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You all should do what I do
My social feeds, and media in general, are packed with stories like “my awesome life is so much better without alcohol and you should do it too.”
I don’t follow this guy but he’s in my feed every day with this stuff. Happy for you Dan but enough.
One person’s vibe extrapolated out to cover the entire human race.
Most of them are no different to the Temperance League posters of centuries past. A grab-bag of pseudo-science and bogus comparisons about alcohol’s demonic effects.
More science here than on current day Insta
Not true I have found alcohol, as a beverage, good for commercial purposes. And what’s the go with that fish in a jar?
Giving up alcohol has a terrible side-effect. The same as people who do a 30-day social media detox. They must write and talk about it at great length. Editors love to run those yarns, especially in the December-January guilt-then-resolutions season.
Please stop, nobody cares.
Yes, I’m aware that that makes me a hypocrite for writing this story. But this is one lonely case for the defence, up against the entire fitspo and grindset Taliban.
I’m keen on exercise and healthy eating. And that short sentence is as much as I’ll ever write on that because it’s of no interest to you.
You’re an adult and you know what’s good for you. You don’t need me to tell you to eat your vegetables. If you can do these things moderately, with all the other demands on your time, you’re a legend.
Also, one of my reasons for exercise and diet discipline is so I never have to feel bad about enjoying a pleasant glass of something with alcohol in it.
I’ve earned it and no fitness Kai or Talia can take that away from me because it’s going to take 4.5 years off my life expectancy or some anecdata bullshit.
Yes, alcohol has risks. Everything in life is a balance of risk versus reward. We all have different risk preferences, and life is better when we all appreciate that. Rather than demanding everyone adopt our personal preferences.
Some clarity on clarity
Those stories are so formulaic. Once they cover the “empty calories”, then: the clarity. Always the clarity.
Let’s talk about that. Life is full of complex decisions. You have infinite courses of action. There’s a constant static buzz in your mind as you try to please everybody plus do a few things to make yourself happy. All the conflicting options churn around in your mind.
Should you do that thing you’ve been thinking of? Or is it too risky, too likely to offend someone around you, too brave, too controversial, too weird?
Yet clearly part of you thinks it’s a good idea. Or it wouldn’t be sitting there in your brain saying “you know deep down you want to.”
So you do nothing about it.
I’ll spend weeks, months feeling this way. Then, I’ll be out with friends, business partners or whoever. I’ll have a few drinks and get talking. It peels back a few layers of my deep white-guy reserve. It brings new, non-cowardly perspectives. Hello, clarity! What have I been waiting for? Why have I been so cautious when my subconscious mind has been telling me the right answer all along. Fuck it, let’s DO THE THING.
Our entire business came from exactly this, very late at night in the disco at Hobart’s Wrest Point Casino during a conference. Ninety-seven excellent people now have full-time jobs thanks to the clarity that those Cascades delivered, and that makes me so much happier than feeling fresh for a dawn ice bath or whatever.
Alcohol tastes nice
It’s not just the clarity.
Alcohol also tastes nice. Good alcohol is art. The personal expression of incredibly talented, hard-working people drawing on millennia of tradition and technique, adding their own original flourishes to make something that’s never quite been done before.
They can’t all be wrong. I believe the fruit-infused beer people are, but each to their own choices.
Trying different drinks is a lifelong journey of discovery and learning. Learning to spot the subtleties is its own reward. Talking with the people who make and serve it will teach you more about places than the local tourist information centre.
And alcohol makes you kick on later, to meet more people, have interesting conversations and create memories you’ll treasure and re-tell decades later.
Rather than going to bed responsibly early, so you can put more Puritan work energy into your spreadsheets tomorrow.
The Tooheys New time machine
Drinks can be so evocative. I’ve been through a decades-long craft beer arc, but lately I’ve returned to the generic industrial lagers of yesteryear.
It’s a magic time machine wired direct to my reptilian brain.
Because with that first sip of Tooheys New on tap I’m nineteen-year-old me clocking off from my carny job, and tomorrow morning I’m driving up the Pacific Highway in a shitty old car to have simple adventures in the sun with my friends. Zero responsibilities. My whole life stretching out in front of me in intoxicating fashion, but no need for any urgent action on that front.
Literally, the taste of good times.
Old, affluent me is envious of that guy. I would never write him a list of things I know now that I didn’t know then. Because he would rightly tell me to fuck off with that sentimental drivel, he’s fine how he is.
With a pub Tooheys New, I can just pop back and inhabit that world in my mind for a moment. Never change, Tooheys.
I know you mean well
I know you mean well when you’re sharing the joy at your zero-alcohol life over two thousand words. You want others to feel nice and healthy.
The problem isn’t so much what you say, as how that message is received. It’s preachy.
People feel you’re calling them problematic for enjoying a few drinks. They feel you think they’re the same as people whose alcohol abuse causes genuine damage to society. They aren’t, and you want to take away one of their few sources of escapist social joy.
They feel you think you’re better than them.
One reason Donald Trump is the next President of the United States is because a lot of normal people are tired of killjoys and do-gooders telling them what they shouldn’t be doing.
I get that some people should not drink it because the effect varies. I have the greatest respect for people who choose not to, because they don’t like what they become on the drink. Incredibly strong move and respect to them.
I know plenty of other people who become funnier, more eloquent, and more open to genuine good times when they let their guard down for one glorious evening every so often, and bless that also.
Stay classy out there
It’s the beverage-heavy time of year. Classy use of alcohol can be guided by the pure definition of hospitality: to look out for others, and take responsibility for them having a good time.
This includes non-drinkers: folks from all the fine non-drinking religions out there, people who just don’t like the taste, whatever reason. They don’t have to justify their choices, and they deserve the same quality night out as anyone.
They deserve as much thought put into the non-alcoholic list at your work party as the alcoholic stuff. They too have worked hard all year. They’ve earned more than an afterthought cup of Sprite.
The classy drinker is alert to signs of boisterous dickhead behaviour that excludes the quiet people, and moves in to balance out the conversation.
And if you want to write a long post about all the fun you had at the party, how fulfilling that was and the warm human connections you made, go for it.
Welcome to the resistance comrade, we shall overcome the health cops one enjoyable night at a time. Cheers.
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Have you read my book Undisruptable? It’s the practical antidote to the Inspo Taliban. Business can be fun as well as lucrative.
Zoë Foster Blake said: “Ian is a cheeky, funny, disruptive (and proven: important) business rascal and thank goodness for that.”
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