The Poison Response

Quiz a room full of heavy drinkers. All of them will tell you that there is at least one type of alcohol they won't drink, let alone approach with any of their four other senses (pretending for a moment you can hear alcohol). It's not that they have some innate hatred of vodka, rum or tequila. It's that one bad experience has triggered their body's poison response, forever turning their stomach away from the offending booze.

The poison response is a wonderful mechanism in theory, one of the benefits of a large frontal lobe and superior memory that keep us alive and evolving. We try something poisonous, we come close to dying, we remember on a visceral level never to touch those purple berries ever again.

Yet somehow, this response to physical poisons can go a step further, with disastrous results.

Take the last time you got dumped. Throw your memory far back into the ether — to say, last week. Think of anything remotely associated with the person who took a cheese grater to your heart — the shirt they gave you, the music you listened to, the crowded restaurant in which they chose to do the deed so you wouldn't make a scene.

Your body, confused as to what actually is causing the physical distress brought on by such extreme emotional turmoil, decides to put all these peripheral items on the "Do Not Fly" list. Suddenly your favorite T-shirt makes you want to puke just as much as bottle of root beer schnapps. Your favorite song, rather than soothing the recently savaged beast, makes your stomach feel like it's stuck riding bitch in a Sisyphusian road trip. Getting a whiff of whatever your once-favorite restaurant is cooking up sends you into convulsions.

Which just isn't fair. Perhaps next time, when on the verge of getting dumped, you should begin modifying your physical and cultural diet in order to purge what wasn't really wanted in the first place. Wear the ratty sweatpants you don't have the heart to toss out. Plug in to the latest tracks churned out by American Idol contestants. Put yourself on a regimen of fast food and endangered animals.

Then get your heart ripped out, and with it rip out the rubbish you should have gotten rid of years ago.

The poison response ripple continues. Imagine meeting someone else with the name of your former love. It would never work. Imagine the consequences of naming your children after that love.

"Kelly, go to bed."

"Dad, it's 3:30. The sun is still out."

"Do what Daddy says. Go to bed."

"But I just got home from school! I want to play!"

"Cheating whores don't get to play. Go to your room."

Some day, your former love won't inspire fear or sickness. You may even become lovers again. Perhaps some day, after years apart, you'll meet again in some crowded bar. You'll stride over with confidence and say, with the passion of love reborn:

"Vodka-straight up."

— Colin Alexander (colin_alexander at hotmail dot com)