"Dear Alcohol, We need to talk..."

A casual drinker's self-reckoning--and a test for everyone

[This is a revised version of an essay I first posted on danielgawthrop.com in 2018.]

CALLED TO THE BAR–Some of us are a little too enamoured with our own sense of good taste. (Photo by the author)

It has been said that alcohol is a good servant and a bad master. Nice try. The plain fact is that it makes other people, and indeed life itself, a good deal less boring. —Christopher Hitchens

Dear Alcohol,

We need to talk. With the holiday season now upon us, you and I will soon be seeing more of each other—a little too much more, I’m afraid—so now might be a good time to re-assess our relationship. Like many other people, I am so easily seduced by your charms that, every now and then, I find it necessary to remind myself not to get too carried away with you.

Over the course of my life, you and I have had a pretty good run. With a few exceptions—the odd hangover, rare incidents of drunken nausea, the occasional overshare while looped, and, in 1999, an ill-advised bike ride home from a party that ended with a hospital visit—our love affair has been mostly successful. To this day, nothing beats a frosty pale ale or IPA after a hockey game in winter, a gin-and-tonic at Rangoon-on-the-Fraser (the outside deck) during summer happy hour, a glass of cab sauvignon with a steak dinner, and, on special occasions, a nightcap shot of fine Irish whiskey.

At Christmas time with family and friends? All of the above. Plus brandy.

Seducer that you are, dear Alcohol, you know full well that such enjoyment is the result of both experience and influence. Never mind the example of my family, who can party with the best of them. Or the Roman Catholic Church of my upbringing, where wine appreciation was almost a condition of faith. Or even all the friends and lovers I’ve drank with over the years, the many drinking buddies who have introduced me to one great boozy discovery after another. The truth is, I was predetermined to fall under your spell, regardless of those influences, long before I was born.

Throughout recorded history—but especially since the end of prohibition—polite society has found no end of ways to make you seem sexy and sophisticated. This is especially true of the British culture that informs nearly half my ancestry. From Chaucer’s mead to Ian Fleming’s shaken-not-stirred martini, you, dear Alcohol, have burnished your reputation as an exotic portal to exquisite pleasure and forbidden wisdom. Yes, you can indeed be sexy and sophisticated. On the latter point, witness the gravitas of drinking snobbery, of which Kingsley Amis was once the exemplar. (On ‘exotic’ drinks: “We have no excuse for self-satisfaction while we allow the atrocity of the Pina Colada to flourish unchecked in our midst.” On beer with lime: “An exit application from the human race.”) And now, thanks to the past century or so of mass marketing, there’s a multi-hundred-billion dollar industry around you. This despite, or perhaps because of, voluminous evidence of your many harmful effects.

Paired with certain people you wreak havoc in social settings, destroy relationships, and ruin personal health. You lower productivity and increase absenteeism at work. You also kill more people on the roads than any other cause except speeding—which, in many cases, is also your fault. (In my home province of British Columbia, impaired driving has accounted for 22 to 34 per cent—that’s one third—of all fatal crashes in the past decade.) One of the worst of your Jekyll-and-Hyde behaviour-altering effects is to turn otherwise well-mannered men into maniacal rapists and monsters of violence. And guess what? Word has been getting around about you and your insidious ways. Younger folks, like Gen Z, are not fooled by your sultry come-ons. They’re smarter than we older folks, who find it hard to let go of you. As Frank Sinatra once said: alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.

All of which brings us to that tipsy old elephant in the room: alcoholism—or, as the self-help gurus and health professionals prefer, alcohol use disorder (AUD). When I began drinking as a teenager, my father took me aside one day for a serious talk. Dearly departed Dad was not an alcoholic, like his father had been, but more of a party drinker like his mother. And so, combining love for his son with his professional knowledge as a medical doctor, Dad warned me of the “risk factors” for chronic addiction—for beverage dependency—that I would need to monitor for the rest of my life. Four-and-a-half decades later, I can’t help wondering: how honest have I been, all these years, in assessing those risk factors and acting accordingly?

There’s another question worth asking of everyone: why are confirmed alcoholics so often the only drinkers expected to be held accountable for the effects of their relationship with you? Diagnosed alcoholics, people with AUD, bear the burden of stigma associated with their disorder. They are judged for being incapable of resisting the temptation you offer; they are assumed to be the only “problem drinkers” because of their chemical dependence on you. But many people who are not diagnosed with AUD still have drinking habits that could be described as compulsive or in some way problematic; many indulge in behaviours, while enjoying too much of you, that can have negative impacts on other people’s lives as well as their own. Even a single incident. Why should such casual drinkers avoid the self-reckoning assumed of every Alcoholics Anonymous member? Why should the recreational tippler be spared the moralizing innuendo so often heaped upon the chemically dependent?

