Raging alcoholic?

Relearning The Three R's By Mike Roselle Fear and loathing in The Firm, and the historic role of alcohol in the movement.

Or social drinker?

We started this blog to get a discussion going, and to find out what folks in the field are thinking about a range of issues not often discussed on the Internet. It is an experiment, as Josh and I are new at this. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who is the brains behind the Daily Kos, one of the most lively and popular blogs, has this advice for bloggers ; “Be noticed. Make a stir. Don't regurgitate the contents of a news story, but provide perspective or additional insight. Be clever, funny, and original. Get away from the default templates. Create your own identity, your own domain. Have attitude. Be self-confident”. We are trying to do that. How we are doing at it is a matter for you to consider and we enjoy getting feedback from our readers, especially snarky e-mail.As some of you know, back in January I was fired from my job at the Large Environmental Group Best Known for Saving Whales, or as its know by its operatives “The Firm”. They wouldn’t officially tell me why they fired me. They thanked me for my 17 years of service and asked me to turn in my computer, cell phone and credit card. They stopped short of tearing the epaulets off my shirt and breaking my sword, but they did demand I surrender my door pass, thus denying me access to the best smoking deck in Chinatown.

Of course by this time I wanted to be fired. Usually these things are handled more diplomatically, by the Firm’s famous Human Resource Department, using the dreaded three “R’s”. You either Resign; you are Reorganized, or you are Reprioritized. For me, they had a new “R”, Rehab. Now I don’t know many people who have not contemplated checking themselves into a nice quiet mental institution after a hard fought campaign. The part I don’t like about Rehab is that I would still have to go to meetings with people I normally wouldn’t hang out with, and there would still be facilitators. This is what drives me to drink in the first place. Anyway I turned down an all expenses paid trip to the Betty Ford Center and got “Reprioritized” which is what happens if you don’t “Resign”. I had tried to resign, but they would not accept my resignation, because as it turned out, someone was calling my colleges and mentors in an evidently futile attempt to get them to convince me it was time to get on the plane to Palm Springs or wherever the hell in California the Betty Ford Center is.

Of course its no secret that I drink, at least I don’t try to hide it. My father was a bouncer in a South Texas stampede bar room and my mother met my stepfather while he was a bartender in Louisville. My step-dad tended bar at the Penguin Club, which was a Go-Go bar and he would take me there sometimes. The only time I saw my Grandfather was at Zilber’s a pub on Seventh Street, which served as his home and office for 50 years, and which is where he usually was when he wasn’t fixing people’s plumbing. (Yes, he had Plumbers Butt). The only letter we ever got from him was when they tore Zilber’s down to expand the Honey Crust Bakery next door. I can still remember the last sentence of that very short letter. “We all stood across the street with tears in our eyes.” He tended a bar down the street until the day he died at age 82.

It’s not just the USA office either. As frustrating as it is to work with the people upstairs in Chinatown, you also have the Europeans, Aussies, Brazilians, Russians and a couple dozen other countries to deal with. Inherently, it’s not an easy job, and very few are any good at it. Fortunately no matter how bad things got in coordinating this sprawling network of campaigners, sailors, engineers, fundraisers and managers, the campaigns have managed to succeed. This is a testament to the many hard working grunts, many which are the unpaid volunteers and lifelong supporters. These are the Men and Women below Decks, and a braver more patient lot you’ll never meet.

Even though I asked for it by not getting on the plane and spilling my guts in front of a bunch of B-List movie stars and strung out athletes, getting fired is never a pleasant experience. I wonder if Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone would have fired Hunter S. Thompson for not checking into Betty Ford? While not wishing to compare myself to the late Dr. Thompson, (I’ve never taken that many drugs or drank that much hard liquor in my life) I do envy the freedom to be himself that he enjoyed with his boss. I never had that with any of the half-a-dozen bosses I had in Washington. Much of the time I felt like I was hidden away in the basement like a demented nephew, or I had to constantly watch my back and defend myself from all sorts of career monkeys and commissars.

The irony in all of this is that drunken sailors and dope smoking hippies, if the stories are to be believed, founded the organization known as Greenpeace and gave it it’s personality. Additionally they were mystical and unconventional, and uninterested in politics per say. They were interested in changing the way people think, and they succeeded in doing this a number of times. Most of my experience with the Firm, excluding my brief stint on the Board of Directors, has been with the campaigners, action team members and the volunteers. We’d never get together without telling drinking stories. Some have been handed down through the years and have gained an almost mythical quality.

