Wet Brain
This is a song that my girlfriend, Hannah and I wrote together. We collectively dreamt up a scenario where a damaged and heartbroken wife warns her husband that she wont let him drink himself to death. The clinical diagnosis of “wet brain”, also known as Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome is caused by thiamine, also known as vitamin B1, deficiency. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol can interfere with thiamine absorption in your digestive tract. A lack of exogenous thiamine in the diet will cause atrophy in the brain, through negative effects on glucose metabolism. Essentially what happens is severe, irreversible brain damage as a result of alcoholism. Fun fact: in Chester, PA it’s known as being “shot out”. Anyways what’s so ominous about Wet Brain syndrome is that it can change you forever, even if you get completely sober. It can do so much damage to your brain, that it changes who you are as a person. In our scenario, the husband did not literally suffer from Wet Brain syndrome, but he was drinking so much, it was changing who he was. The wife is on a train writing a letter to her husband. “The weight of your hurt is taking me over and dragging me closer to fear. The drink in your eyes, the colorless demise is killing you softly, my dear”. Pretty self-evident, guy’s drinking himself to death and in turn his abuse is substantially affecting his wife and her mental health. She claims that “You’ll die trying to find some way to feel”. This is not the first substance or activity that the man has chased, it just happens to be the most recent iteration. He’s a known abuser and addict who’s unfit for normal life and will die trying to feel something. “You will always love me less” she claims “than the poison in your veins. That fuels your wet brain”. This song was particularly difficult for Hannah and I to write because we were secretly discussing our own personal relationship struggles. Mainly, my pre-disposition to alcohol abuse and the trauma it had caused her in the past. Although we wrote the song from someone else’s perspective, we were using elements from our own relationship as inspiration.