Rolling the Dice - TBI and alcohol

The experts agree: people recovering from traumatic brain shouldn't drink.  It's a vicious cycle -TBI lowers survivors' alcohol tolerance.   It enhances alcohol's negative effects, and alcohol in turn exacerbates TBI deficits.  This lovely cocktail (no pun intended) of alcohol and TBI can lead to impaired thinking - poor judgment, memory issues, decreased motor skills, and so forth - basically alcohol's ordinary minuses, but amplified.  In some cases alcohol can even lead to seizures.  

Fortunately this only while people are recovering.  I was straight edge* at 19, when the drunk driver hit me (yeah, how's that for irony, a drunk driver hits a straight edge pedestrian who doesn't drive), so when the doctor told me I shouldn't drink it didn't bother me. 

Unfortunately recovery is a lifelong process and when, years later, I "broke the edge" and started drinking, I still had to deal with TBI-alcohol problems.   If I had problems every time I drank I just wouldn't do it, but this is not the case at all.  Drinking is extremely interesting for me - my tolerance and reactions are so varied that I never know what to expect.  

The vast majority of the time everything is copasetic, some nights I drink two drinks and am pleasantly tipsy, other evenings and I will have 5 drinks and not feel the affect, but I am generally pretty good at regulating it.  However on occasion there can be dire consequences.  One fateful night (last summer) I had two drinks, I felt fine, but half an hour later my memory of the night ends, and I (apparently) ended up vomiting in an obliging closet.  

Now I am one to roll the dice, I don't drink terribly often, but last night I decided to a Matador Records/Insound listening party for AC Newman's (frontman for the New Pornographers) new album Get Guilty.  A friend of mine was organizing it, and I hadn't seen her in ages, besides; I love the New Pornographers.  I took the D train from my Harlem apartment to the Lower East  Side, and Stanton Public, the bar it was at, was easy to find (after having written down step-by-step directions - www.hopstop.com has saved my life on more than one occasion).

I'm not sure if I'd ever been to Stanton Public before, but it is a really cute little bar, and all the better for having an open vodka bar.  I'm not one to turn down a free drink, and when my friend suggested I get a drink, I readily ordered my standard cape cod - it's hard to get a vodka cranberry wrong.  It was a fun night - I got to catch up with a lot of friends I hadn't seen in ages, hear a good album, meet some cool kids, and everybody seemed to like the turtles I brought (like I said, I've been a candy making fool; the caramel recipe makes delicious turtles)

Sorry, no fireworks.  Just a fun night with friends in LES.  I won this roll of the dice.

TURTLES

Ingredients:

• Caramel
  
• 1 pkg dark chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli)
  
• whole pecans

Assembly:

• Cut caramel into pecan-sized squares
  
• Lay out sheet of waxed paper
  
• Melt chocolate in double boiler
  
• Assemble turtles by sticking one pecan onto each piece of caramel
  
• dip caramel/pecan pieces in chocolate.  
• Refrigerate turtles

Enjoy!

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge