hilarious they all are with a chorus of, “APRIL FOOL!!!” I stand there confused and wonder, why is this funny? April Fool’s is just not my scene and I think I come off as humorless all day long.

Speaking of which, do you remember the Tom Hanks movie Castaway where his character befriends a volleyball? He is so lonely on a deserted island, he names the ball “Wilson” and it becomes his best friend. There is a scene that is not supposed to be funny, I think, where the castaway decides to leave the island he is marooned on or die trying. He lashes together a makeshift pontoon boat. There’s a bit of bad weather on the journey, and his volleyball floats away in the storm. Tom Hanks watches it disappear and shouts like he’s trying for his third Oscar, “WILSON!!!” For some reason, everybody in the theater laughed and I think we were all supposed to get that lonely people will form attachments with an object if they have to – something to help them realize their need for fulfillment, comfort and happiness.

For some reason this popped into my mind yesterday as I was writing a post for Sanford House on Isolation: the orange face on the ball and the personification. It’s kind of like addiction. The bottle of Zinfandel becomes your best friend even when it can’t love you back. And the loneliness of the addict is self imposed, but just as isolating as a shipwreck…

It’s a fool’s paradise.

The post April Fool first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

 

Jacksonville Beach this morning…

Reading scholarly statistics about something as unmindful as excessive drinking can be amusing. First of all, excessive drinking is defined as 5 drinks for men and 4 drinks for women per day. Need I mention my previous, three-bottle-of-wine-a-day habit would translate into 15 drinks a day?

I’m the statistical equivalent of three drunk men… For me, these findings are like reading the possible ill effects of traversing a bunny hill when I’m used to downhill racing.

Nonetheless, I gleaned these snippets from a Harvard University study on alcohol and injury :

• 13% to 63% of all accidental falls are alcohol related (duh, Harvard…).
• Alcohol is implicated in one-third of drowning incidents.
• 8% of all ER visits each year for illness or injuries are associated with alcohol.
  
• Evidence links a high proportion of deaths from fires and burns to drinking.

says (in a sort of first-year, poetic, power-point presentation I found):

“Alcohol is responsible for approximately half of all trauma deaths and nonfatal injuries in the United States—a very tragic and very expensive public health problem that continues every day and every night on our nation’s highways, in our cities, and on our farms.”

Farms? Imagine the statistics for drunken cow-pie slippage or goat goading…

Does any of this make you want to put down the drink?

Today I’m not drinking because the Harvard smarty-pants say I have an excellent chance of drowning if I do…

How come you’re not drinking?

The post Alcohol and Injury – Rainy Day Stats… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.