The Beginning.
Cause and Effect of Alcohol, as learned by Greg Sanders.
It wasn't Greg's first time being drunk. Right after turning twenty-one on May fifth, he went out with his buddies to the bar down the street and drank himself into a stupor. Instead of waking up to a hot blonde with breasts out past her chin, he woke up next to his old collie, in his own bed, in his own home. The home he shared with his parents, his three fish, and his one budgie named Oscar Wilde. At least he didn't have to worry about any paternity suits or STDs – no, only an unimaginable headache and the need to vomit plagued Greg after his first dabble in the world of alcohol.
He told himself he'd never drink again.
Funny how everyone seems to eat their words in the end.
Greg hadn't touched alcohol in an obsessive or compulsive way until the Demetrius James scandal. However, depending on who you talked to, everyone called it something different. The Demetrius James case. The Demetrius James ordeal. The wrongful and should-be-punishable-by-death Demetrius James slaying.
The fact was that Greg knew he'd done the right thing. Demetrius James had been planning to kill the man lying on the ground – the man he'd been beating just minutes previous – and he'd also physically threatened Greg's life as well.
Even though he'd done the right thing, Greg couldn't shake the feeling that he'd crossed an imaginary boundary along the way. He was no longer an observer to the murderous underbelly of Las Vegas; he was a part of it. And once you gained entrance into that club, boy, there was no getting out, kind of like Hotel California.
The fact that he now had someone else's blood on his hands shook him to his very core. He didn't want to burden anyone else with his doubts and insecurities, so he bottled them up, and only uncorked them when he decided to raid his liquor cabinet. That oak cabinet that had once stood empty in his living room beside his over large stereo.
Once upon a time.
That wasn't the case now, though. As often as he could, he restocked that cabinet. Every day off, he tried to get through as much as possible, and he didn't even have a clue why.
Greg knew there were other outlets to getting rid of the guilt, subduing the horror of what humans did to each other, and the loneliness that came along with his career. Somehow, he got the idea into his head that he should learn to deal with life's problems on his own. Everyone had to have guilt, everyone had to see what was going on in the world, and due to the popularity of websites like eHarmony, everyone appeared to be lonely.
Nick got through just fine, and he didn't even have a girlfriend. Grissom had Sara, and Catherine and Warrick sort of had each other … but Greg was sure Hodges didn't have anyone.
But rather than buddy up with Hodges and trade tips on getting through life over margaritas, Greg would rather just drink until he passed out on his days off. He was the king of getting rid of a hangover in a hurry, and rarely anyone knew that he'd been drinking the night before.
Greg was smart, too – he didn't drink eight hours prior to going to work.
Everyone had their flaws. That was also a fact. And as long as their flaws didn't permeate to other people … what was the harm?
Greg was only hurting his own liver and killing off his own brain cells.
No harm, no foul, right?
Right?