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After a rocky start, I’ve had a long, rewarding relationship with John Barleycorn. When we met, I was enamored, as I often am with new friendships (and all new romances), and this tendency was exacerbated by my adolescence, which like novelty tends to exaggerate the importance of relationships. I couldn’t get enough of him. Perhaps I was blessed by an incapacity to function when intoxicated, or maybe I was too fond of my self-control. For whatever reason, I only had to get room-spinning, throwing-up drunk three times to realize I never wanted that to happen again.
John Barleycorn has several aliases that I got to know cordially: Jack, Bud, Glen, Gordon, Sam, and the rest. But I never again became inebriated. (There was one occasion when I did not eat all day and then had a martini, which led to a memorable, giggling combination of ambulatory impairment and clear-headedness.) Like anything else, too much of a good thing is bad for you, and I have always wondered what a healthy amount of drinking might be. However, reliable health information is hard to come by. Doctors err on the side of caution and patients lie through their teeth. The World Health Organization reports that in industrialized countries, the amount of alcohol that survey responders claim to consume is about half of what sales data indicate. In my own practice, I’ve noticed a big difference between asking, “How many beers do you drink on a typical weekend?” and “How many sixpacks do you drink on a typical weekend?”
So for years, I was enjoying two or three drinks a day, liking everything about it, but especially the relaxation effects. I am one of those people for whom a nightcap is just that, a final punctuation mark—not a question mark or an exclamation point but a close-parenthesis that sets off the day as not to be taken too seriously or too exciting or too anything—the oil for Keats’s sleepy wards. And then I got my heart broken.
My divorce was difficult for me and I clung to my children in a way that could not have been entirely healthy. My ex was terrific about this, so I kept the house they’d grown up in. After a few months of friendly cohabitation, she set up a home of her own and took them with her for their first night away, my first night alone. You probably know exactly how I felt that evening, beyond anger, beyond sadness, just hurt.
What makes an alcoholic is the function of the drinking, not the amount (although the amount is often indicative of an obliterating function). This makes drinking in a way like any other behavior; its meaning can be understood only in relation to its function. Drinking for pleasure is rarely a problem, especially once you learn to regulate your intake so you don’t accidentally drink beyond what’s pleasurable. Problematic drinking is usually avoidant—of responsibilities, self-control, emotions, insights, and most perniciously (because of the vicious circle) the effects of sobriety.
That was the one night (besides illnesses) that I did not drink on purpose. I sat looking at a bottle of Glenfiddich for a while. I said, “Glen, we’ve had such a good relationship over the years. Drinking now would be like having consolation sex with a close friend; it would feel good, but it would mess up the relationship in the long run.” That was the only night of my life when I was sober (as opposed to just not drinking). Of course, in time the hurt died down and I fell in love again, more deeply and reciprocally than ever before. But I still wonder, if I had let Glen soothe me that night, whether we might have slipped into that vicious circle of comfort and avoidance. I don’t know why I didn’t, but I know it wasn’t anything like strength of character. I tend to think that it was my rewarding relationship with alcohol that kept me from abusing it.
