Feeling like a rock star, living like a saint. WTF?

I've read countless stories of rock and roll excess, of nights spent drinking and days spent sleeping, and I confess, I romanticized them all. You can show me every picture there is of cirrhosis of the liver and tobacco stained lungs and yellow teeth and gin blossoms, and though I am throughly disgusted and dissuaded by it all, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the drug addled, hung over, confused rock star. I mean, those pictures of Keith Richards in the 70s? Man, that is rock and roll to me.

And yet, I have no constitution for drink and drugs. Worse, I don't seem to need them these days to feel like absolute hell. Take today, for example. I woke up feeling about as bad as one can feel and still not be in danger of death: a pain emanating from the back of my head deep into my left eye, my legs ice cold, a touch of nausea, tightness in my jaw and far more dizziness than usual. And what did I do the night before? Well, I confess, I did play my guitar a bit, I had a single glass of wine and I stayed up maybe a little later than I should have (reading High Fidelity). But, I also did my Brainport exercises, plus some other therapeutic things suggested recently by a neurologist. In other words, I kept everything in moderation and followed my doctor's orders and still woke up feeling like Keith Richards all too often looks.

Hell, who knows, maybe I am blessed. After all, thanks to my severe traumatic brain injury a few years back I apparently do not require copious quantities of booze, sand dune size piles of coke and injections of heroine to make me feel like utter shit, no doubt saving me vast amounts of money. On other hand, I can live like a pious monk and yet still feel like a God's worst sinner. And therein lies the worst of it: I get nothing but still pay the price. Hmmm, maybe there's a country song in that.