Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family, and Other Manly Advice (2015)
PART II
Life Skills 101
Showing up is eighty percent of life.
—Woody Allen
6
The Art of Drinking
Alcohol, you probably don’t need to be reminded, is dangerous. But having tried prohibition once, we’re unlikely to do it again. Instead, maybe we need to focus our attention on teaching people how to drink.
Part of the problem is that new drinkers generally don’t have mentors, they have peers. As a result, we tend to end up learning from experience, rather than acquired and inherited wisdom. Granted, it might be hard to learn from someone else’s hangover (other than don’t party with Zach Galifianakis), but left to our own devices we tend to make the same rookie mistakes generation after generation. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a “Spirits Guide” to help us learn to drink?
When you (and when I say “you” here, I really mean “I”) first start drinking, your thought process is something like this: “I have alcohol. I want to get drunk. I have to go home, so I better get as drunk as possible as quickly as I can so I can be sober by the time I have to go home.”
Now, at some point in life, usually after college, you realize that there’s a different kind of drunken experience to be had; one based not on getting as drunk as possible as quickly as possible, but on maintaining what I call the “Golden Zone of Inebriation” for as long as possible. The GZI is that state of being where you’re happily buzzed, but still fully aware of your surroundings and yourself. Your tongue is a little looser, your wit a little quicker (and slightly more bawdy), and all is well with the world. Slip too far into sobriety and all of a sudden you’re tired and you really don’t feel like drinking anymore and you’re just going to Uber home but thanks it was fun you guys. Slip too far into inebriation and all of a sudden your tongue is really loose but it seems to have grown really fuzzy and too large for your mouth. Plus, you’re having a hard time focusing your thoughts (and your eyes), so you’re just going to bellow inarticulately for a couple of minutes before you pee your pants in front of your drinking buddies, which includes the girl you want to marry but haven’t had the courage to ask out yet. You’ll lose the nickname “Pee Pants” in a couple of months, but she’ll never look at you the same again.
Don’t be a Pee Pants. Drink like a grown-up instead. Admittedly, that’s easier said than done when it runs counter to the dominant drinking culture that you might have learned on a college campus or with the bad boys in high school. But you’re perfectly capable of drinking without getting obliterated. I’m not talking abstinence here, though that’s a perfectly acceptable choice. No one should be mocked for refraining from alcohol. (You might need them to drive you home.) We’re simply talking about how to drink if you’re drinking. How do you achieve your maximum GZI? Here are a few tips.
1.Change your mindset. You’re not drinking to get completely ’faced, you’re drinking to enjoy yourself. Instead of pounding down drinks all night, when you feel that warm, pleasant glow suffuse your body, finish that drink and then have a glass of water or something nonalcoholic before having another drink. When you have that next drink, sip, don’t chug. Maintain a pace that’s more akin to a cross country run than a hundred-meter sprint.
2.Drop the sweet stuff. Sugar masks the alcohol flavor, which makes it more difficult for you to judge how much you’ve been drinking. Plus, if you’re drinking birthday cake-flavored vodka, you need better taste.
3.Don’t buy cheap booze. You can afford quality, if you’re not thinking about quantity. You also won’t need to mask your cheap booze with soda, fruit punch, etc. Enjoy drinking, not just being drunk.
4.Learn to say, “I’m good.” As you drink more, and find the limits of your tolerance, you’ll find your own GZI. A good drinker doesn’t mind being the only sober one at the party, or cutting himself off to sober up, if that’s what circumstances require.
Maybe the simplest guideline is this: don’t be the most inebriated person in the room. In fact, depending on the size of the gathering, stay out of the top five. There’s usually a painful lesson to be learned when you stray outside of the GZI. And unlike with exercise, the pain doesn’t represent a gain.
The Perils of Sherry
I’m going to share two illustrative tales, one serious and illuminative, the other … not so much.
Once you’re twenty-one—because none of us ever drank alcoholic beverages before we turned twenty-one, right?—you begin to realize just how off-key those heavy-handed “don’t drink, kids” public service announcements were. I remember a classmate in my sixth grade health class asking why any adult would drink, because it was so obvious that once you started drinking, you were “throwing your life away.” Well done, Carrie Nation.* The scaremongering curriculum blurred the difference between drinking and de facto self-immolation. Once a teen realizes that a Bud Lite isn’t hemlock—cripes, it hardly qualifies as beer—how seriously do you think they’ll take the warnings about drugs?
Carrie Nation was a member of the Prohibitionist movement who used to run into saloons and attack patrons and break barrels with a hatchet. Because drunks were a danger to others, you know.
Here’s what was largely missing from the drugs-and-alcohol instruction we received: one big reason people drink too much is because it makes you feel good. If you’re in a miserable spot in life, the path to a better, happier, more fulfilling life can seem really difficult and far. The “hey, let’s get drunk” path is a lot quicker and easier. But it’s a temporary fix; after the drinking binge, whatever’s making you miserable hasn’t changed, and now you have a hangover.
I’m not an alcoholic, but there was a short span, shortly after turning twenty-one, when I was just flat out drinking too much, too often. It became too big a part of how I had fun.
I hated my job. My then-girlfriend, eventually-to-be-wife, was living abroad. I still had my friends around, but it was hard to see how my life was going anywhere. I had met the real world, and the real world was kicking my ass.
