A Diehard Drinker Accidentally Quits

Illustration by Derek Abella Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story. A few years ago, I noticed that drinking alcohol had fallen out of favor with young people. I was annoyed. Yes, some people drank so much that they got fired and hit on random people and drove drunk—those people should obviously quit. But being able to drink reasonably and quitting anyway was, I believed, a rude refusal to have fun with others. We lived in a world where everything had become a kiosk or an effluent pond, or was owned by individuals so rich that the category “human being” ceased to apply. How could anyone not drink in a world where the most flourishing partnerships seemed to be the ones between climate collapse and state-sponsored violence? People who didn’t drink talked about having clarity. They talked about health. I did not believe in clarity. I did not believe in health. I believed in things like the fact that the oceans were getting hot, and that a lot of Palestinians were dead, and that I, an American, had been obligated to help finance both. So I drank, daily, sometimes with some moderation, but often enough with none. Not drinking seemed to me synonymous with a hatred of pleasure, a fascist quest for purity. Quitting alcohol was counter-revolutionary, enshittification posing as maturity, like downloading an app on attachment styles instead of just going out and getting laid. Those of us who could drink and maintain a decent life had a responsibility to keep it up.

Almost everyone I knew drank, many of them a fair amount, and that was because, like me, they were correct in considering alcohol to be the only thing that gave the world any sparkle. People did fun, life-affirming, culturally interesting things with alcohol. They made wine or eau-de-vie from obscure grapes and herbs, and invented cocktails tasting of eight things at once. A bar that I went to in the suburbs of Madrid served white wine on a plane of ice, frozen on a slant in the glass. When I drank it, my eyes welled up at the generosity and brilliance of such an invention, and at the idea that anyone would turn down such a beautiful offering, and also, probably, because I was wasted.

I started drinking when I was around seven. My father played basketball every Sunday night, and when he came home he’d have two bottles of Molson Export Ale. On those evenings, he’d allow me a sip. I’d often take a large gulp instead. This made him mad, but he wouldn’t stay mad for long. He could see that I liked drinking, and he couldn’t exactly tell me that I was wrong.