The Case for Drinking.
We need to rethink, rework and rebuild our relationship with alcohol.
I’m not here to try to sell the idea of booze. I’m not here to excuse it or push it or explain away the pain caused by it. Just by looking out the window, I can see a pub, empty beer bottles and a bus stop ad for White Claw. We already know booze sells. This isn’t news. But it is still controversial. We have come a long way in understanding the negative side effects of booze and yet consumption is at an all-time high. There are countless painful accounts just on Medium that show just how much of a menace booze can be.
It is a struggle. There’s no denying that. How can we expect a clean bill of healthy relationships with alcohol when one day you can watch an advert with beautiful, healthy young things splashing about in the honeyed waves of California’s sunsets but then also not sleep that night due to the ceaseless sirens ferrying drunk souls to the hospital? There’s a dichotomy here that just doesn’t digest well.
I do absolutely acknowledge the months, years and decades of hardship that many people go through while struggling with their relationship with alcohol. It is, as we have all been told before, poison. It is literally poisoning us. And while drinking is an incredibly unnatural thing to do from an evolutionary standpoint, it is possible to have a healthy relationship with it.
Maybe an affair is more accurate.
Because as with many relationships, it is not always an easy road. But in a society that sees the salvageability of relationships as not only possible but necessary, our affair with booze isn’t always one that has to be saved. It can also be celebrated.
I feel like I could lose some readers here. But please, stay awhile with me.
That First Sip
In all likelihood, the first ever drunken evening and subsequent hangover came about by accident. It being a natural process at the core, fermentation would have occurred in the right conditions all over the world, with a dazzling array of fruits and crops. This is what has led to an exceptionally complex shopping list from each country.
Rice from the East, grapes from Europe, barley from the Scots and Irish, corn from America, agave from Mexico, potatoes from Russia, sugar from the Caribbean and countless others.
In this way, alcohol is a history teacher. You cannot have a sip of rum without tasting the sourness of the slave trade. Nor can you take a dram of whisky without feeling echoes of decades of English oppression on the Scottish.
Alcohol has been a major influence on some of the most important moments in our history. I mean it’s used as a substitute (or sometimes literally) for the blood of Christ, for crying out loud.
Chartreuse has flowed through monasteries, bourbon through candlelit civil war basements, wine through the very highest political meetings. Alcohol has become capillary in our society and it is important that we acknowledge its influence.
Look, I get it. It sounds like I am waxing poetic about something which does not discriminate in its cruelty against colour, gender, age or ability. What a knob, right?
But I do I know the pain it causes. I have seen in my own family, as I am sure most people have, the effects of addiction. All of us, each time we drink, engage in this relationship with booze that can be great one day and then devastating the next. It’s a relationship that needs constant work.
Because not all relationships are great. In fact, some are dreadful. Some sting us with such pangs of regret that we shudder even at the thought. Others fill us with such expansive joy that it feels you’re breathing in the memory of that joyful time. These trials and errors are not dissimilar from those of booze. Just because sometimes we go through difficult relationships does not mean we toss away the concept of romantic love. We work hard, we listen, we learn from our mistakes and we move forwards.
This is the same with alcohol.
As I’ve said, the demonisation of booze is justified for those who struggle with it. There should be as much done to help those that need it as with any addiction or personal struggle.
But there is beauty in booze. There is a rich history and fascinating process that goes into making thousands of different styles. There is mastery in the craft and there is an opportunity to build a mutually beneficial relationship and appreciate the generations of skill and generations of good times.
I’ve been drinking for about ten years. A veritable drunken hiccup in time compared to that of humanity’s slurred history of imbibing.
Most of those years I drank very poorly. One such example was sticking a beer can in the reliably wet, muddy ground at an English music festival so that I could awake bright and late to an ice-cold can of European lager nestled in the damp soil of central Berkshire. Yum.
Perhaps surprisingly, I do not regret this at all.
In fact, this muddy, crusty lager is woven inextricably into one of my fondest memories.
More recently, if drinking Lillet, I’m not only drinking an example of French aperitif culture, I’m also able to drink to summer evenings with my grandfather, who also loved the drink during his life.
Lillet is a perfect example of the richness and versatility a bottle of booze can have. It is an aromatised wine sitting at around 17% and is essentially wine fortified with various herbs, botanicals and roots to give more depth and flavour. A liquid essentially unchanged since its inception in 1872 but within the bottle lies the success story of a local French family whose legacy now stands at 150 years, the commitment between the Allied forces to keep each other buzzed during two world wars, James Bond’s favourite tipple and, for me, the memory of my Grandfather. That’s pretty impressive for 750 millilitres.
What I’m trying to get at is that I understand most people do not see or do not want to see this side of the booze industry. Many see booze as the devil at the bottom of the bottle and I’m not trying to convince them otherwise.
What I am saying is that there’s a reason you look forward to that first sip of a cold pint on a hot day surrounded by friends. There’s a reason wine is such a vital component of a traditional French dinner. There’s a reason
Booze doesn’t have to be abused as the shameful affair or treated with disdain and ignorance. It can be an example of a marriage of pure hedonism and tradition, held up by the continuing respect that it deserves.
Cheers to that.
