Don’t chug it
Growing up on the rugged streets and back alleys of La Jolla, I don’t recall ever being taught how to ride a bike. I have no memory of a parent or older sibling running along beside me while holding on to the back of my bike seat, letting go once I got safely moving. I know there were training wheels bolted to the back wheel of my first little two-wheeler, but I soon took them off since they made me look childish - I was probably 4 or 5 at the time. Chances are I learned how to ride by gathering speed while coasting down the long hill that was our asphalt driveway. But, since I hardly remember what I had for lunch today, I may have blurred the facts on my introduction to bicycling.
From an early age we’re taught to eat fruits and vegetables, to always wear sunscreen and clean underwear, not to stare or pick your nose (or is it not to stare while picking your nose?), and to cover your mouth when you cough. I recall countless times my mother admonishing us kids to ‘sit up straight; brush your teeth; chew your food with your mouth closed; elbows off the table.’ In scouting, it’s all about teaching young men to ties knots, be brave, loyal, and trustworthy.
My dad never showed me how to throw a baseball, catch a football, shoot a basket, or drive a nail. In school, I learned how to read, spell, world history, and to habla español. My grandmother taught me how to bake cookies and cinnamon rolls, and to memorize the multiplication tables (8x8=64, 9x7=63, 4x9=36, 12x11=132). As I got older, I learned how to drive a car and fly an airplane. In my late teens, I even learned how to scuba dive.
But I was never taught how to drink alcohol.
I know as a very young boy there were sips from my father’s tin cans of Hamms – “From the Land of the Sky-Blue Waters”, or Schlitz – “The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous”, but the first beer I remember having on my own was a lukewarm Coors around the age of 15, and it tasted like crap. Well, DUH! It’s Coors, of course it will taste like crap, warm or cold. Despite that initial negative debut into the life of a beer drinker, it didn’t stop me from a future of toilet hugging nights and headache riddled mornings.
During the summer of 1974, when I was a wee lad of 19, Barney, Randy, Bob (three friends from school), and I drove to Phoenix since it was legal to drink in Arizona at age 18. With me at the wheel of my little Porsche 356 (Porsche is a two-syllable word), and Barney driving his Corvette, the four of us made the 350+ mile trip in less than 4 hours. Upon arrival, we rented a cheap motel room, bought a bottle of vodka and a can of grape juice, mixed the two and started to drink our poison like it was ice water. My only other memory of that night is standing outside on the small 3’x3’ stoop of our room, puking into the bushes. Hungover, we drove home the next morning.
During several months spent as an unemployed, teenage youth, my days were filled by sitting around one of two pools at my apartment complex where I befriended a fellow tenant who was a die-hard beer drinker. Several other residents of the apartment complex and I would spend hours sitting around the pool or in his apartment drinking Budweiser, but it HAD to be in longneck bottles. No cans or the standard brown glass bottles. It was longnecks or nothing. Quite often after a day of beer drinking, we’d go to dinner at Saska’s, in Mission Beach, and I’d order a burger and beer. No one ever carded me.
In my mid-20’s and while working at The Diving Locker, one of the managers had a party at his house and invited employees and a few customers. Three things stand out in my mind from his party; 1) Tequila and margaritas were the featured drinks; 2) The host was planning on painting one of the bedrooms, so he got this great idea to provide magic-markers and allow the guests to draw or write on the walls of this one particular room. Well, as you might guess, as the night wore on and numerous bottles of Jose Cuervo were emptied, the ‘artwork’ spread from the single designated room, down the hallway, and into another bedroom. I never heard any follow-up on painting over his failed attempt at having his guests limit their creative drunken selves to a single room, but I know that covering over magic-marker ink isn’t easy. 3) The next day, a majority of the employees called in sick because they were so hungover.
Having been an experienced drinker and faithful member of the staff at the time, I showed up for work the next morning bleary-eyed and with a raging hangover. While waiting on a customer, who took one look at the few of us who showed up for work and inquired about our previous evening, he mentioned how he was a pharmaceutical rep. After a brief explanation of our drunken debauchery, he went out to the trunk of his car and brought in a few samples that promised to cure what ailed us. I have no idea what he gave us, but I remember feeling better shortly after taking it.
It was also during my time at The Diving Locker that I was one of two trip leaders taking about 30 customers to the Cayman Islands. During a week of diving and drinking, I discovered the best drink in the world – Ron Ricardo’s Coconut Rum. Served straight up over ice, it was a tiny slice of tropical-island life, minus the steel drums, in a highball glass. After a day of diving, the late afternoons and evenings were spent in the small beachside bar listening to a 2-piece band, sipping coconut rum. I’d reached Nirvana.
Based on the above stories you might think I did nothing but drink during the 5-years I worked at The Diving Locker. Looking back, that’s probably true, and I could go on and on with numerous alcohol-fueled tales, but I will add just one more.
Everclear.
We’re cautioned to avoid snakes, loose women, and rabid dogs, but why was there never a word mentioned about staying away from Everclear, a 190 proof grain alcohol? To give you an idea of this toxic liquid, here is some information I’ll pass on to you, dear reader. It’s not legal to sell in California; it’s 95% alcohol; chemistry doesn’t allow for anything to be stronger than 191 proof; The Guinness Book of World Records labels it as the ‘most alcoholic drink in the world.'
I won’t vouch for the authenticity of the following, but according to my friends at Google, “... it is illegal to sell or purchase ANY FORM of Everclear in New York, New Hampshire, Nevada, California, Ohio, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota and North Carolina. However, some of the states that do sell it require that the person buying Everclear must be 25 years of age or older, and some even require permits or licenses to purchase it.”
