That Demon Drink

There are at least a hundred things that I completely fail to understand about humans and their constant fascination with intoxication has to be in the top five. American society is absolutely enthralled with the concept of kicking back and having a ‘drink’. “It’s Miller Time”, “Tastes Great/Less Filling”, frogs croaking Bud-weis-er, all these images and slogans aren’t just advertising gimmicks, they’ve somehow made it into our everyday culture. People went around for a year saying “Waaaaassssuuuppp!” to each other because they saw it on a beer commercial. There’s even a significant portion of the population that has redefined “fun” to mean “get drunk.” You can’t have “fun” in this country unless you’ve first had something to drink.

As an outside observer who’s never had a drink of alcohol in his life (yes, I’m serious and yes, I’m 33) I’m completely befuddled by the popularity of this activity. From my viewpoint, here’s what boozing it up basically looks like:

• Drinking is REALLY expensive. Not having consumed such drinks I’m not exactly an expert on the costs but everything I’ve ever seen for sale from Pabst Blue Ribbon to … well, whatever’s considered expensive has been pricey. Pricier than soda, water or any other equivalent volume of beverage.
• From what I’ve been told, alcohol tastes like crap. The same people that provided that information also assured me that one acquires a taste for it over time. That too is nonsensical. If it tastes like crap and costs a lot, why would anyone bother drinking enough to become accustomed to it?
• As is often the case with things that taste foul, it also smells bad. You can tell someone’s been drinking from a mile away. In some cases, the smell of it seems to ooze out of every pore in their body.
• It’s poison. There’s a reason alcoholics end up dead, it’s because they drink poison that their livers are dutifully trying to save them from.
• Alcohol makes you stupid. People tend to get into a hell of a lot of trouble over this little leisure activity for exactly this reason; it’s a really good way to earn a trip to jail. I have to say, that never in my life have I thought that my judgment was so sharp and so precise that I needed something to dull it.

So if I came up to you on the street and said, “Hey! Drink this. It tastes horrible, makes your breath smell, will impair your judgment and eventually kill you” would you drink it? Would you PAY me for it?

All that said, people seem to have one hell of a good time with this stuff. I was recently in extremely close quarters (somewhat against my will) with several people who were drinking and they were having a BLAST. On examination, I can’t really see what it was that was so entertaining for them but they were sure tickled by it whatever it was. Despite all the apparent fun around me, I’m still not in the least tempted to drink. It seems evident that the ‘fun’ being had was a sort of fakery. It wasn’t that whatever was going on was fun but that their brains had been tricked into thinking so.

I’ve never seen the sensation of joy or fun as an end to be achieved. People don’t set ‘Be Happy’ as a goal in their life. Happiness is a byproduct of doing something meaningful and exciting. Fun is something that happens because you’re doing something you enjoy. If you just take your happiness out of a jar like you do your mayonnaise, then you’re cheating yourself. You’re missing out on the real experience of actually generating real and meaningful good times for yourself and those around you. If you add enough alcohol to even the most meaningless existence, it will seem like fun. Staring at a broken TV in a roach-infested apartment will seem like a blast if you take enough chemical inducements to puree your mind into a confused slurry of disconnected thoughts.