Prayer Meetings of a Different Kind

My addictive personality didn't manifest itself.  I've had nature and nurture conspiring together to make me into a gambling, drinking, facebooking, tweeting fool. 

Less than a full month after my 21st birthday, I began my new life in Oklahoma City, OK as a First-Term Airman.  Sounds like a great idea, dudn't?  Give a guy a license to drink, legally, and no parents or the like within 1500 miles to say, "Gee, maybe you shouldn't be out at the bar eight nights / week 'til they do last call."

Well, if you know my Dad, you know he might not object so readily. 

I'm man enough to admit that on more than one occassion, I drank enough to arrive at a puke-and-rally check-point.  Twenty eight years on this Earth and there's only one day that I recall actually waking up the next morning and wanting to throw up.  This was almost exactly a year ago.  It was following one of my last nights on the East Coast before heading West with tens of thousands of dollars, in search of some dream in Las Vegas.

Not only did I want to pray to the porcelain gods after that night of drinking, I went through with it.  I'm convinced that it was more nervousness about the trip than a simple hangover from hell.  My second night in Vegas, I lost a $3K-$4K pot with a set vs OESD/FD.  I went on tilt for the ensuing six or eight weeks, and lost many much monies.  The dream quickly turned into a nightmare.

Since I picked up the poker habit, I don't drink nearly as much as I did within the four years before and the four after my 21st - but when I do, I try to make up for lost time.  Went out last night and had a good time, woke up this morning feeling fit as a fiddle.  Bright and early, too - I was out of bed a full 13 hours before I had to be at work.

Just before I started writing this, I came across the Grump's Re-cap of a Robl vs Antonius PLO Hand.  For the second time in my life, I wanted to puke after a night of drinking.  This was a sympathy-vom, though, and I failed to follow through.