Well, I see the world through bipolar-colored glasses. When manic, many bipolar people could be characterized as having “too many goals, aspirations… distractions.”
Mania usually descends to depression. If you’re untreated, you usually self-medicate, often with alcohol. Maybe heroin seems like a better medication than alcohol.
I wonder if the “drunk close-talker” is the author, or if the author is talking about someone else? I kind of think it’s the author, reminding himself (yes, I think it is a he) that his keys will be taken if he gets drunk where he usually does. Again, a heroin addiction seems to allow you more permission to drive than alcohol. does.
Now, why does he write these messages on a paper back in two different colors of ink? That’s a stumper. It sounds like a joke. Maybe he was drunk, and he had written these messages on the bag so that he could remember them after he had blacked out. He was driving home (because he hadn’t surrendered his keys) and he came to the intersection, feeling very sick. He opened the door to puke, and the bag fell out.
As the traffic drove by, the bag was blown hither and thither until it ended up in the place you found it. The poor man, blacking out upon arrival at home (if, indeed, he did arrive at home and not in the jail), wakes up with this vague sense of missing something important. But he just chalks it up to being stinking drunk again, and possibly to one of those delusions he’s been have more of recently.