From the distiller’s website: ‘Luxco is a consumer products company that is mindful of the past, yet focused on the future.' I find using the Zen-like term ‘mindful’ on a website that promotes the consumption of Everclear to be as incongruous as ‘act naturally’; ‘clearly confused’; ‘larger half’; or ‘Microsoft Works.'
It was at a summer party in 1980 that I was introduced to this pseudo-legal moonshine. In an attempt to get me drunk, a woman I’d just met (who would later become my wife), secretly poured a shot or two of Everclear into my beer. When that had no impact on me, and encouraged on by my so-called friends, she dumped more in, still unbeknownst to me and still with little change in my behavior. After concluding an evening of drinking that would make a pledge at a frat party envious, I found the following day that I’d become allergic to beer. So I switched to tequila – problem solved!
Was it the addition of Everclear that caused my body to convulse at drinking even the smallest amount of beer? I’ll never know, but thinking tequila was a better alternative to the beer/Everclear concoction was certainly a naive thought. You also might think that by the time I reached 50, I’d have a good idea on how to drink.
Wrong!
In the 80’s, Garcia’s of Scottsdale was a chain of Mexican restaurants with a location in the Sports Arena area. On one of our many visits to the restaurant, we asked for their recipe for margaritas that we enjoyed so much. From notes they scribbled on a cocktail napkin, we tweaked it to become the World Famous ‘Mary & Andy’s Margaritas’, enjoyed the world over, but often to excess. Even though Garcia’s taught me how to make margaritas, I still had no formal education on how to properly drink them.
For my 50th birthday, Mary booked a little casita in Palm Springs to spend a few days relaxing in the warm desert air. She surprised me by inviting four other couples to join us. At my celebratory dinner at The Blue Coyote Grill, a local Southwest Mexican restaurant, the 10 of us ordered platefuls of great Mexican food and went through countless pitchers of margaritas. On the stumbling mile or so walk back to our hotel, linked arm-in-arm with our friend Joyce, I remember thinking to myself “…she must be shitfaced, she can’t even walk in a straight line.” I’m guessing both our BA levels were in triple digits that night and Joyce wasn’t the only one who couldn’t walk a straight line. The morning after was pretty rough.
Media constantly bombards us with ads designed to lure us into the laughing and smiling world full of beautiful 30-somethings shown joyfully holding a bottle of beer or a glass of wine while surrounded by other beautiful 30-something friends doing the same.
Waiters and waitresses are trained to explain the daily specials and ask for our drink order all in the same breath. Bartenders are schooled in the ways of mixing the perfect Pisco Sour, Cosmopolitan, Vieux Carre’, Martini, or French 75, but have they, or any of us ever been taught how to drink?
Again returning to my friends at Google, I typed in the following search: ‘classes on how to drink.' After scrolling past all the page hits for bartending schools or food and wine classes, I stumbled on an article about a ‘mindful drinking’ meditation class. Perhaps this is the shaman on top of the mountain I’ve needed all my life?
Plush cushions and foam cubes lined the dimly lit meditation room, the excerpted article began.
Rinzler, a bearded man wearing a suit jacket, a bow-tie, and green argyle socks, advised us to sit cross-legged on a cushion. He has studied Buddhism and monastic tradition for over a decade. In college, he didn't drink mindfully; as on weekends, he would drink all night and then wake up at sunrise to meditate. “If you wanted to meet an expert in hungover meditation, I was your guy,” he said.
There are a few strategies for drinking mindfully, he said. First, we meditated to set our intentions for drinking. While trying to remain in the present moment, we asked ourselves, “Am I drinking because I want to unwind...Or to drown my sorrows?” “Alcohol in itself is not good or bad,” Rinzler said. “It’s our relationship to it that matters.”
After about 15 minutes, Rinzler rang a bronze gong to signal meditation was over. It was time for our first “healthy” cocktail by Lazy Point, a new agey bar in Manhattan.
We “mindfully walked” in a line out of the room to a table where the bartenders prepared our drinks. They called it a pistachio Moscow mule, a punchy cocktail with ginger, vodka, and a lime garnish.
Once we returned to our cushions, Rinzler told us to mindfully “experience” the drink. I examined the color and smelled it a few times, getting a whiff of ginger. Then, I took my first sip, really concentrating on the sensation of how it tasted.
Next, it was time for an exercise. Rinzler told us to talk to one or two people next to us, focusing on deeply listening to them while drinking. Listen, engage, mindfully take a sip, and then come back to the conversation, he said. I talked to a 20-something woman visiting from England who “loved alcohol,” but wanted to learn how to tame her racing thoughts while she drank.
“Don’t chug it,” Rinzler reminded us before we started our second meditation session. This time, he asked the class to concentrate on how our bodies felt after the first drink. About 15 minutes later, he rang the gong again. Time for drink number two. By this point, I felt more tipsy than enlightened.
I’ve meditated semi-regularly for the past year, but this was my first time adding alcohol. Although I wouldn’t smell my cocktail or sit on the floor at a bar or party, checking in with myself could make me a better listener, feel more present — or even deter a hangover.
Leanna Garfield/Tech Insider
I too have mediated for the past few years, though I doubt I’ll be mixing meditation and mash anytime soon. Perhaps the best and only lesson needed on drinking alcohol is not to chug it, but sip your drink and in moderation.
Oh, and stay away from Everclear.
Cheers!