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Dear James,
I’ve been reading a lot lately about the long-term effects, mental and physical, of regular alcohol use. The trend toward being “alcohol free” strikes me as long overdue. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, but within my Irish family, we have a history of alcoholism. What I’ve discovered in the past year or so is that even a small amount of drinking—say, one glass of wine with dinner on a few weeknights or a cocktail or two on weekend nights—takes a noticeable toll on my health and general outlook. When I avoid alcohol completely, I feel lighter and more hopeful despite the state of the world, I sleep better, and my memory improves.
At the risk of sounding too preachy (or maybe tedious? priggish? take your pick), I wonder if you would dare suggest cutting out the alcohol to those who write to you saying they’re depressed and admitting to “drinking a little too much”?
Dear Reader,
Here is my thought on the question
of how much booze should be had:
Enough to make you merry,
not enough to make you sad.
A bit glib? Well, yes. Occupational hazard of light verse. And I appreciate that one man’s merriment is another man’s trash-can-knocked-over-at-3-a.m. (Or worse.)
But I do like a drink. Alcohol—like coffee, exercise, cold showers, heavy metal, and occasional churchgoing—is an important part of my Mood-Management Kit: I use it to regulate my personality. Or dysregulate it, depending on your perspective.
Not long ago, I was in a pub in Sydney, Australia, where right into my booze-melted ear a man delivered himself of the most beautiful apologia for drinking that I could ever hope to hear. He was soaring; he was plunging. Drinking, as he rhapsodically defended it, was about exposure, adventure, vulnerability, availability, commonality, democracy, poetry, blessed release, the mystical body of boozers … I wish I could remember exactly what he said. I can’t, of course, because I was drunk.
Depression and alcohol, I agree, are a bad mix. A sluggish and dangerous mix. If you’re low, the booze will take you lower—perhaps not straightaway, but inevitably you’ll hit some air pocket in your evening, some floorless moment when you drop 10,000 feet in three seconds. Anxiety and alcohol, on the other hand, are such eager bedfellows that their conjunction can feel almost sacramental: I’m nervous; I have a beer; I’m not nervous anymore. It works so well! The trick, I suppose, is knowing when to stop. You don’t want to get too not-nervous.
By now, it will be clear to you that I have nothing very useful, and certainly nothing prescriptive, to offer on the theme of alcohol. If your health, your sense of yourself, and your general feeling-tone are improved by abstinence, more power to you. Pour that sherry down the toilet and don’t look back. To my fellow boozers in America, I will just say this: The one thing that definitely cannot be fixed, managed, or ameliorated by drinking is an authoritarian takeover. Much as some of you may wish to plunge your head in a fuming vat of wine, for this one, you’re going to need to have your wits about you. Tyrants love a blotto population. Stay sharp.
Reluctantly feeling the call of sobriety,
James
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