I’VE HEARD IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY—FROM DOCTORS, EVEN—THAT DRINKING A couple of glasses of red wine each day will add years to my life. This is good news. At the rate I go through red wine, I should live approximately forever!
Ha ha ha! I am kidding, of course.
Actually, I’m not kidding, but I do know better.
I do know that just because a little wine is good for us does not mean that a lot of wine is even better.
Darn it. It’s that whole moderation thing again.
I get so bored with moderation sometimes. Why couldn’t we have ended up on a planet where moderation is bad, and it’s excess that is good for us?
Maybe heaven is like that. Champagne mimosas for breakfast, beers at lunch, wine at dinner, and tequila shots all night. Party on!
I know. I’m dreaming.
Booze was very taboo in my family. My mother came from a long line of crusading abstainers, and there was a bona fide drunkard or two in my father’s lineage. Believe me, alcohol can be just as unpopular among the descendants of boozers as among the descendants of teetotalers.
I think I even was spanked once, as a child, after I spontaneously erupted into a spirited song rendition of one of the popular beer jingles of the day: “National Beer! National Beer! You’ll love the taste of National Beer! And while I’m about it I’m proud to say, it’s brewed on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay!”
Alcohol was so forbidden, so condemned, so cloaked in ignominy in my family that I, of course, found it deeply fascinating. That’s the kind of curious little bugger I was. I wanted to know more, not less, about mysteries such as this. I was drawn by temptation to alcohol as surely as the moth is drawn by temptation to the candle flame.
I had my first drink when I was nine or ten.
Well, it wasn’t a drink, really. It was more like a tiny sip. OK, a lot of tiny sips.
My pal Jay, who also was nine or ten, would go walking with me along Adelphi Road, which in those days was pretty rural, with lots of wooded areas on both sides. Motorists always felt carefree about flinging out their empty beer, wine, and liquor bottles there. As a consequence, there always was a fresh supply of new bottles each day, and a fair number of them would have a trickle or two of drink still in them.
I use the word “fresh” with some hesitation because there is nothing even remotely fresh about the flavor of old booze, baked hot in the sunshine, and probably with a little bit of somebody’s spit mixed into it.
But this is what we settled for, young Jay and I, as our introduction into the sophisticated world of adult beverages. The beer tasted terrible, but we strained for each drop. Wine was even worse, sour and sticky, but we let nothing go to waste. Our favorite was whiskey, which had deeper, darker, more concentrated flavors. Sometimes we would find several whiskey bottles and combine the drops from all of them into one bottle, so each of us could get something close to a whole swallow’s worth of liquor. Old Crow was the brand we found most often, so it must have been the local crowd favorite at the time. Or maybe it was just the choice of one guy who did a whole lot of drinking and driving on Adelphi Road.
And shame on us, too. What brats we were!
I don’t recall that we ever got tipsy as a result of those salvage operations. The volume for that just wasn’t there.
So, it’s not like we became hardened alcoholics at the age of nine or ten.
In fact, once those boyish adventures played themselves out, there was no more alcohol for me until college days, other than the occasional shenanigans that high school students pull.
I will confess, though, that once I was off to college I wasted no time in becoming a man of cosmopolitan thirst. For years I drank mostly beer, because that’s what college students do. And it was good beer, by the way. Today’s beer-flavored water drinks known as “lite” beers had not yet been invented, thankfully.
Then, a few years out of college, I became fond of fine wine. I remember the day it happened, in fact. My hiking companion and I stood in the woods near Forest Falls in the San Bernardino Mountains. A light snow started to fall, so we decided to call it a day and head back down to the car. First, though, we opened and shared a bottle of wine I had brought along. It was an expensive Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon. I think someone had given it to me as a gift.
This was a complex red wine, far different from the lightweight wines with which we were more familiar, being infrequent wine drinkers. At first taste, we grimaced. But the snow kept falling, gently, and the wine produced a warming effect, and we handed the bottle back and forth with increasing rapidity. By the time it was half gone, we agreed it was not too bad. By the time it was three-quarters spent, we declared it to be excellent. By the time it was all gone, we had become confirmed oenophiles for life.
For years I remained fully satisfied as a partaker of wine and beer only, but eventually my drinking career came full circle, and I again started to sample the blandishments of whiskey and other spirited liquors, as I had done on a very small scale as a very small boy. Of course, I now wasn’t drinking just the last drops of a bottle I had found along the roadside, but all the drops in a bottle I had purchased at the store.
I look back with some ruefulness on this development because hard liquor is about three times as strong as wine, just as wine is about twice as strong as beer, so there is an obvious escalation of risk factors that comes into play here. Great care must be taken. The need for moderation becomes more and more important as one contends with stronger and stronger forces.
Believe me, these are what are called “lessons learned” for me, and I don’t share them with you lightly.
Alcohol can be a mighty foe if mistreated, just as it can be a steady friend if treated well.
I always have tried my best to get along amicably with it, but sometimes I have overplayed my hand. Alcohol pairs well with my questing nature, my sense of adventure, my curiosity about what marvels are to be seen around the next bend, but, alas, alcohol and I don’t always travel well together. We have our ups and downs. It’s a complicated relationship.
I wish I wasn’t quite so fond it.
