time is made to be wasted

When I came out of the Charity Ward of the L.A. County General Hospital in 1955 after drinking ten years without missing a night or a day (except while in jail) they told me that if I ever took another drink I would be dead. I went back to my shack job and I asked her, "What the hell am I going to do now?"
"We'll play horses", she said.
"Horses?"
"Yeah, they run and you bet on them."
She had found some money on the boulevard. We went out. I had 3 winners, one of that paid over 50 bucks. It seemed very easy.
We went a second time and I won again.
That night I decided that if I mixed some wine with milk that it might not hurt me. I tried a glass, half wine, half milk. I didn't die. The next glass I tried a little less milk and a little more wine. By the time the night was over I was drinking straight wine. In the morning I got up without the hemorrhaging. After that I drank and played the horses. 27 years later I am still doing both. Time is made to be wasted.

Charles Bukowski, War All the Time, p. 39)