Mind Games
Why I’ve Never Tasted Alcohol and Am Not About to Start
I am afraid of the one thing everyone wants from alcohol — to become someone else
When I tell people I don’t drink alcohol, I see them stiffen, as though I’m denying my birthright or weaseling out of a contract. Sometimes their next words take a defensive tone: they don’t drink much, just once in awhile, like on Christmas or New Year’s or birthdays. At other times when I decline a drink, I’m met with skepticism. The person might offer a second time, as if I just needed a moment to think about it, or they might tease me with “Are you suuuurrrre you don’t want one?” It’s a variation on trying to get kids to eat broccoli: “Just try it. You might like it.”
A lot of writers drink. David Mamet describes his first taste of a particular whiskey almost lovingly: “It was dark and rich and not at all sweet, and quite sharp without being bitter, and it tasted overridingly of smoke and, curiously, of iodine.” P.G. Wodehouse told a friend, “I have come to the conclusion that gin and Italian vermouth are the greatest thing in life.” William James didn’t especially like alcohol, but he saw its utility, writing of its power to “stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the…