But, honestly, is there a refreshment in all of creation that is so beguiling, so seductive, so affectionate toward so many of our senses?
That is why we must be so wary of its wiles, so cautious in our entanglements with it.
There is no other elixir than alcohol that is available in so many flavors for our tongues to taste, and so many colors for our eyes to admire, and so many fragrances for our noses to savor. Even our ears are delighted by the fizz of sparkling wines, or the whisper of beer as it foams in the glass, or the tumbling of ice cubes as we stir a cocktail. And our sense of touch is aroused when we lift the glass to drink and feel the heft in our hands and the tingle on our lips.
And what other elixir comes in bottles of so many enchanting shapes and tints? Even rainbows are not more beautiful than a row of spirit bottles that gleam upon a shelf in front of a light.
And what other elixir fascinates not only our bodily senses but our minds and emotions, too, calling to us with a longing siren song, giving form to our dreams, quickening our imaginations, inviting us and urging us to undertake brave exploits in strange faraway places?
What other elixir excites our ambitions, calms our doubts, forgives our faults, redresses our past mistakes, assures us that we can be great poets, great champions, or great lovers, and then charms us into taking the chance?
OK, that’s probably enough rhapsodizing about booze. This is a health book, for crying out loud.
Drinking too much is unhealthy, and many millions of people cannot resist the temptation to drink too much. Alcohol is addicting, quite literally as well as figuratively. It is a substance that begs for abuse, and it never lacks for volunteers. It commands a slave army of abusers who themselves become the abused.
There are very few choices, and very few outcomes, for addicts.
Some alcoholics succumb to their affliction and ruin their lives. Often, they ruin the lives of others, as well.
Some alcoholics save themselves by pulling back totally from alcohol’s clutching embrace and renouncing it completely and forever.
It’s not easy.
One famous success story involves a friend and hero of mine, the great writer James Brown who lives in Lake Arrowhead, less than a half hour’s drive up the hill from where I live.
I call him my drinking buddy, but not because we drink together. No way. That’s never going to happen.
He’s not drinking these days, you see.
But he used to drink, big time, and I call him my drinking buddy because that’s what we talk about whenever we get together. Drinking. That’s right, we talk about drinking.
“Alcoholism and drug addiction are my favorite topics,” Brown says cheerfully. “There’s nothing I’d rather talk about.”
Brown not only talks about drinking. He writes about drinking. The Los Angeles Diaries, which won numerous literary prizes when it appeared in 2003, is Brown’s unsparing memoir of how his dysfunctional family, which included an abusive mother who spent time in prison, and two siblings who committed suicide, sent his own life on the skids. He became a manic-depressive bully, a drunk, and a junkie.
A sequel, This River (2011), tells how his depression and addictions plagued him as he attempted to build his own family and career. It was rough going.
Brown writes with brutal force and frankness about the epic battles between his demons and himself. I will urge anyone who is teetering on the brink of addiction, or fighting in the trenches with it, to please buy and read This River. Two chapters in particular, “Instructions on the Use of Alcohol” and “Instructions on the Use of Heroin,” surely are among the most harrowing indictments against those two indulgences ever rendered into words.
Brown quit drinking and drugging quite a few years ago. He promises to describe his recovery in a third memoir that will complete the trilogy of his story and put a happy ending on it. Whew! That will be a relief!
Brown quit substance abuse because he had to quit. It was do or die. He absolutely made the right choice, and I am glad he did it.
I would hate to lose my drinking buddy.
Now, myself, I’m not ready to quit drinking. I don’t want to quit. At least not completely. I believe that a truly moderate amount of drinking is good for us. And I take pleasure in reminding everyone that booze is vegan. Unless, of course, you wreck it by making those wretched milky or eggnoggy drinks. No thanks!
If I ever do decide it is time to quit drinking altogether, I will do it. And I’ll let you know how it goes. And, by the way, I won’t do it cold turkey. That can shock the system and cause stroke or heart attack. It’s true. It has happened to people I know.
No, quitting should be done just like drinking should be done. In measured increments. That’s right, quitting should be done in moderation. Ironic, huh?
Like I said, I hope I don’t have to come to that crossroads and make that decision. I hope I can continue to walk the semi-straight line that veers between drinking too much and drinking not at all.
For what it’s worth, I have a few tips to offer on how to do that. And, believe me, these are battle-tested tips from the front lines.
First, follow doctors’ orders and limit yourself to one or two drinks each day. Mind you, these drinks must be of conventional size. No fair filling up a fish bowl and calling it a glass. No, the serving sizes we are talking about are 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, and 1.5 ounces of liquor.
Second, if a rare day comes when you find yourself tempted to imbibe in slightly more than one or two drinks, because you have been invited to a Kardashian wedding, let us say, and the champagne is exquisite, then pace yourself, please, by drinking a tall glass of water between each of the wicked drinks.
Third, don’t ever drink on an empty stomach. Always drink with a meal. Preferably not breakfast. That just looks bad. Come on!
Most importantly, don’t drink at all if you are about to do anything that is the slightest bit dangerous, such as driving, using sharp tools, or discussing politics with strangers.
If you hurt yourself, and possibly others, all of that good health for which you have been striving can be gone in an instant.
That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?