Another night in Marudi, Borneo a very well known anthropologist and I had to be carried into our hotel rooms by a group of tattooed Dyak hunters after an all night ceremony with a hundred tribal headmen from around the region. I was there to attend the trial of the Cayan activists arrested the year before for blocking a logging road near their village. When the charges were dropped it was time to party, and after the local Catholic Priest left the longhouse, the jars of rice wine came out and were set in front of each visitor by the elder women. As far as I could ascertain, not getting drunk was out of the question. Afterward, and after a trip up the river to the Cayan village of Uma Bawong, I was looking through the visitors log and saw photos of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus delegation wearing funny hats and according to Chad Dobson, one of the revelers, dancing the Hokey Pokey. I asked Chad if they had gotten into the rice wine. He said they had.

I’ve had similar experiences in Russia, Central America, Lithuania, Germany, Africa and even Canada. I’ve had more than a few late night sessions with David Brower, who never failed to mention anytime he spoke that the best campaigns were planned on napkins in the bar at closing time. I have definitely witnessed the birth of many of a campaign on a bar napkin, and know for a fact that many of these original Greenpeace bar napkins are carefully archived. We could take some time here and explore all the reasons why enviros have, and still do, drink but we won’t. Plumbers and soldiers, priests and cops, loggers and politicians drink, smoke pot, and use a number of other recreational drugs, including many I gave up using when I was a teenager. But sometimes I think those of us who live on the edge are victims of a creeping Puritanism, a sort of buzz kill mentality. The Ruckus Society used to have great parties, but they have become so uptight lately that when they fart only dogs can hear it. I think we are missing good opportunities for teambuilding and bonding when we are afraid to party, afraid to be a little wild. This goes against the cultural grain of the conservation movement, although we see this from time to time in the left. At Nixon’s Inauguration in 1973 we had long meetings on whether having beer at our victory celebration was considered cultural imperialism, and decided to ban it. We had our shindig, but the men were afraid to dance with the women, and even more scared to dance with each other. It was the lamest party I’d ever been to. Would it have killed them to have a keg of beer? I think not.

We are creating an environment that questions the value of getting a little crazy and howling at the full moon. Things that were normal, almost required, are now taboo. Even consensual sex can get you into a tribunal where you can expect to face a panel of dour judges questioning your motives. Additionally you have to worry that this may get back to your boss and go into an evaluation that you don’t even know exists. And, of course, the biggest problem is that these rules are never uniformly enforced and sometimes (and I know you will be shocked to hear this) politics can even play a roll. Now I think we can all agree that there have been excesses, and there have been times when things got out of control. Usually it involves just one or two people, but the result will always be the same. We deal with it, and we move on. Unfortunately, a lot of times this means that we make more rules and have more sensitivity training and, of course, more meetings, In my experience this has never solved anything.

The worst part about all of this Kafkaesque nonsense is that once you are accused of having a problem, denying it only makes you look more guilty, while agreeing and not going into rehab makes you look uncooperative and self destructive. When my boss told me I had the choice of going into rehab or getting fired I ordered a beer and asked him if he wanted to make a wager on me going, because I would dam sure take his money. But maybe I was too hasty. Since my now ex-boss has called many of my friends, and none of them have called me, I think there may be a consensus that I simply drink, as Mojo Nixon says, to kill the pain of being alive. Or maybe I do actually have a drinking problem, and my friends are afraid to confront me on my cell phone.

We want to know what our readers think. If enough of you write in, I will check into rehab. On the other hand, if nobody cares, I am staying put. If it evenly split, I will check in for a week with Floyd and then go to a bar. I’ll bet there is a good one filled with movie stars very near the front gate.

--Pompano Joe’s, Destin Florida

Mike is very serious about your opinion, dear reader. Don’t leave him hanging with a 12-pack of Milwaukee’s Best and an uncertainty about its place in his life.

Raging alcoholic, social drinker, or neo-Puritan? Email your diagnosis as to the extent of Mike Roselle’s drinking habits to editor@lowbagger.org.