A better title than brains are weird

Stay for the Alcoa Fantastic Finish

Up until yesterday I believed that this song, a staple of the NFL Films halftime highlights on Monday Night Football when I was growing up, was called “Night Train to Istanbul.”

As much as I wish this were a Mandela Effect situation, I am clearly the only one who thought this, per Google. If I’d been at a party when it played in a nostalgia-focused State Farm ad, I’d have said to whoever was closest, slightly too loud, “You know, this song is called ‘Night Train to Istanbul’. I bet it’s from some 70’s movie, before the NFL got hold of it.”

Maybe I have a lot of false memories since over 17 years of alcoholism, I blacked out between 1,000 and 2,000 times. Like 1-3 times per week. I’ve coopted a bit from Sarah Hepola’s “Blackout,” where I describe a lot of my life as episodes of “CSI: Last Night,” where I’d obsessively assess my partner’s every twinge of movement to determine if I woke up on the couch because I was snoring, or because I accused her of humorless narcissism for preferring me to be sober when we have an 18-month-old in the house. I’d regularly find melted Tupperware in the microwave and half-drunk neat bourbons below the sink. I’d have Amazon purchases to cancel.

I’ve grown to love the rubber fallibility of the brain. A couple years ago I left a one-minute message about the joy of not blacking out on the Tiny Victories podcast (8 minute mark), how I was relieving some mental anxiety through routine, and taking some joy in knowing where I’m going to wake up. That podcast just concluded, but it was a nice shot of positivity I used medicinally.

Then there are the long-term ripples. Months after we split, my ex shared that she found a file on our shared computer that was incredibly shitty and cruel about her. When she told me about it, I was mortified for her and embarrassed as hell, but it didn’t have the gut-punch of true guilt, since I had no memory of its existence. It’s a common sobriety problem, the landmines.

These days, my memory’s pretty good. I can successfully argue with my 5-year-old when he claims I promised to drop $50/hour at Main Event or whatever because I remember the conversation he’s referencing, and he’s got that child-lawyer need of exactitude before he’s convinced. Though “No” works fine, too.

In fact, I may have some sort of super-memory, as evidenced by the fact since getting sober, I get déjà vu several times per day. Déjà vu is probably just a glitch in transferring memories to cold storage, but for me it creates a sense of touching multiple timelines. I thought it might be due to the damage I’ve caused my brain, but none of my addict friends have experienced it much.

The causes are unpredictable, but the sensation is always the same. A tingling starts at the top of my head, where the birth plates meet, and specific nerves fire in or near my corpus callosum marching downward about one inch per second. The sensation isn’t anxiety; it emanates from the brain, not the chest or the throat, cresting slowly through my nervous system, ending at the bottom of my stomach.

It’s like anxiety traveling in reverse, and it adds the better part of an hour to each day’s experience, like I’m in a Borges story. Or it’s like a delta, mixing filthy fresh water with sushi-grade saltwater.

Anyway, the other day I opened Evernote and found a note I had no memory of. Was it something I dreamed? Did I dash it off at work while multitasking?

It read: “Judi Dench? More like Doodie Stench.”