A little more self-reflection—a little less hypocrisy—is in order for those of us who shake our heads in dismay at the AUD sufferer for having an addiction while smugly patting ourselves on the back for allegedly being able to handle our drinks. If chemical dependency is a variable concept—something that exists on a continuum rather than a single point at the end of a scale—then it follows that all habitual drinkers are, to some degree, alcoholics in the making. Factoring in all the risk factors, I have come up with a handy, zero-to-five scale that categorizes each of us:

0—“Zeroes” either don’t drink at all or enjoy a single glass on special occasions: champagne at New Year’s, wedding toasts, the obligatory shot of hard stuff after closing a deal. These folks are so low on the alcoholism scale that their risk factors are negligible. “Zeroes” are to be congratulated—and somewhat revered—for they belong to that mysterious category of human beings who manage to get through life completely impervious to your charismatic appeal. (Gen Z, take a bow.)

1—“Ones” are people who occasionally join friends or colleagues at the pub after work, or enjoy a drink or two on the weekend. These folks spend more time with you than “zeroes” do, but it’s still only moderate sipping. Their preferences are limited—beer, wine, perhaps one of the spirits—and they have no expertise, or even a hobby’s interest, in the type of alcohol they’re drinking. Not only do “ones” never get drunk; they tend to nurse their drinks. They have no difficulty observing the medically recommended maximum per week because, well, they’re just not that into you.

2—“Twos,” arguably the largest proportion of the drinking population, are weekend partiers who enjoy the occasional weeknight happy hour or wine with dinner. Some attend wine and/or beer festivals. Their knowledge as amateur sommeliers is a harmless point of pride, while others enjoy a wide range of spirits. “Twos” exemplify the Oscar Wilde maxim: “There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.” But they are also highly functioning: at some point in their drinking lives, “twos” discover that all-important behavioural check known as the off switch: the moment they know that it’s time to stop drinking, especially if driving’s involved.

3—“Threes” still have an off switch—but it’s several drinks after a “two”’s. For the “three,” everything is a special occasion: finishing a project, winning a sports wager, seeing off the in-laws after too long a visit. (How could one not celebrate that with a glass…or five?) “Threes” get drunk now and then, and when they do they can be loud, argumentative, or inappropriately affectionate. Perhaps aware that they need to dial it down, they tend to congratulate themselves for spending two weeks on the wagon as if that’s an accomplishment. They also fudge the truth when their doctor asks how many drinks they have in the average week, or say things like: “I’m not an alcoholic—I only drink beer and wine.” Yes, when it comes to you, dear Alcohol, “threes” are on a gin-soaked cruise down That River in Egypt.

4—“Fours” are people who no longer have an off switch and whose drinking has become legendary gossip fodder. This is Bette Davis territory (“There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”). “Fours” guzzle to excess and their behaviour when drunk can have consequences for their personal relationships. It begins with their partners scolding them for visiting the liquor store but forgetting to buy the groceries—or with their employers taking note of their liquid lunches. When a “two” says “I need a drink,” it usually means “want.” But when a “four” says it, the intention is literal. Intervention is a good idea for this level of juicer, because the slope from “four” to “five” is a slippery one, indeed.

5—“Fives” have surrendered all control of life to the bottle or have stopped drinking to avoid that possibility (which explains why there’s no number on the scale after this one). “Fives” can and do drink any time—morning, noon, or night—and consume quarts of liquor per day. They also hide bottles, afraid of being caught. This is the Tom Waits category (“I don’t have a drinking problem—’cept when I can’t get a drink.”). Lying to friends, loved ones, colleagues, and especially themselves about their addiction, some crash and burn: they lose their families, homes, and careers because of all the wreckage left in their wake. “Fives” include everyone from A.A. members to alcoholics who prefer not to go the Twelve Steps route but still want to quit, dissolute debauchees and hedonistic dipsomaniacs who have no intention of quitting but have jumped on a Keith Moon-like joyride to the abyss, and functioning inebriates like the aforementioned Kingsley Amis, who manage to keep it all together until their livers give out. Other “fives” haven’t touched a drop in decades—because they know they’re “fives.” A select few “fives” summon the strength and self-motivation, with support from loved ones, not only to beat the bottle but also to empower others by sharing lessons from their struggle. One of them co-authored this book I reviewed recently.

So where do I place myself on this truth-telling scale? I’m a “two-and-a-halfer”: not quite enough of an alcoholic to qualify as a solid “three,” but somewhat more of an alcoholic than an even “two.” My pledge, as my early Sixties progress, is never to slip into the bottom half of the scale. That pledge should be easier to keep thanks to Health Canada’s low-risk alcohol drinking guidelines, helpfully updated in October.

Sorry to lay all this on you, dear Alcohol. I mean, I love you and all that, but you know—boundaries, right?

Happy Holidays—but not too happy,

DG