New York Times columnist Charles Blow quit drinking four years ago, and wrote a column yesterday complaining about “aspects of our culture that normalize and romanticize drinking and can be suspicious and dismissive of those who quit.”
Reminded me of a pal who quit drinking while working on a sponsorship with a small brewery. When the brewery’s owners found out they asked him why? He felt compelled to justify being on the wagon with a fantastical tale about getting blind drunk and chasing down his wife with a car. That shut them up.
That was about thirty years ago. Now, Charles Blow writes: “I’m trying to relieve the killjoy stigma so that people know that they can become sober and remain social. I’m trying to change the culture.”
Good luck, pal. I read the book Drunk last year, about the “alcohol-soaked origins of civilization.” Actually, I skipped through the audible version, after realizing that the author was spending many words trying to explain why people drink to a man who did not need the information. (My five-year-old niece once asked my mother sitting beside the Christmas tree, “Nana, why do you smoke?” “Because it tastes good.”)
Blow wrote about some fears he had to face to quit drinking, “At one point, I worried that the poetry of language would elude me without drinking. That worry proved unfounded.” A few paragraphs down: “I don’t think everyone realizes what an othering experience it is to be treated like a freak because you have made a healthy choice.” Uh oh. (Speaking of poesy: What rhymes with “othering”? Smothering.)
Blow writes that he doesn’t judge drinkers. In fact, “My boyfriend is a moderate drinker, and I will occasionally meet friends at a bar. … But now the sadness of those spaces is the thing that strikes me, and I’m unable to connect to the part of me that once enjoyed them. How had I grown accustomed to the smell of dirty bar towels and cheap disinfectant? How had I not detected the loneliness hidden in the loud laughter? How had I not seen it then, as I do now, as a funeral dressed up as a festival?”
I don’t think he realizes what an othering experience it is to be called a sad, self-deluded, filthy loser, in The New York Times. Honestly, it’s enough to make a fella want a drink.
Funny how converts so often feel compelled to lead us to the light. Almost as if they fear they’ll be lonely there without us. It’s not enough, somehow, to find the right solution for yourself. In order to truly be right, it has to be the right solution for everybody.