Drinking epidemic in our business?

The flavor says 'butter'

 

They lie. Tastes like margarine.

 

Engaged here.

And she was with me one of those two nights spent at the 24-hour breakfast joint.

 

If anyone is keeping score, I'm hammered right now — Sunday, at 11:55 p.m.

 

Hell, I'm in the bag and it's almost 2 a.m. on a Monday. I just made the start of my workweek move to the foot of a hill...I'll be playing catchup until Thursday night.

 

I recommend the 12-step approach. It has worked well for others.

 

After years as the SE of a weekly, I got into working for daily papers. I had always enjoyed drinking, maybe a little too much sometimes, but when working for dailies, the schedule and social isolation that go with the work got me into the habit of drinking alone when I got home from work. One beer turned into two to three to four. Then it turned into wine. A glass, two glasses, half a bottle, a bottle. I gradually became a drunkard. It never affected my work in any significant way...I'm not prone to hangovers and I never touched alcohol until I was home for the night. But it was a pathetic, sad existence.

Even after I got a different job with a more normal schedule, I continued drinking heavily, as the habit had been established. It took a bad alcohol-related event in my personal life to wake me up to the fact that I was destroying myself and sabotaging every aspect of my existence: physical, personal, professional.

The good news: I laid off entirely for a while just to prove I could. After a period of abstinence, now I can enjoy alcohol like a regular person, i.e., I can stop at one drink. I can have a beer after work, but I don't get hammered alone any more.

I got off easily. I could have fucked up in so many ways that were so much worse than the ways I did fuck up. I really dodged a bullet. It's easy to forget what a strong drug alcohol is because it's legal, it's socially acceptable and people generally treat it lightly. The reality is that it is a powerful fucking drug. I was a stoner in my early 20s, and I can attest that alcohol is much stronger, much more addictive and much more destructive than marijuana. I enjoy alcohol, but these days I treat it like I would a pet wolf. I respect its ability to fuck me up if I'm not careful.

I take full responsibility for all my decisions, but the schedule and other aspects of working for a daily sports section were definite factors in my 10-month descent into alcohol abuse.

 

I was a huge drinker in college and the few years afterward, up until a couple of years ago when I moved in with my fiancee (now wife) and started to fall into the pattern of a normal domestic life. And it wasn't necessarily about "selling out" or being "whipped" or "changing who you are for a woman." It was more because whenever I came home, there was someone there to hang out with. So I didn't need to drink to socialize any more.

Anyway, for those who scratch their head about it: people drink to excess because it is a blast. It's not politically correct to say this, but it's the fucking truth. Some of my best memories in life, spotty though they may be, are of drinking a ridiculous amount of beer, then cranking up the stereo, or throwing things off the balcony for stupid, silly fun, etc., etc., etc. I also think just about every relationship I ever entered, including my marriage, began over a couple of drinks. There is definitely a sociability factor that draws people to drinking.

I don't really drink much anymore. I keep beer in the house and may go a week without one, then have a couple with dinner, then for whatever reason one night work through a few over the course of a few hours of a game or watching a movie or whatever it is. But when I go to the annual IRL race here, or a concert or the fantasy football draft, or hang out with some of my friends-for-life, it is still on and it's still fun. A good time is invariably had by all.

Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

That being said, there's always one obnoxious drinker on every beat, I swear, who doesn't understand why all the married-with-children guys can't keep up with him or choose not to.

 

Aging and pluses/minuses re: drinking

Hangovers: do tend to last longer. On the rare occasion where there's some really heavy drinking going on, the recovery period isn't just a 24 hour turnaround. Can make me sluggish for a minimum of two days now.

Stupid drunk: just doesn't happen anymore, at least for me. I don't know if it's years of drinking experience, maturity, knowing 'when to say when', but I just don't cross the line to complete incapacity like could and did happen say, 20 years ago. A number of folks have alluded to just not being able to down that quantity of drink--there's truth to that, but I think it's also an internal shut off valve that says cool it, junior before trouble can start. And definitely, an ability to fend off peer pressure unlike in my youth. If someone wants to do shots of virtually any brown liquor, or more than a single of tequila, vodka etc., whereas in the past, I could be goaded into participating, now, it's more like, fuck you, Gomer, you're on your own.

I also think one of the board favorite terms, methinks, could only have been invented by some journalist in a blinding drunken stupor.

As an aside and potential threadjack (and feel free to start a new one if it would seem threadworthy), but what and at what age was your first drink?

Mine? Now completing my 3rd decade of drinking, it all began with several Little Kings Cream Ales at age 14 at my first high school dance, or more accurately, going out in the country, re: Dazed and Confused, to a drinking party in lieu of said dance.

 

First drink? Hmm, I think I was 9, and my dad let me have a sip of his Coors Light or something at a party. It was disgusting, and turned me off to beer for the next decade. I still don't like standard domestic beers, and I think it stems from that.

A screwdriver, not a beer, was the first "real" drink I ever had -- I was 13. It was mostly a peer pressure thing, although you can't rape the willing. That was the start of my "career". Then, it was anything we could get our hands on -- raiding liquor cabinets and such, stealing from convenience stores, you name it. Fun times.

Started drinking beer for the first time when I turned 21 and had to start buying my own. I was a broke college kid -- couldn't afford cheap liquor, let alone the good stuff. Even now, I rarely drink it. Keep some Bailey's in the house to pour over ice cream, and some vodka when I'm in the mood for a screwdriver, and that's about it.