Not Drinking and Others 2

 Last night, I "wasn't drinking" because of upcoming surgery.  To be sure, I didn't extend this example outward for dessert after dinner.  It wasn't even an appetizer, but, by some perfectly ordinarily and deceptively strange swing of chance, the host pulled out a made-for-the-evening punch, with blueberries in ice, and announced the question "everybody here drinks alcohol, right?", which I found funny, since he didn't say booze, or liquor or anything, so that it sounded clinical to me, a disclaimer: I presume at the start of these trials, that you're well adapted to the ingestion of chemical substances containing portions approaching one half ethyl alcohol, one quarter quarter highly sugared crystalline powder based red drink mix, and a dusting of well known psychoactive substance that may freak you out but which is highly acceptable in normal discourse, particularly personal entertainment in circles of the local intelligentsia. Sure, sure, who's not ready to partake?  Well, I offered with a meek hand, as if I might rush to a draft and close a window or change the subject, that I might not be in the grandest of drinking moods on this particular evening anyway, so would prefer water.  It was accepted.

The trick to performing well in job interview is to provide answers to questions that evoke further questions, not out of necessity for competence, but out of excitement.  Similarly, one must proffer some aspect, or tendril, depending on how eagerly a friend may be to hold down the smooth layers of the scene, of plausible rational.  I had nothing, but he had everything: the coming surgery, no?  Tell me about that?  No, don't want to mess around with booze or anything until the surgery is over!  So, when is it?  And my mom has the same thing, or had it, and she too didn't want to partake in my cocktail, which was perfectly understandable, given the nature of doctors orders.

So basically I let a lie maintain relevance, because it was easier.  No big deal.  But I did catch myself daydreaming today about the possibility of having a few drinks on my birthday since it was the technical start date of the none-drinking zone.  Ah well.

Dealing With Others

And so, I’m going to Poland and potentially the Czech Republic and plan not to drink beer. “They INVENTED PILSNER there” says a well lubricated friend of mine, who may be historically accurate (I’m not sure), but by commenting about it, he brings up another strong dynamic associated with not drinking: how the hell do you explain this to friends? Also, how might friendships that, while not fully centered on drinking, did involve at least above average levels of imbibing, change? While I can’t hope to answer this in a few paragraphs, I can say that friends will wonder why you’re not drinking. The tricky phenomenon to explain is that, while you’re not quite an alcoholic (at times characterized by an unabashed love of booze over all other things, and a complete inability to stop drinking without help), alcoholism is not a disease that people either just have or lack. It is, instead, a progressive process of annihilation, which means that I may exhibit relatively normal behavior around friends and hold my life together (albeit loosely) in a way that outwardly manifests as harmonious, while internally, it isn’t going so well—and that, without changing current behavior, 5 years from now I will be doing less well regarding alcohol consumption. And of course there are myriad other items that you want to talk about when queried from a friend or acquaintance.

Now you’ve got a problem though, because the friend you’re currently talking with turns out to have about the same consumption patterns that you used to maintain (as of yesterday, let’s say), so their choice in the matter is to take you seriously and think about their own drinking or not take you seriously. At least that’s what I’ve run up against. People don’t generally like to talk about their drinking, especially if they happen to drink daily, over 3 drinks at a time, or have remotely tried to push away any intuition that might swim to the surface regarding their patterns. Beyond that, though, for most people, the act of drinking is also an excuse to fall into a more oblivious socially enhanced mindset, not just because of the booze. You’ve all seen the ultra peppy or egregiously garrulous person appear in some people after a few sips. In this laboratory, inserting actual comment about the activity itself is also likely to be returned with, well, some reluctance, let’s say. That’s to say nothing (for now) of the serious full time alcoholic who has decided to steer completely clear of watering holes on pretext.