But after a few drinks, man oh man, everything changed! Not only was I no longer worried about people thinking I was a loser or socially awkward, but everything was hilarious! Alcohol was a social lubricant, and my life was a slip-and-slide. If you trip and pratfall while sober, you’re embarrassed. If you trip and pratfall while drunk, not only do you not feel much pain, you’re laughing hysterically at yourself and not the least bit worried about other people laughing at you. In that window of tipsiness, you’re the guy you want to be—so cool, so at ease, so relaxed, nothing bothers you.
And so you drink—starting on Fridays and Saturdays, and maybe you drink quite a bit on Sunday watching football, too. You have something with dinner … each night of the week. When your roommate is traveling, you realize you can drink as much as you like without him saying something about whether you’ve had enough. You count the number of sick days you have, and wonder if you can call in sick this week, free to drink as much as you like one weeknight. This was back when liquor stores were closed on Sundays in Washington, D.C., so I remember sprinting to the one in my neighborhood on a Saturday evening, desperate to restock before it closed for the evening.
My dissatisfaction with everything else in life prompted me to join a comedy improv troupe—cue everyone’s “man, you really were drinking heavily then” comment. After my girlfriend returned from her study abroad, she saw one of our performances, and then we went out after the show to celebrate.
My idea of celebrating? Three Long Island Iced Teas in rapid succession.
Do you know what’s in a Long Island Iced Tea? Vodka, gin, tequila, rum, triple sec, sour mix, and a splash of cola. At least, that’s what they say is in it. Basically the bartender just starts looking for bottles under the bar that he hasn’t used in a while and starts dumping them into a tall glass of ice. Because when you order a Long Island Iced Tea, you’re basically telling the bartender, “I want the shortest path to utter, blotto inebriation you have. If you’ve got Absinthe, throw that in there, too. Vanilla extract? Sure. Rum raisin ice cream? Hey, it’s got ‘rum’ in the name, give it a shot. Speaking of which, throw in some shots. What’s that over there, lighter fluid? Hey, you only live once!”
A Long Island Iced Tea is the Price Club of drinks—lots of variety all in one place, in a portion large enough to take care of your family for a month. By the time the waitress brings a Long Island Iced Tea to your table, the garnishing lemon has already checked itself in to a twelve-step program.
Anyway, my girlfriend was not impressed with my shift from a high blood-alcohol content to a high alcohol-blood content. She didn’t have to say much. She later said she thought I was trying to impress her with my ability to drink a midsized distillery’s worth in one sitting. It was worse; I didn’t think I was drinking that much more than usual.
I don’t know if I would say I had a “moment of clarity.” But I’m certain that I sure as hell didn’t want her, or any of my friends, thinking of me as an alcoholic. I knew I had been drinking a lot; I just hadn’t thought of it as being “too much.” What’s the difference between a guy who likes to drink and a guy who has a problem? I concluded the answer was control—and I set out to prove to my girlfriend, my friends, and ultimately to myself that I had that control.
I went cold turkey for six months. No alcoholic drinks, period. Afterward, I felt pretty confident that I didn’t have a drinking problem or addiction.
Once I decided it was safe to drink again, I decided to try to find drinks I could nurse throughout an evening. Having renounced Long Island Iced Teas and the sweet, gulp-able screwdrivers—hey, it’s got orange juice! It’s practically a health drink!—I started trying out the bourbons, whiskeys, scotch, and Manhattans. Sure, they were bitter and strong—and because of that, you had to sip them and take your time. No one could tell you were nursing a drink for the entire evening with one of those.
I must warn you that ordering harder drinks like bourbon does have side effects; you can end up really liking them.
Almost every man has his worst-night-of-drinking-ever story. I’ll skip to the punchline of mine—apparently yelling, “I can’t find the steering wheel,” in my bed after a good friend ensured my butt got home safe from a friend’s bachelor party and just warn all of you, “Don’t mix rum, Jack Daniels, and gin when you’re dehydrated in extremely humid weather.” Sorry about the plants in your backyard, Paco.
My other cautionary tale is to warn you to beware of that drink that you’re not as familiar with as your usuals. The only time I’ve gotten sickly drunk in the past fifteen years or so came when the Mrs. and I hosted a party. The guest list was mostly her work friends, and I had visions of an awkward evening, full of boring shop talk. I warned my wife that I didn’t want the workmates and spouses to split off into two groups, leaving the bunch of us groping for conversation.
My wife was cooking with sherry, and I poured myself a serving before the guests arrived. Has there ever been a less menacing sounding drink than “sherry”? Sherry! It sounds like a sweet girl who works a few cubicles down. Sherry’s not going to do you wrong. Sherry’s not going to sneak up on you when you least expect it!
Uh-uh. Sherry’s a bad girl. Sure, she looks sweet. I’ll skip the obvious joke about her going down easy. But man, when you’re not looking, she’ll pack a punch.
“I’m just wine!” she’ll giggle playfully.
“Like hell she is!” warns your liver. “She’s 15 percent alcohol by volume, minimum, maybe up to 22 percent!”
Needless to say, with “Sherry” as my constant companion at the party that evening, I was full of good cheer, although I found myself suddenly tired as it wound down. And then, once the last guest had departed … I waved a friendly farewell, closed the door … and ran to the toilet and returned all the terrific food my wife had prepared.
I learned, painfully, Sherry’s not the kind of girl you can keep down for long.
What Would Ward Cleaver Do?
Drunk? Are you kidding? Ward Cleaver likes the occasional drink, but he knows how to handle it, and his drink of choice is coffee.
