Teetotal Evangelist
I can’t seem to shut up about quitting alcohol
My decision to become a vegetarian in graduate school was a financial one. It was what followed naturally from cutting out the most expensive items on my grocery list. Spaghetti was a lot cheaper when the recipe only called for sauce and noodles. I never told anybody about it. Ditto on bicycle commuting.
But I can’t seem to shut up about quitting alcohol. “It’s amazing,” I’ll say over dinner with friends, “my thinking has actually improved.” My guests nod with politely raised eyebrows as they follow along, their fingertips gripping the stems of their champagne flutes. “And my sleep is so much deeper now.” Then I go on to explain how alcohol doesn’t really provide the sort of sleep satisfaction I used to think it provided, and how I see everything more clearly now that I’m always sober.
Reading my audience, I keep my examples for quitting alcohol to ten. I don’t explain my reduced risk for cancer, for example, or how I no longer feel the need to pee in the middle of the night. But I manage to squeeze everything else into conversation. “You mentioned mowing the lawn,” I say, gesturing to Larry, “I’ve actually found that, since quitting alcohol, I have an extra two hours each day to read and write or do chores around the house. Anything I’d like, really.” After Erica shares a story about our rodent problem, I add, “You know, one drink is sort of like eating a teaspoon of rat poison, if you think about it.”
Everybody else continues ordering their second and third rounds of cocktails while the ice melts into my tasteless seltzer.
At the doctor’s office for my annual checkup, I get to say “None” for the first time when asked about drinking.
“None?” says the nurse, looking up from her tablet.
“That’s right,” I say. “No alcohol.” I consider asking if I am the first adult patient she’s met who has had zero drinks in the previous six months.
In my developmental psychology class, I share with students that one of the best lifestyle decisions I have ever made was my decision to give up alcohol.
“I wasn’t any sort of drunk,” I explain. I don’t want them to picture me sitting on some street curb and drinking out of a paper bag after all.
“I mean, I drank a lot,” I tell them, “but my decision to stop is purely one of sacrifice in service to well-being.” I am Abraham setting aflame his firstborn son in the name of God. Only that I haven’t been blessed with descendants and cities for my sacrifice, I’m blessed with better gut health and a certain I-know-better-than-you arrogance.
Without realizing it, I have resurrected a social role I thought I had outgrown 20 years ago: I am a proselytizer. In high school I used to carry a pocket-sized Christian Bible with me wherever I went. I worked quotes from scripture into ordinary conversations like I was handing out care packages to the homeless. As a department store menswear employee, I once spent two paid hours explaining to a woman at the jewelry counter how the Watchtower Society had it all wrong.
“I’ll think about it,” she said at last.
“That’s so brave of you,” I said.
I returned to my department high on the belief that I would be repaid tenfold for my efforts. On the way I was stopped by a customer trying on scarves.
“I heard what you did back there,” she said, and then she thanked me for my service. I nodded piously. “I’m only speaking the truth in love,” I said.
After summarizing the reasoning behind my abstinence to a classroom of students, a 22-year-old woman in the front row crinkled her nose and giggled. I went crimson with indignation.
“Is something funny?” I asked.
“You are,” she said, and she shook her head playfully.
Her comment stung, but what stung worse was that no other students leapt to my defense saying, for instance, What Mister Whitehead is doing is very brave. Nobody offered a teary-eyed, You poor thing: the burden you carry in service to the rest of us. There was no That’s so inspiring! or Tell us how you did it! There was just this giggling young woman and a classroom of blank faces.
I folded my arms and tapped my toe until she provided a little more context.
“I mean,” she said at last, making an enormous effort to meet me halfway, “my uncle — he quit,” she explained, “and that was good. He a mess.”
“Mhmm…” I said.
“So… good job?” she said. “Congratulations? Is that what you want to hear?”
Class ended and I asked this student to stay back for a minute. When it was only she and I, I said, “It hurt my feelings what you said.” I then asked if, perhaps, the real reason for her laughing was that she thought I couldn’t handle giving up alcohol. That I would fail in the end.
“Whoa,” she said, holding up her hands and smiling uncomfortably. “I never said that. Drink or don’t; I don’ care. It’s really no big deal.”
