After an afternoon of lonely day drinking, I paused to reflect on how well dry January was going. As a gym going, must eat-five-a-dayer (though I consider it a success if I manage 1 and a half), I often wonder about the effect of my drinking. I’m not an excessive drinker, but I am a consistent one. On a good week (or a bad one, depending on your view) I can average 1-2 pints a day or, if I’m feeling particularly fancy, a glass of wine or two.
This is probably considered too much by medical standards, particularly in regard to cancer risks, a disease that seems impossible to escape. It’ll get us all eventually if global warming doesn’t. My local pub has a poster over the urinals detailing the symptoms of colorectal cancer, which is not the most uplifting reading material when doing a two-pint wee. Having said that, over the years medical advice on drinking has got to the point that even looking at a pint of beer is considered liable to increase your chance of some sort of cancer by as much as 5000%.
I know talking about dry January is boring, but talking about drinking is equally boring. I suppose the sad truth of the matter is most of us, when it comes down to it, are quite boring. I find a drink or two takes the edge of that realisation.
People who give up drinking (mostly famous actors who have access to fancy rehab centres and have a flock of people ready to cheer on their sobriety and millions in the bank to inject other forms of excitement into their lives) tend to oversell the benefits.
‘I lost so much weight. I sleep better. I’ve got more energy. My emotions are better regulated. I can hear the thoughts of pigeons. The leg I lost in Nam grew back.’ It’s never ending. If that is the case for drinkers turned non-drinkers, I say kudos, but just once I want someone to say, ‘I gave up drinking and have never been more depressed. My family no longer invite me to Sunday dinner. And I keep shitting myself for no reason.’ Just for the sake of balance if nothing else.
The problem is, I feel there is no greater place than a pub. If I were a spiritual man and believed in an eternal paradise, it’d be one of two things. First, it’d be forever waking up and realising it’s only 3 am, meaning you don’t have to get up and get ready for school yet (it has to be school; it hasn’t been the same since I entered the world of work). Second, it would be a nice pub. Not too busy, but enough people for there to be a decent vibe.
A pub pint is about as close as I get to a ritualistic experience. Maybe being spiritually bereft has left a hole in me somewhere. Perhaps all human beings need that slightly ethereal edge to their lives. An embrace of the otherworldly and illogical.
Then there’s the aesthetic nature of drinking. It goes beyond the pure physical pleasure of the stuff. Get yourself a perfect pint in a sturdy glass. Whatever shade your beer, be it a shimmering black, a woody brown, a warm amber or a shimmering gold, a beer is a work of art, especially with a couple centimetres of tantalising foam. A small tumbler of whisky is like a poem, distilled into a potent liquid. There’s nothing quite so sophisticated as a glass of wine sloshing from side to side with the wild gesticulation of a passionate storyteller claiming, ‘And then, I says to him I says…’
That first metallic hit on the tongue is more refreshing than anything you can imagine. If it’s whisky, the powerful thump to the chest makes you feel alive. The sharp taste of white wine makes me think I could be an ancient Greek philosopher, discussing the latest developments in metaphysics. Perhaps I’d discover quantum metaphysics. Why is there something rather than nothing? Child’s play; imagine something that is also nothing at the same time, depending on it being observed. A mellow red makes me feel like an old lord, hunkered down in his fort for winter, eyes bleary with the smoke of the fireplace.
Look, the point is. It’s either I over idealise drinking as some high experience, or I sit and listen to my own thoughts at night! Maybe drinking is healthier.
Entirelyforced 