Quick update – in the hours after I published this article I stumbled across these words from W. B. Yeats and which struck me as relevant:

“The World is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

Over the years and almost against my conscious will, my body has been rejecting alcohol. For someone who used to love wine, there is a regrettable side to this rejection. But there’s also a mystery about it, perhaps relevant to our collective evolution – a process that’s likely happening even as you read these lines.

The drunken excesses of youth

I started consuming alcoholic drinks when I was 14. At that time my friends and I began to socialize in bars and night clubs. There was no age related restrictions in former Yugoslavia so it was easy for us to get drunk as badly and as often as we wanted to.